Page 227 of The Silent Note

“Does it matter to you? That we’re step-siblings?”

“It’s a little awkward.” I shrug.

“What if I told you that your mom offered to divorce my dad if I broke up with you?”

My eyes widen. “When?”

“A while back.”

“I can’t imagine mom giving up her status just to keep us apart.”

“That’s how much she loves you.” Zane traces my lips with his finger. “Have you considered… maybe… talking to her?”

I stiffen and turn away.

He tilts my face toward his. “It was just a suggestion.”

“Mom will never accept us.”

“Grey,” Zane sets his boxes down and holds me close, “I love you. I love you with everything inside me. That means I want you to have everything you could ever want. Everything. It shouldn’t be me or her. That’s not the life I want for you.”

“But it’s the life I’m happy with for right now.” I smile. “Really.”

“First the yakuza, now your mom. I’m afraid of how you’re going to surprise me next.”

“Brace yourself.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Forget it.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s, as my students would say, ‘cringy’.”

“Now I’m really intrigued.” He plants both hands on either side of me. “Grace Elizabeth Cross, you either tell me what you want right now or I’m laying you on this desk and using that ruler over there to teach you a lesson.”

I shudder in delight. “Don’t tempt me.”

He laughs.

I grin along. “I’d want to feel, just once, what it would be like if I wasn’t your teacher or your step-sister or any of that. If I was just a girl you met in school and I had a crush on you and you had a crush on me too.”

“That’s it?”

My eyebrows arch. Why is he making it sound so easy?

“Come on,” Zane says.

He pulls me along and takes me to the lost and found area where he instructs me to put on a school uniform.

I feel extremely awkward wearing the prep school outfit again after six years… until Zane rolls everything under my skirt off and shows me that there are much better feelings in the world than awkwardness.

We hold hands and walk to the library where Zane brackets his hands on the bookshelf above my head and kisses me.

He takes me to the football field where he kisses me again.

I finally enter the infamous private practice room for The Kings where Zane sets me in his lap and…