A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! You guys are so rad! I hope you guys can feel the tension rising because the next chapter it practically explodes. Like, all over our faces. And it's going to hurt but it's going to be so awesome.
Chapter 6
"You learn to be content with your life because you realize it's the only one you're ever going to have," he said, sitting by her family's lake. "Flying away – it's just a dream. It's never going to happen. That's why it's so nice to think of."
"Miss Blackwell?"
Hermione looked up at her Headmaster, trying to blink away the stubborn cobwebs of past memories. But in the back of her mind, that image of him, the glow of the sunset reflecting off of his young, flawless face, clung tightly – almost even with purpose. Though not often, the moments she'd had with Draco when he had mentioned this capricious desire to fly away from all the tangible elements of his life stood loud out and clear in her mind. She could almost even remember how cool and firmly he'd held her hand when they had shaken on the deal – that if she could overcome her fear of flying and heights, he would mount his broom and leave. Everything. Maybe even her.
"Madam Pomfrey has informed me that Mr. Malfoy will be fine. He has no serious wounds. Just a minor fainting spell, it appears."
Hermione had been at Hogwarts long enough to know when Dumbledore wasn't telling her the entire truth. Granted, it was something more of a fact – that Dumbledore was almost never telling them the entire truth, and usually all they could do was simply accept that, because they could rarely challenge someone of such high authority like Dumbledore. But something about Draco's case made her anxious enough for the truth to try and press her luck on it.
"Headmaster, forgive me but – this is the second time I've seen him like this," she insisted. "The first time, he had a mysterious head wound. I didn't take him to the hospital wing because he woke up soon after and acted as if nothing had happened."
A flash of that night came back to her. She didn't tell him another reason she hadn't gone to Dumbledore was because she was too busy wishing she'd left him there to die. In all of her intent to do good, she also remembered that all of the dark, shameful thoughts were a part of her, too.
She noticed Dumbledore's bright blue eyes darken behind his half-moon glasses. "And you didn't report this to his Head of House?"
She wrung her hands underneath the table. "I-I didn't think much of it, at first," she lied, sighing, diverting her eyes. "Until it happened again, tonight." She looked up and met his eyes again, firmly. "I don't think it's just a minor fainting spell, Headmaster. I have a very strong feeling there's something else going on."
Something sinister, she wanted to say. Something sad. Something dreadful.
Dumbledore considered this thoughtfully. "Have you noticed anything else out of the ordinary with Mr. Malfoy?" he asked.
"Well – no," she said, starting to become frustrated with her lack of evidence when she could see the invalidity of her conjecture increasingly being reflected on Dumbledore's face. "But my gut tells me something isn't right about Draco. Please, Headmaster. Tell me you'll look into it."
His eyes softened at her, and already she could feel that this was a losing battle. "Miss Blackwell, I understand there has been some unresolved tension between you two as a result of an unexpected turn of events last year. Mr. Malfoy will be kept here after he regains consciousness, where I will then question him. But you do understand that we have no evidence to initiate an investigation otherwise. To do so," he said somberly, "would be against Hogwarts policy."
Hermione sat back in her seat, suddenly feeling as if all of her energy had been drained from her. Her body felt spent and her mind was disoriented with drowsiness and the confusion over the night's recent events involving Malfoy. "Yes, Headmaster Dumbledore. I understand."
"Good," he said. "And I do appreciate you bringing Mr. Malfoy to the hospital wing and bringing his situation to my attention. I will do everything in my power to make certain he is not in harm's way."
Hermione nodded, thanking him for his time before exiting his circular office. As she left and headed back towards her room, silently making her way through the dead, dimly lit corridors, she couldn't shake the feeling that Dumbledore was hiding something from her, and it frustrated her. Didn't she have a right to know?
No, actually, you don't, her mind's voice harshly answered. You're out of his life now, remember?
As if it were that easy to stop caring about someone just because they had decided you were no longer worth any of their time or good intent. As if she could just turn it all off, all of those years of friendship and their associated memories. As if she could just as easily pretend none of it meant anything. As if she could be Draco.
But she didn't wish to be him – no, not with the way things were turning out. But right now she wasn't exactly enjoying being herself, either.
