I wasn't going to throw all that away because of some ridiculous attraction to a man I'd met once and would probably never see again.
With renewed determination, I washed my dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and set up my study materials on the dining table. I would focus. I would be productive. I would stop thinking about him.
Three hours later, I gave up.
I'd read the same paragraph twelve times. I'd written exactly two sentences of my paper. I'd checked my phone more times than I could count, though I wasn't sure what I was expecting to see.
It was nearly midnight, and I was wide awake, my mind racing, my body humming with a restless energy I couldn't dispel.
With a sigh of defeat, I changed into my pajamas—an oversized Harvard t-shirt and cotton shorts—and climbed intobed. I turned off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness, and stared at the ceiling.
The city lights filtered through my curtains, casting patterns of light and shadow across the walls. From somewhere in the distance came the wail of a siren, the sound rising and falling like a cry in the night.
I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come, but all I could see was his face. All I could hear was his voice. All I could feel was the weight of his gaze on my skin, heavy and hot like a physical touch.
Someone who sees you.
What would it be like to be truly seen by someone like him? To be known, not as an O'Sullivan, not as a law student, not as any of the labels I wore like armor, but as myself—with all my contradictions, my desires, my secrets?
The thought sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the cool night air.
I rolled onto my side, punching my pillow into a more comfortable shape. This was insanity. I was lying awake at midnight, fantasizing about a man whose name I didn't even know, whose intentions were unclear at best and threatening at worst.
A man who had known my name without being told.
That fact kept circling back, a red flag I couldn't ignore no matter how much I tried to rationalize it away. He had known who I was. Had sought me out specifically.
Why?
The possibilities were troubling. He could be connected to my father's enemies. Could be using me to get to the O'Sullivan family. Could be planning God knows what.
Or he could just be a man who had seen me and wanted to know me. A man who had looked at me and seen something worth pursuing.
The rational part of my brain knew which scenario was more likely. The part of me that had been raised in a family where paranoia was a survival skill, where trust was a luxury we couldn't afford.
But another part of me—a part I rarely acknowledged, rarely allowed to surface—wanted to believe in the second possibility. Wanted to believe that his interest was personal, not political. That the connection I'd felt wasn't one-sided or imagined.
I turned again, restless and frustrated with my own circular thoughts. This was getting me nowhere. He was just a man. Just a moment. Just a strange encounter that would fade from memory with time.
Except it wasn't fading. If anything, the memory was growing stronger, more vivid, more insistent with each passing day.
I wanted to see him again.
The admission, even to myself, felt like surrender. Like stepping off a cliff without knowing what waited below.
I wanted to see him again. Wanted to hear him say my name in that voice that seemed to touch places inside me no one had ever reached. Wanted to feel that electric awareness, that sense of being truly seen.
It was reckless. Potentially dangerous. Definitely stupid.
And yet, as I finally drifted toward sleep, my last conscious thought was a question that had no rational answer:
If I went back to Tenebris, would he be there waiting for me?
And more troubling still:Would I want him to be?
The answer, whispered in the darkness of my own mind as sleep claimed me, was a simple, damningyes.
7
