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“What did you do?” I ask.

“I took care of the men who were trying to hurt me,” she says, plucking mint leaves one by one. She gently places them in a wooden bowl and starts grinding them. “I made sure that they would never be able to hurt another woman ever again.”

I want to ask her what she did to those men, but I think I already know.

She adds hot water to the bowl.

“It’s all in the past now,” she says. “My life turned around when I was least expecting it. I thought my fate was sealed, but God had bigger plans for me. Everything changed after I met Simon. He loved me back to life.”

I glance toward the window again. My eyes automatically search for him. Every cell in my body relaxes when I see him standing there.

“Klaus uses your herbal blends a lot,” I say. “Did you have any formal training?”

“After getting married, my husband and I traveled the world together. I learned ancient Ayurveda in India and oriental medicine in China. I learned how to make natural remedies instead of poisons.”

She sifts the mint leaves and pours the tea into two cups. The clean scent of mint infiltrates my lungs as she hands me a cup.

Just as I take the first sip, Klaus enters the greenhouse. His eyes are lost in some void as he pockets his phone.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

He blinks.

“Yeah,” he replies. I can tell by the haunted look in his eyes that everything is not okay, but I also know he won’t open up to me right now. I’ll have to ask him about it another time.

“Vera made me mint tea,” I say, taking another sip. “It’s delicious.”

Some of the tension leaves his shoulders as he rests his eyes on me.I pass him the teacup. Our fingers brush as he takes it from me.

He takes a sip and hands an empty cup back to me.

Vera giggles. “Rule number one. Never offer a man food or drink if you expect to have some left over for yourself.”

Klaus shrugs sheepishly. I smile at him. I don’t mind him eating all my food or finishing my drinks. I don’t mind anything as long as I get to keep him in my life.

But I can’t shake the feeling that our days together are numbered.

This bubble of illusion we built is going to pop any day. The fall might just devastate me completely.

Vera clears her throat. “The tea sample?”

I suck in a breath. It feels like being jolted awake from one of those dreams where you feel like you’re falling. But instead of everything being okay, I’m still falling.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the little glass jar.

“I hope I stored it correctly,” I say. “It’s an air-tight container, but it’s been weeks since I saved the sample.”

Vera holds the glass jar up to the light. It’s just tea sludge, but it makes every nerve ending in my body fire up, filling me with endless anxiety and dread.

“And you suspect that this tea was poisoned?” she asks.

My heart slams against my sternum. Blood rushes to my ears. My tongue feels like cotton in my mouth.

“Yes,” Klaus answers for me. “Her grandmother was in a coma for weeks after ingesting it.”

“And what made you think that the tea was poisoned?” Vera asks me.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“For whatever reason, your first instinct was to save a sample of the tea,” she says. “Did you see anything that made you suspect it might be contaminated?”

I can’t bring myself to speak. This incident happened weeks ago, but the fear never really went away.

I swallow, trying to get my throat to work.

Klaus takes my hands in his and squeezes them, giving me some of his strength.

“It’s okay,” he says.

My heart squeezes in my chest. It’s one thing for him to be gentle with me when it’s just the two of us. It’s another thing entirely for him to show affection in front of someone else. But his warmth is exactly what I need right now.

“I don’t remember,” I say. “It was just a gut feeling.”

“Something must have tipped you off, though,” Vera says. “If you can remember anything, it would help narrow it down.”

I take a deep breath.

I revisit the memory that I worked so hard to keep buried.

When I found my grandmother slumped on the floor that evening, my mind jumped to the worst. Her face was so deathly pale. She looked like she was no longer a part of this world.

“There was white froth at her mouth,” I tell Vera. “And her muscles were...locked up.”

Vera grabs a notepad from the workbench and starts writing.

“Muscle rigidity,” she says. “What else?”

I close my eyes. Tears roll down my cheeks. I try to envision the other details of the room.

There was an unnatural quality to the air at my house, like someone else had been there. Like something very wrong had happened.

Gentle hands wipe the tears from my cheeks.

“Vera, is this really necessary?” Klaus asks, sounding distraught. “Can’t you just perform some tests on the sample?”

“A tiny pink petal,” I say. “Underneath the table. It was a dried flower petal, and I don’t know where it came from. But I remember seeing it. However, it was gone after the police searched the house.”

“A pink petal,” Vera whispers.

She grabs a thick textbook and starts flipping through the pages. She makes notes as she reads, her scribbles growing messier the more she writes.

We watch as she turns on the light for the microscope and prepares a slide.

“This might take a while, so feel free to walk around the estate in the meantime,” she tells us. “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

She doesn’t look up from her work.