As she made it through the portrait hole to their common room, she stared again at his open door. She slowly walked in, turning on the lights. Everything there looked neat and perfectly in order, and it occurred to her that she wasn't sure exactly what it was she was looking for. Some sign of struggle, maybe. A sign of something terrible that would confirm her worst fear, as if he'd be stupid enough to put up a poster of the Dark Mark or leave out a private journal in clear view. She sighed, biting her lip, before heading over to his wardrobe. She opened the doors and quickly rummaged through his clothes. Nothing.
She began to search through his things, looking for anything that might give her a clue of what was going on, what he had gotten himself involved in. She looked even though she knew she would find nothing. Draco was impeccable about details. She would never find anything he hadn't meant for her to find.
She looked in a bedside drawer and lifted up a volume of Hogwarts: a History. It wasn't the common edition the school had them buy their first year here – it was one from his family's personal collection, a crisp first edition. She knew this because while her own library was filled with first editions back home, she had always envied him for this one. For a moment she was pulled from her spot and transported back in time, running her fingertips down the spine, tracing the depressed lettering. She closed her eyes for a second in an attempt to collect herself before she could possibly unravel. And then she opened it.
"You've got an unhealthy obsession with that book," Draco said to her, looking at her oddly, as she leaned against the shelf with the tome tucked against her chest. "Granted, you've got an unhealthy obsession with all books, but that book in particular."
"You don't get it," she said, shaking her head at him. "It's history. Or a good chunk of it, at least. This is the very first edition of Hogwarts: A History. It's the largest one before they decided to edit out what they thought a bunch of First Years didn't want to bother with. It's utterly complete." She sighed as she flipped through it. "I've been trying to find one for ages, but a lot of them were destroyed in the first Wizarding War."
"So now your only resort is to come here to my library," Draco drawled, "and salivate over my copy. I'd say you're mental but this is perfectly like you."
She looked at him, before closing the book. "What kills me is that you don't even know what you have." A symptom of the obscenely rich, she'd realized. They saw objects and rare deluxe trinkets but nothing about what they could possibly mean to someone else.
"Blackwell, let's forget for a moment that you're a woman and thus create irrational bonds to pieces of chocolate and sentimental objects," he said dryly, coming up next to her. "It's a book. I've got thousands of other 'historical' books, all first editions, too. So forgive me if I'm not paying this one special attention every hour of every day."
"It's a book," she clarified, "chronicling how four very different people came together from all paths of life and built a school whose values would live on for ages after their death. It's a book about immortality." She began to mutter to herself. "And the noble kind, not the villainous kind they write about in fairytales."
"Immortality," he said slowly, as if thinking it over. "I suppose that almost makes it exciting."
She tenderly shoved the book back in its place on the shelf, rolling her eyes at him. Leave it to him to debase a sacred hobby like reading your favorite book. "You're a machine, you know that?" she said, turning to him.
Draco only smirked. That same infuriating, condescending smirk that seemed so disturbingly natural for such a handsome face. She wondered if he had come out smirking that way from his mother's velvet womb or if he had caught it, like a disease, from his father before he even learned how to talk. "For everyone else, maybe," he teased nonchalantly. "But not for you."
Realizing she couldn't bear to look over this book – not like she used to, not anymore, not right now – she decided to close it and put it away – but not before she noticed something. There was a pocket behind the cover that she would have surely missed if she hadn't spent summers pouring herself over this single book. She curiously slid her finger against it, trying to reach what was inside.
Finally, she was able to pull out what was in the hidden sleeve. She held her breath.
It was a photograph from a New Year's party that had been held at her manor, one year ago. She looked at the two moving figures in the picture, smiling and laughing in the crowd. She hardly recognized herself. As for Draco, she hardly recognized him, either – if it was not for the same Draco still living like a ghost in her mind. The same Draco she had been trying to convince herself was out of reach, hopelessly adrift in the darkness somewhere, he was here. He had existed. He was in this picture. With her.
Her fingertips curled against the picture, humanly anchoring it to this world, thinking that it would slip away from her or disappear as soon as she let go. Holding this physical proof of a time she almost thought she'd imagined burned her. She was trapped in a revolving daze that kept hitting her, over and over again, staring at that picture, impossibly trying to grasp what it could possibly mean. Because it meant something. Perhaps even something she couldn't bear to fathom.
