I should have gone straight to my room.

That was the plan. Dinner had drained me, pretending to be Elena for hours, smiling in all the right places, swallowing every jab Mary threw… and then dealing with the way Harry kept watching me like he finally saw cracks that had been there for years.

I just wanted silence. Darkness. A breath.

But Elena's house was never quiet after nine. Someone was always stomping down the stairs or slamming a cupboard or arguing in a hallway. And tonight that ...