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Chapter 9
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2024-10-29 19:42:56Felix’s love bite is gone the next morning.
Not healing, not faded – just gone. As if it was never there in the first place.
I run my fingers over the smooth patch of skin, still feeling the touch of his cold lips.
If it weren’t for Alastaire seeing the mark and losing his shit over it, I might have thought I’d imagined the whole thing.
Great. Yet another lovely incident to add to the long list of ‘Impossible Things That Can’t Be Happening To Me But Somehow Are.’
Unfortunately, the other, older bruise over my ribcage is still right where it was, as darkly purple and painful as ever.
Even though there’s no longer a need for me to cover up, I still choose a high-necked skater dress with a button-up collar. My neck and shoulders are totally hidden, and I won’t have to wonder if Felix or Alastaire t
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Time passes. Maybe minutes, maybe hours. I stir to wakefulness, rising up out of a deep and dreamless sleep. The room is dark. I can hear Felix’s voice, soft and muffled. He’s singing Déjà Vu. Where is he? I sit up in bed with a jolt, wide awake, trying to trace the source of the sound. It’s distant, yet somehow very close… far away, but definitely in my bedroom. In fact, it’s in my bed. Silvery light bleeds out from beneath my pillow, a soft glow seeping into the dark. I lift my pillow and I almost can’t believe my eyes – it’s my long-lost phone. It’s been missing for ages, since my birthday. It purrs softly in my hand, and in a split second I’m both relieved to have finally found it, and bitterly disappointed to realise that the singing
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Wait.My voice sounds hollow and distant, like it’s coming from far away. Felix hovers over me, a darkness dawning in his eyes as I speak.“Wait, Felix,” I whisper. “This isn’t… I can’t do this.”His dark hair falls in front of his eyes, and he pushes it back as he nods, releasing me as he sits up, leaning his back against the trunk of the tree we lie beneath.I stay on my back for a few moments, trying to catch my breath as I stare up at the canopy of brilliant bright red leaves overhead. As I watch, a single, delicate leaf drifts down, landing on my breast like a drop of blood.Felix reaches for it with a faraway look in his eyes, his fingertips leaving echoes of prickling electricity where they brush my skin.He holds the frail crimson leaf up into the silver moonlig