When the terror of a forthcoming epiphany finally overwhelmed her, she shoved the picture back inside the book, and the book back in its proper place – inside the drawer, buried, and out of sight. Feeling as if she couldn't breathe, and as if the walls were now shrinking in on her, she left quickly and locked the room behind her, wishing she'd never been in there at all.
It was only later that night as she lay restless in her bed, rubbing away the saltwater in her eyes, that she remembered the pensieve she had seen earlier. She remembered it vividly, glowing blue and ethereally amidst the darkness in the corner, before she had found him unconscious on the floor. But when she had returned to inevitably find his family's first edition of Hogwarts: A History in his drawer, as well as the picture he had hidden inside it, she had surveyed his room again. The pensieve hadn't been there at all. As if purely a figment of her imagination, it hadn't even left a trace.
ooo
She remembered that New Year's party, perhaps too clearly than she wished sometimes.
Her parents held a New Year's social every year as part of their efforts to keep up with the people of the Pureblood socialite crowd. Every year since she could remember it had been extravagant, bombarded with champagne and wealthy adults that smiled as if they singlehandedly knew the secret to the world. It had always amazed her how seamlessly her parents could fit into this crowd, as if it was as simple as slipping into a second skin, the way they could sparkle and fit the persona they had moved to India to escape in the first place. She realized, after her sixteenth birthday, that the first pretenders she had ever known were her parents. They had taught her that lies were a part of getting by.
Draco could have easily ditched her to go with the others that had tagged along with their parents to the party (as the years went on, there weren't many), but every year he would show up and spend his New Year's with her. Some days they'd spend it cooped up in the opposite wing of the party, doing their best impressions of the people downstairs, having stolen a tray of desserts from the kitchens; or some days – if it wasn't cold enough yet – they'd spend it by the lake, toasting to each other as the clock struck into the New Year, then screaming nonsense into the dark oblivion.
This year, even though she'd had her doubts, he had shown up. Impeccable and in his dress robes – as if he had just stepped out of a Witch Weekly photo shoot, as usual.
"Thought you would be at the Greengrasses' New Year's party," she said to him, as he nonchalantly grabbed an hors d'oeuvre. People were starting to filter into their manor, oohing and ahhing over the glitzy décor and talking to her parents. She smoothed out some imaginary creases in her dress. "Seeing as how Daphne's your latest flavor of the month and all."
"Careful there, Blackwell," he smirked. "Starting to sound a bit bitter, are we?"
"Not in the slightest. I just thought I'd finally gotten rid of you, that's all," she said, aligning the dessert trays to distract herself. "Was getting ready to pop open the champagne to celebrate."
"Well, nobody gets rid of me that easily," he said haughtily, before pausing their conversation to mechanically greet a few passerby. "Besides, it's tradition. It would have felt wrong to have spent New Year's with anybody but you."
She looked up at him to see if he was still smirking that stupid smirk, but saw that he wasn't. He had meant it, what he'd said, and she quickly looked away, not quite sure of how she felt about it. She was almost even glad there were people around to greet and quickly edge the conversation away. As she made short small talk with some family friends, she could feel his eyes on her bare shoulders, making the skin there invisibly burn.
"I imagine Daphne wasn't too pleased," she said, as casually as possible, as she took a sip of her drink. She could still feel his eyes on her and it was unnerving her because she was starting to think her slight jealousy was radiating off of her in waves, and she was truly praying that it wasn't.
"Since when," he was saying to her, as they began to weave through the ballroom, slipping past the other warm bodies, "have you ever cared about Daphne being pleased or not? Or any of the girls before her? Face it. You care about them even less than I do. You actually laugh at their misfortune."
"I don't laugh at their misfortune," she corrected. "I laugh because taking up with you is the stupidest thing anybody could ever do. And the fact that they get their hopes up is further proof that our human nature is to contradict everything we know about ourselves." She turned to him, giving him a stern look. "Which is that people don't change. Especially if they're wealthy playboy prats."
He pretended to look hurt. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side."
"It's a bit hard to be on your side when you leave a trail of weeping, vengeful girls everywhere you go," she said, a bit coldly. "I get weekly Howlers from girls who make the tragic mistake of thinking that I'm your girlfriend. Just last week one singed off my eyebrows."
"To be fair," he said, trying not to look so amused, "your eyebrows have been needing work for quite some time now."
