I turned around and shut the door.

Noise filtered through from the other side, and I could just make out Davina's teary, wounded voice.

"It's fine, really—I can walk. Don't worry about me."

"This whole thing is my fault…"

Oliver let out a long breath.

He hesitated, then went downstairs after her.

Almost instantly, a text came through.

"She only showed up tonight because you can't follow the rules."

"I can't just leave her out there."

"Don't overthink this. If you need to throw a tantrum, go ahead."

The front door slammed shut.

I stared out into the black night.

I closed my eyes, and somewhere in the dark I could almost hear the crickets again.

That night had been so still it felt like something was wrong.

I'd just come out of dance class when I found Oliver slumped against the dumpsters, soaked in blood, a photograph of a woman crushed in his fist so tight his knuckles had gone white.

He was hunched over, gasping like each breath might be his last.

I saved him.

I only learned later that it had been the anniversary of the woman in the photograph—his mother. She'd given the Vance family one son in all her years of marriage, and that alone was enough to condemn her: she'd failed to carry on the line, broken the rules. Then his father's mistress started coming for her, again and again.

His mother had a breakdown and took her own life.

Oliver always said the Vance family's rules killed her.

He used to watch me through the studio glass while I danced, just standing there, lost.

All that dazed panic in his eyes would go quiet the moment I nodded at him, then flicker back to something like hope.

Soon after, the family took him back.

And then strange accidents started happening to me, one after another.

When I asked why, his face went hard, but all he said was not to overthink it.

After that, I barely saw him.

The only way I knew what was going on in his life was through the tabloids.

One of Oliver's brothers once dropped a stack of those headlines right in front of me. Cold and blunt about it.

He and I were never going to end up anywhere.

Later I confronted Oliver with the articles.

He waved it off. "None of that means anything. Stop listening to people."

But I kept receiving photos of him in bed with different women.

At first I refused to believe it. Then a recording arrived.

"She's pure, sure. But once you've had her, the thrill wears off pretty fast."