It probably helped that I’d been suspecting Saff’s lies since the beginning, so it didn’t exactly feel like a betrayal the way it might have if it had come out of the blue.

I was unexpectedly excited to get a bigger look at her real world. Especially since I knew how much Saff loved her home, how much work she’d put into it, how she never wanted to leave it.

“You can’t judge the contents of my fridge,” she warned as she unlocked the door.

“What contents?” I shot back, getting a wobbly smile from her over her shoulder.

She was nervous, I realized.

I’d seen a lot of moods from her over the past few weeks.

But nervous had never been one of them.

She clearly thought, despite my defending her to her angry boss, and tending to her face in the backseat of the car, that I was going to be pissed.

“I do have coffee, at least,” she said as she pushed open the door and moved inside, making a beeline for the kitchen, anxious for something to do.

While I took my time taking it all in.

She was right.

She’d put a lot of work into the place.

It was in the bookshelves lining the walls, most of them already overflowing with books. The giant round chair that had a small stack of books, a bunch of pillows and blankets, and the end table beside it that held sticky notes, pens, highlighters, an empty bag of chips, and the mug I’d gotten her.

The whole area smelled like her signature strawberry sweet cream scent. I figured she had been endlessly burning that same candle in her house that she had been in her office to make everything smell like that.

There was a sweatshirt thrown over the back of the couch with Morally gray is my favorite color embroidered on the front.

On the kitchen island was a pile of various bookmarks and an unopened package from what seemed like a subscription book box.

Seeing me looking at it, Saff said, “Opening it was supposed to be the only plan I had today. Then, well, everything else happened. Now I don’t feel like I’m in the right mood.”

“I’m sorry Alen did that to you,” I said, looking at the bruise on her cheek that seemed to be getting darker by the minute. “If I had any idea he would lay a hand on you—”

“I think you can guess that this is not the first time I’ve been hit. Trust me, this is nothing.”

“That may be true. But this is the only time you got hit because of me. That’s not nothing.”

“Even if I knew about Alen, there’s a good chance he could have gotten his hands on me.”

“Saff…”

“Soren…”

“It’s okay to be pissed at me.”