She just looked at him, incredulous. "And that's supposed to win me over. Brilliant. Quite the charmer of words, you are, Draco."
She excused herself and made the obligatory rounds at the party until she was sure she'd at least said hello to everyone before finally escaping upstairs. She opened the door to her room to find Draco laying in her bed, having picked up a book from the pile on her desk, quietly reading. She sighed silently to herself as she closed the door behind her, muffling the cacophony of the crowd.
So he had stayed, after all. She found some comfort in that.
"If you're bored, you can leave, you know," she said to him, nudging off her shoes and rubbing her tender, raw heels. "I am releasing you from any sense of obligation you might have been feeling by showing up here and not to the Greengrasses' tonight. So go. Fly away, bird. Be free."
He flipped the page, not even looking up. "You're not getting rid of me that easily. You insult me just by trying."
She lay down beside him, watching his face, which was perfectly focused on what he was reading. She could hear the faint music traveling from all the way downstairs. "You broke up with her, didn't you?" she said softly.
"In a sense," he said, after a long pause. "Yes."
"What was it about her this time?" she asked. "Was her nose too pointy? Her knees too fat? Her voice too shrill? Her breathing too loud?"
"Yes," he said, dryly. "All of those, if you can believe it."
She stared at him in awe. "Only you could find a flaw in the most beautiful girl in school. She made decent marks, too, from what I've heard."
He snorted. "You hated her. You told me yourself. You thought she was up her own arse and that she was ridiculous."
"So? I think that about all the girls you date. They seem to fit the same mold, as if they're all clones of each other. But she was better. A little, at least. You two would have made a decent pair, if you weren't so monogamously-challenged."
"And what about you?" he said, closing the book.
She raised her eyebrows him. "What about me?"
"Exactly. Nothing. I seem to give you ample cannon fodder and you give nothing. You give worse than nothing. You give – negative space." He seemed oddly frustrated by this, and she cocked her head at him, trying to read why.
"I told you. I'm not going to get involved with just anybody."
She said this even though she knew her own parents were getting pressured to "debut" her out into society as part of some outdated Pureblood tradition. She also said this even though she was also aware of how some boys at school had begun to look at her – in double-takes, in seemed. None of it changed her mind.
"Don't you ever think," he said slowly, "that whoever this mysterious perfect man it is you're waiting for might never show up? And that years later, you'll look back on these prime snog-worthy years of your life and regret it?"
"Que sera, sera, Draco," she smiled at him, and he shook his head at her, smiling despite himself. "Besides, being with all those girls. . . don't you find it exhausting? You don't even like them half the time. Not as people, anyway."
When he didn't say anything, an idea crept up in the faraway corners of her mind. That maybe she was right, and maybe that was the reason he'd come here for New Year's, and not the Greengrasses'. And at that, she smiled a little bit to herself, letting out a tiny breath against her fingers.
"The truth is, I don't like most people. And if I do like them at first, I'm immediately suspicious of them."
She laughed. "That's only because you've got trust issues."
He looked at her, the right side of his mouth pulled upwards. "I trust you, don't I?"
"That's because you've got no choice. I know all of your dirty secrets," she said sinisterly, before the quiet crept in-between them and she realized the dark underbelly of what she'd said. That she did know most of his dirty secrets, and wished that sometimes she didn't. And when she turned to look at him again, she could see the somber expression he had, as if he were thinking the same thing – but different. Heavier. Always heavier with Draco, these days.
That was the funny thing about being friends with both Draco and Harry – two boys who swore like hellfire to hate each other forever. They had no idea – and would never care enough to listen – how much they had in common. Sometimes they would both get these dark, identical looks – like the entire world was on their shoulders. And as if they were so bone-tired and hadn't slept in weeks.
She knew things had changed for Draco at the manor because in the summer and during their Christmas holiday off from school, their visits became less frequent. He was always off busy with his father, or shagging some chit he'd happened to make eye contact with in the jewelry store. And when he was with her, she could sense the tension, as if he was wound tightly inside and he was trying to let loose around her. He could never do it all the way – not completely. In silent moments like these, she could see it all over his face, like a shadow that was pulling him in with either of them helpless to do anything to stop it. Her, especially. She didn't even know where to begin. How could she, when he would tell her absolutely nothing?
"Do you still do it?" she asked, softly. "Dream about flying away?"
