An hour and a half later she closed her e-reader app and yawned. She was curled up on the velvet chaise on the third floor, the room softly lit by the glow of her Tiffany lamp. Her tablet was backlit, so she didn’t need the light to read, but the glass shade threw slashes of jewel-toned light on the creamy walls and gave the room a cozy, dreamy feel. It was pretty, and made her feel somehow less alone.

Her eyes had grown too heavy to read, so she set the tablet on the table and tugged the knitted throw up to her shoulders. She knew she should get up and go downstairs to sleep—there was a big comfortable bed with a fluffy duvet and million-thread-count sheets waiting for her, but the bed felt lonely without Cade, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d fallen asleep on the chaise. She smiled as her eyes drifted shut. Maybe, she though hazily as sleep crept in, he’d find her up there and wake her up in some deliciously perverted way and make her forget she was ever lonely.

She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when the noise jolted her awake. She sat up, disoriented, the throw falling away from her shoulders. There was something different, something not quite right about the room, and even though she was too fuzzy to make sense of it, a thin trickle of fear wound its way into her gut.

She rubbed her hands over her face, then tossed the throw aside, barely noticing when it slithered to the floor. She looked around the room, listening hard for a repeat of the noise that had woken her, but everything was quiet. She could hear the quiet tick of the small clock on the bookshelf, and the swishing sound that was the lilac bush planted outside brushing against the house. It had taken her the better part of a week to stop jumping every time she heard it, but she was so used to it now that even on windy nights it didn’t register as alarming.

But something had. She tilted her head, ears straining and heart pounding, as she scanned the room for anomalies. The door was still open, the way she’d left it, so Cade would know she was there when he came home. The bookshelves were undisturbed, books and knickknacks where she’d left them. The prints and photos still hung on the walls, though she looked them over twice, since the muffled thump of a frame hitting the floor could absolutely have been the noise that woke her.

But everything was where it should be. The books, the knickknacks, the pictures on the wall, her tablet on the table by the lamp—