Chapter 58

• The rain had already started before I woke, soft and insistent against the glass like fingers tapping for entry. I stayed under the sheets longer than usual, not because I was tired but because the weight of everything we hadn’t said the night before still lingered in the air. Julian was not beside me. His side of the bed was still faintly warm, but the rest of the room had grown cold in his absence.
• I got up slowly, pulling on one of his long-sleeved shirts that hung low over my thighs. The hem was wrinkled, the cuffs stretched from the way he always pushed them up past his elbows. The scent of him clung to the fabric, warm and clean and unmistakably his. I ran my hand down the length of the sleeve and let it rest there, curled loosely in my lap, as I sat at the edge of the bed staring at the floorboards.
• There were things we both knew but had not yet spoken aloud. His silence about the anonymous message was beginning to settle between us like a fog, and though I couldn’t name the specifics of what he was holding back, I felt the presence of it in the way he looked at me last night, like he was bracing himself for a conversation he wasn’t ready to have.