There she was, struggling to hold on, when he was daydreaming about leaving it all behind. She wanted to be angry, to point a finger and talk about being so callous towards an advantaged life, but she couldn't. She couldn't because she knew him – because she understood.
"More now than ever, I think. But the more I'm tempted to, the more it feels impossible."
"Why?" she pressed, as gently as she could. She knew that this was a risk. That if she said or did anything wrong he would shut down completely. He was good at that now. Shutting down, not letting anyone in, bearing the burden by himself. It was such a tragic hero thing to do and it infuriated her.
"Has anybody ever told you," he said, getting up from her bed, "that you ask far too many questions for your own good?"
She sat up and watched him as he walked over to her window, looking out at the magical light display her parents had set up for the party, down at their lawn.
"It's only because I'm on the quest for truth, Draco, like any purpose-searching human being."
"Well, the truth is pretty fucking overrated, I'm sorry to say," he said bitterly. "You know that, don't you, Blackwell? That the truth is cruel and ugly. Tell me you do."
Her throat was dry. When he finally glanced over at her, she could only nod, her heart beating like a bomb inside her chest. Did he know about her? But how could he? No, it was impossible. If he knew. . . he would have told her. Or simply never have come to see her ever again. Cut her off like an infected limb, even. At least that's what Lucius would have demanded.
She got up to stand next to him, watching the people down below. They were laughing with their mouths open to the sky and there was a band playing with fairy lights in the trees, turning colors. She wondered how happy they were. Then she wondered how ugly their secrets were, too, and if it sat heavily inside them, waiting, like a tumor – even when they were dancing, forgetting, and happy. She wondered if she had more in common with them than she'd ever thought.
"Draco, there's something I have to tell you," she breathed, not looking at him. Instead she focused on the moon she had clear view of from her window. She wanted to live there, where secrets like hers didn't matter. But when she looked up, mentally preparing herself to tell him, rehearsing the words and lining them all up on her tongue, all the while wanting to transcend her secret and him to transcend this life – the only life he'd ever known – he had quickly stepped up, overtaking her petite frame. Then he kissed her.
"Kissed her" was an understatement. She hadn't known kisses could really be like this – yet in some bizarre way, it was what she'd been hoping it would be, all along. Soft and tender but pulling her in and getting his fingers urgently tangled up in her hair. It spanned infinity yet was altogether too short that by the time she had pushed him away she was out of breath and her mind was spinning like the planet in rapid regression. Her knees felt flimsy, like windblown paper – but so did every other part of her. Like she was half in this world and half above it, floating.
She stared at him, his lips swollen and his eyes dark like wet stones. Her pulse sounded like white noise in her ears. There was a gauzy shimmer all around them that made all of this seem too much like a dream.
"What," she breathed, "was that?"
He just looked at her for a few moments, silent. She wondered if he was desperately trying to gather up his scrambled thoughts just like she was – but he didn't seem anywhere as flustered as her, and it scared her. "Nothing," he finally said. He ran one hand through his hair, moving to turn away when he looked back at her again, his mouth gnarled into an annoyed scowl. "Does everything always have to mean something to you?"
"Nothing," she scoffed, the luster of the moment quickly disappearing. She had left the orbit and dazedly landed back on earth now. Hard. "You think that was nothing."
Nothing. She never thought any other word could feel so much like a punch in the stomach.
"What do you think it was?"
"Well, I can hardly say, can I?" she said, her voice rising. "I'm not the one who attacked your mouth."
"Oh come off it, Blackwell. It was just a bit of fun. It's New Year's, for Merlin's sake," he said, a little coldly that it stung her. "Little did I know you'd want to dissect it to pieces – if I'd known that, I wouldn't have even considered it. Honestly. Just let it go."
"So I've become one of those girls then," she said stubbornly, her words quivering slightly. "The girls you don't take seriously, that you like to kiss or shag just for fun because they mean nothing to you." She felt her eyes get hot, clenching her fists against her stupid silk dress. "Fuck, Draco! Is nothing sacred to you? Does everything always have to be about sex? Does everything always have to be so-so – disposable and meaningless?"
She saw the immediate reaction from her words on his face, flashing like lightning on stone. "What the bloody hell is your problem?" he snapped. "It was one sodding kiss. Forget about it, all right? Just pretend it never happened."
