Page 28 of Lured By Shadows

“The shadows beneath your eyes,” he said gently, gesturing toward my face. “They are dark with a purplish shade, which indicates you slept poorly.”

Great. Apparently I looked as bad as I felt.

“It’s just the new house,” I said. “I’m still getting used to it.”

I hesitated, weighing whether I should say anything else as the scent I’d noticed last night lingered faintly in the back of my mind, unsettling and recognizable. “Hey, um… speaking of the house. Were you near my place yesterday?”

He tilted his head, that faint smirk returning. “I dropped you off yesterday evening. So yes, I suppose I was around your house.”

My eye twitched. “No,” I pressed, my voice sharpening. “I meant specifically last night.”

Because if he said yes, I was legally allowed to panic.

Instead of answering, he hummed quietly, low and cryptic. A sound that offered nothing while somehow suggesting everything.

His hand lifted, brushing through my hair before settling lightly on top of my head in an almost absent gesture, as though he were soothing something instinctively. I flinched and nudged him away, not roughly, but firmly enough to make my point.

“Why do you do that?” I asked, half-laughing despite myself. “I’m not a baby.”

“I think it is because you are much shorter than I am,” he said with a grin. “It makes me want to pet you affectionately.”

I was not about to get domesticated by a weirdly attractive man.

“You’re not that much taller than me,” I muttered, rolling my eyes as I rose onto my tiptoes, stubborn and ridiculous. It was a lie considering he was built like a haunted tree.

He didn’t argue. He simply raised his hand and traced an invisible line just above my head, lifting a brow with quiet confidence. His smile wasn’t mocking. If anything, it was patient in a way that drove me a little crazy. I scrunched my nose but didn’t push it further. Maybe he really was just tall, and I could deal with that. Boundaries, though, were another thing entirely.

“I’m still not a baby,” I muttered as we reached the classroom door.

“I have not thought that once about you,” he replied calmly, his gaze steady, and I believed him.

“Well, that’s good at least,” I said softly, the corner of my mouth lifting. “Anyway, I’ve gotta get to class.”

“And I will see you after,” he said, the gentle smile returning. “My little lamb.”

I groaned but didn’t correct him, pushing through the door before he could say anything else.

That was probably how cults started.

I spotted Sienna and Oliver almost instantly, sprawled across the soft seats near the middle of the room, already deep in what could only be described as academic warfare. They leaned toward each other with animated intensity, voices sharp and overlapping, hands flying as though they were conducting an orchestra only they could hear. Sienna jabbed a finger at the paper between them, her cheeks puffed with frustration as though she might actually combust.

“You aren’t listening; I said it wouldn’t bloody work,” she snapped, eyes narrowed into little daggers. Each word landed clipped and exact, the sort of authority that came from being right far too often.

Oliver, on the other hand, looked entirely unbothered. He lounged back in his seat like a smug cat, lips pulled into a dramatic sneer. “I’m keeping it,” he declared with full theatrical flair, “because it makes our subject pop, obviously.”

“Hey, guys,” I said, sliding into the empty chair beside them and lifting a brow. “What’s got y’all tied in knots?”

They turned on me in perfect synchronization, as though they’d rehearsed it.

“He won’t listen to me!”

“She won’t listen to me!”

I snorted because they argued with the ease of a long-married couple, equal parts exhausting and weirdly endearing. Somehow, it made me feel a little less like an outsider slipping into their world. “How about I settle it?” I offered, reaching for the page they were tugging back and forth like a wishbone. “Let me decide if the sentence fits or not.”

“Brilliant!” Oliver exclaimed, instantly surrendering the paper as though he’d just won something.

As I scanned the sentence, Sienna leaned closer and nudged my elbow, lowering her voice into something conspiratorial. “We clocked you’d be with Scarbrough,” she said with a grin. “So we swooped in early and bagged seats near you.”