FORTY-EIGHT | HIDDEN

Lily

Lily felt as though her bones were rattling. With shaking fingers she removed the crumpled letter from the crumpled envelope, smoothing it out on the desk as she lowered herself into the chair behind it.

She lit a much-used candle that had dripped and oozed wax down itself onto the tabletop. Shards of moonlight cut through the hastily-closed curtains, peering through the gaps as though it was as interested as she was by the contents of the letter that her mate had gone to such lengths to keep from her.

Her breaths felt too quick, too shallow. Elijah gave her everything she’d ever needed but never known how to ask for. Though the sting of Atticus’s rejection had long since been soothed, the gut-clenching fear that this was all a fallacy, ever intimate moment they’d ever shared, made the pain of not being good enough wash over her anew.