"Right," she said back at him, wishing she could vomit her words into physical things and pelt them at his head. To make him feel something. Anything, for anyone else. "Like it's that easy."
"Get off your high horse, Blackwell," he hissed, passing her. "I'm not the only one who fucking pretends around here."
And then that was it. With a slam of her bedroom door, he was gone. And she cursed at him with her lips still tingling.
ooo
The first time she saw Draco again after the incident was on Monday, halfway through their classes. She took little glances at him while they prepared their supplies, trying her best to read him – his face, anything – but there was nothing. He practically radiated frost, which, unfortunately, was his normal ambiance. All she wanted was for there to be a little sign that something was off, because she knew with all her conviction that something was. She just needed to be right. She just needed a little proof it wasn't just her.
She bit her lip. He hadn't even looked her way since class started. Not once.
"Oy, Hermione, you all right?" Dean asked her, as he finished grinding up the fluxweed. She turned back to their work, feeling her cheeks flush. "Something going on? You seem. . . less focused than usual."
"Sorry, no, just a little distracted," she said, turning the page, taking a breath. She tried to herd her scrambled thoughts together, fading out the image of Malfoy in her mind. "What's after grinding the fluxweed? Oh, right. Chopping up the mandrake root."
He handed her the root. "Things still going okay with Malfoy? You know Harry and Ron get worried about you having to work with him. What with everything that happened last year, and all."
Hermione forced a smile at him as she began slicing through the mandrake. "Malfoy's just a little more than an inconvenience, that's all. In the shape of an utter prat – but I can handle myself."
Dean nodded, not looking quite as convinced but taking her cue nonetheless, and for the rest of the class period they concocted their healing potion to success. If Dean noticed her looking a little more relieved than usual at their potion turning out the correct hue, he didn't say a word – and she let out a sigh of reprieve when Snape finally announced the end of class. She started quickly gathering up her things, wanting to catch Malfoy in the hall.
Draco was out of the class before she was, followed by the rest of her peers, but just as she had hurriedly crossed towards the front of the class to head out the door, she heard her name. Her stomach sank as she slowly turned around, cursing under her breath. Even as Head Girl, she had not yet transcended their group's collective dislike for Slytherin's Head of House.
"Miss Blackwell," their Potions Master drawled, his upper lip curling with distaste at her name. "I understand you are responsible for admitting my student to the hospital wing last night, in his. . . unfortunate state."
She adjusted her satchel strap, watching him warily. "That's right. I am."
He just looked at her for a moment, completely silent, unnerving her. She could feel him trying to gauge what she knew. "Let's not pretend here, Miss Blackwell. Both you and I have been closely associated with the Malfoys at some point or another, and I know your character as well as your little friends from Gryffindor House," he said with revulsion. "I'm only warning you once. Stay away from Draco. I can sense you sniffing around like a little vermin."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "It's a bit hard to stay away from him, isn't it? Seeing as how he's Head Boy and all. Seeing as how we've got to sleep one room away from each other, which makes me privy to all of the suspicious things he's involved in," she went on, defiantly.
After years of pretending – first that she was someone she wasn't, then that she was okay when she wasn't – she was fed up with it. She was going to push the envelope. She was going to make him as uncomfortable as possible as he threatened her with his authority. She was tired of tip-toeing, most of all around someone who didn't deserve the courtesy.
"As usual, exhibiting your typical Gryffindor insolence." His beetle-black eyes flashed. "Listen to me closely, Miss Blackwell, and listen to me well. If you're as clever as you think you are, you'd stop poking your nose in things that don't concern you."
"Perhaps you didn't hear me, Professor," she said, firmly. "If it concerns the Head Boy, it concerns me. So either you get him to step down and mysteriously faint in somebody else's common room, or you convince Dumbledore I'm not doing my job as Head Girl. I'll leave you now to make that decision. Good day."
And as she turned on her heel to walk out, folding her trembling hands into tight fists, she could swear she caught a glimpse of him shaking his head from the corner of her eye as she left the classroom.
As soon as she was far away enough, she pinned herself into the nearest hidden alcove and sank against the wall, struggling to breathe against the reality of who was really behind Draco's destiny. That perhaps he hadn't done all the leaving – she had left him, too, at a time when he needed her the most. And that now…
She sighed, closing her eyes.
… It was very possibly too late.
