The house felt smaller every day.
I started noticing things I used to ignore—the way the floorboards outside my door creaked if someone walked past after midnight, the thinness of the walls between my room and the hallway, the way my mother’s voice carried up the stairs when she talked on the phone. Every sound made my pulse jump. Every time Liam and I locked eyes across the dinner table I felt the phantom stretch of him still inside me from the night before.
He knew it too.
Thursday afternoon the house emptied for a few hours. My mother had a doctor’s appointment. My stepfather left for a meeting that would keep him until evening. The second the front door closed behind them, Liam found me in the kitchen.
He didn’t speak. He just backed me against the counter, gripped the backs of my
