The queasiness intensified. She wheeled the weeds to the ends of the yard and tipped them into the woods. If only her parents had been a better fit for each other, like Morgan’s. Then this would be somebody else’s problem: namely, her mother’s.

Thinking about Morgan brought the now familiar rush of warmth. Dinner with the Donovans had been more enjoyable than she’d allowed herself to hope for. Shannon, she’d noticed, had held herself a little back, eying her daughter, but Aaron was one of the most genuinely wonderful men she’d ever met. He was so like Morgan that she smiled at the memory.

It hadn’t just been talking about her father that made the evening feel special, either. The love in that house reached out and invited her in, so much so that she hadn’t wanted to leave. Her own family looked at her with too much concern these days for her to appreciate the comfort of her mother’s home. It didn’t hurt that Morgan had been visibly flustered each time she reached for Emilia, catching herself at the last minute—although not, she suspected, before Shannon had seen. Morgan always seemed so cool and put together. Seeing her off balance made her itch to push her down on the nearest surface and blow her cool even further open.

The forced platonic nature of the evening had ended in a spectacularly unplatonic night. She leaned against the handles of the wheelbarrow while her body tingled in recollection. Morgan had been even more intense than usual, and Emilia recalled the marks her teeth had left in Morgan’s shoulder with a new wave of hunger. She’d wanted to take her again and again, until Morgan’s breathing was so ragged it sounded like sobs, and afterward she’d fallen into a dreamless sleep sprawled across Morgan’s chest with Morgan’s hands still buried in her hair.

A buzz from her pocket broke her out of her reverie: the alarm she’d set as a reminder. Her campaign against the weeds had taken her longer than she realized. She hurried to get cleaned up, reflecting on all the things the agent would no doubt say needed updating: the upstairs bathroom, for starters. She trailed water out of the bathroom and past the open door of her father’s room to her own bedroom with its twin bed. The bed was the main reason she hadn’t invited Morgan to spend the night here.