Page 255 of The Professor's Wife

Oliver didn’t shower. Didn’t sleep. By the time the sun came up, he grabbed his bag and left the house. I pretended to be asleep. It was only when I heard his car engine fading down the street that I slipped out of bed and looked out the window, at the white car across the street.

The windows were too tinted for me to see if anyone was inside.

It looked like an ordinary car.

I wondered if Oliver was losing the plot. That, in his paranoia, he was looking for signs that didn’t belong. What could have happened recently to have stirred him up so much? The detective hadn’t been around again, and according to Oliver, they were investigating Lucy’s boyfriend into her disappearance. It had sounded convincing that he would have something to do with it. They’d had a fight before she disappeared, after all.

Then again…

I chewed my nail as a knot of dread settled into my stomach. It was obvious Oliver wasn’t telling me the whole story. From themoment he fled his office in a panic, he’d been distracted and withdrawn.

Something happened. Why else would he leave the alarms and cameras down? Oliver was hiding something.

Unable to stop myself, I left the room and made my way to his office. I stood outside the door for a long time, trembling like an earthquake because I was doing something especially wrong. After taking several breaths, I placed my hand on the knob and turned—

I froze, my heart in my ears as I let the knob go and stepped back.

It was locked.

Of course it was.

I wasn’t meant to know what was on the other side.

But its evil presence pulsed like an entity, staring at me through the door, waiting.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

TRISTAN

I was insane for being here. In front of her house again. And I’d be lying if I said it was the first time, or that it didn’t hollow me out to imagine her choosing him over me, letting him touch what I ached for.

Was she fucking him while I sat miserably, thinking about her? Was I just another bad habit she slipped into before going home?

Fuck.

Yes, I was insane.

I could keep telling myself I was just passing through the neighborhood, but that was a lie too. I came to see the house—that towering, immaculate monument to everything he had and everything I didn’t. My land back home used to feel like something worth being proud of, but next to this place, it felt like an inadequate dump.

I’d sworn off technology, but I didn’t need it to know how far his influence stretched. I’d recently walked the university halls, skimmed pamphlets, seen his name stamped across shelves like he owned the fucking air. The celebrated professor whose bookspromised that anyone could be remade into their most perfected self.

Oliver Black. Even saying his name felt like I’d swallowed something bitter. One meeting with him was enough to feel the weight of his fucking ego, yet everyone else treated him like he was untouchable. My fingers twitched with the urge to look him up, to see his face beside hers—

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Instead, I ended up back in my van. Back in that cold hotel room. Back to drinking myself numb while waiting for her to knock on my door and kiss me like I was the only thing she wanted. The waiting was its own kind of torture.

So I came back here. To his house. At odd hours. Sometimes more than once a day. I’d park behind the same white sedan and watch the still windows, feeling my skin prickle, feeling something cold crawl up my spine. I told myself I didn’t know why.

But maybe I did.

And that was when her voice—the reader from my childhood—slipped back into my mind. The way her expression had changed, how she’d stared at the symbols like they were a warning written just for me.

You’ve done this before. Not the fucking tea. The journey.

Back then, I didn’t understand it. I thought she was being dramatic, mystical for the sake of it. Just utter bullshit because if she was onto something, why hadn’t she warned me my father would drown in his lungs while I sat helpless at his side?

But standing here now, staring at Daisy’s house, I felt it in my bones—that unsettling truth that I was returning to something I’d never truly left.