She pulled back to stare at his long dark lashes. She wanted to touch his lips. She’d done it before, once, and she wondered if they were as soft as she remembered, or if memory had made a fantasy out of him.

“You’re home,” she whispered, willing herself not to grasp at him. Raven was her best friend. For years they’d lived as brothers, racing through the orchard, or dueling in the rose garden. She wanted to hug him. She did not want to push him onto the bed, rip off his shirt, and lick him from his throat to his stomach.

She didn’t. And so she tore herself away from the boy with warm brown eyes, walking over to the window and looking down. The garden used to be filled with crimson roses. But after Raven and Lily went away, Evelyn Holloway had torn up the red blossoms and replaced them with white. “White roses are purer,” she’d sworn.

Jack cringed at the sight of them. She missed the wild crimson roses that Raven’s mother had nestled in her son’s curls. He’d never been so beautiful as the evenings when he’d stood against the jewel-blue sky with red petals falling around him. The first time Jack had seen him that way, she’d wanted to kneel at his feet.

She wanted to kneel now.

Instead, she turned to look at him, with his plush lips and dark eyes, his careful hands toying with the hem of his shirt. Of course he’d be wearing black satin pajamas with velvet cuffs, because Raven Holloway had grown up in the lap of luxury. For all the good it had done him.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Jack said softly. “Are you okay? Was boarding school terrible?” Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you write? No, she thought, as he stepped toward her.

Why did you only write to Belle?

“The academy was okay. I liked my professors for the most part. Some of the guys were all right. Others, not so much.” He was looking at his hands. He only looked at his hands when he was keeping secrets. She remembered that about him, even now. “We need to prove Belle’s innocence, and then we can catch up on everything else. I know she didn’t do this. Belle pretends to be vicious, but underneath—”

“I know you’ve been talking to her,” Jack blurted. “Lily told me, and I don’t understand…”

“Of course I’ve been talking to her.” Raven stepped up close, and Jack’s breath caught in her throat. She was pressed against the window. He was almost pressed against her. “I’ve been talking to you both. You’re the one who never answered my letters.”

“Your… what?” Only Raven could pull the breath from her lungs. Only Raven could make her tremble without a single touch.