Klaus tugs on my hand, telling me to follow him. He leads me out of the greenhouse. The temperature has dropped sharply. The cold bites into my cheeks as we walk toward the lake.

“It’s so beautiful here,” I say.

“Would you like to have a lakeside home?” Klaus asks.

“Maybe,” I say, glancing up at him. He makes it sound like he’s making future plans with me. Which is ridiculous. We’re just two people who enjoy each other’s company, nothing more.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not really.”

He leads me toward a section of the lake that’s surrounded by trees on all sides, offering us a private alcove. He presses me against one of those trees, his hands almost bruising my waist.

“Me neither,” he says.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.

“Not right now,” he says. “You?”

“I already did,” I say. “That’s why it hurts.”

After keeping everything bottled up inside me for this long, I finally ripped the Band-Aid open. I’m bleeding again.

He leans down and brushes his lips against mine. Like always, I unfurl like a flower for him. My lips open with a sigh as he presses his mouth harder against mine, taking me like I belong to him.

His tongue warms up everything cold inside me.

His hand tugs on my scarf, making it fall to the ground. He replaces it with his hand, wrapping his fingers around my neck and squeezing possessively.

“Mine,” he says. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

“Yours,” I say. “Only yours.”

I’ve heard war stories. When people thought the world was about to end, when bombs were raining from the sky, they made love. It’s human nature to want to find pleasure and joy even in the most dire of situations.

That’s how this man kisses me. Like it’s the final few minutes before the whole world ends.

Like he needs me close to his heart.

I let myself believe the lie because it feels like magic in my veins.

“No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.” He whispers the words against my lips. “I’ll always look out for you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I reply.

He’s about to pull away, but I clutch him tighter.

“Can you just...hold me?” I ask. “Just for a little while.”

“Whatever you need,” he says, pressing a kiss on top of my head and wrapping his strong arms around me.

I can hear the sound of his heart beating against my ear. It soothes me, making my own heart beat in sync with his. He holds me tighter than I expected him to.

I become warm lava in his arms, my body turning liquid just for him.

With him surrounding me like this, I enter a state of deep relaxation. Nothing can touch me here. Nothing can get to me. He’s an impenetrable armor that shields me from everything else.

After a few moments, the blissful silence is interrupted by his phone ringing.

“It’s Vera,” he says, looking at the caller ID.

The two of us stare at the phone. I think I already know what she’s going to say.

He picks up. “Hey.”

“Come to the greenhouse,” she says. “I found something.”

As we walk back toward the greenhouse, I realize I’m not nervous anymore. No matter what I learn, it’s going to be okay. I have Klaus on my side.

Vera sits on a wooden chair, writing in her notepad.

“I have good news and bad news,” she says.

“Was the tea poisoned?” I ask.

“It was,” she says. “It’s a potent neurotoxin derived from a flower that grows in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s a rare species, so the studies that have been done on it are limited.”

I thought I would be ready to hear it, but the news feels like someone punched me in the stomach.

My stalker was in my house. He tried to kill my grandmother.

He used to send letters that he would take everything from me. He told me that he would destroy everything I loved. All of that fear I used to feel before comes back multiplied.

“What’s the good news?” Klaus asks, squeezing my hand tighter.

“There’s an antidote,” she says. “Your grandmother must have been given a very low dosage. That’s the reason it caused minimal damage.”

“She only took a sip of the tea,” I say.

Vera nods. “Whoever gave it to her miscalculated the dosage required to kill a person. He forgot to take into account how different variables?—”

“Vera,” Klaus says, cutting her off.

She blinks, coming out of the scientific haze.

“Would you like the antidote now?” Vera asks me. “From what I know about this toxin, she must be experiencing extreme fatigue.”

Tears spring to my eyes. “She doesn’t admit it, but I know she’s in a lot of pain. She’s tired all the time.”

“I’ll prepare the antidote for you, but you have to be careful to wean her off any other non-essential medication,” Vera says. “Especially if she’s on any steroids. Certain medications have cross reactions when taken together.”

“That makes sense,” Klaus says.

“You don’t know what this means to me,” I say. “If my grandmother gets better, it’ll mean that I can bring her home.”

Vera gives me a soft smile. “If you’d like, I can come to Ravenwood to give her the antidote in person.”

“You would do that for me?” I ask.

“Sure, that’s what friends are for,” she says, looking between Klaus and me.

I’m overcome by gratitude. I step forward and wrap my arms around her. She’s startled for a second, but she hugs me back.

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you so much.”

It feels like my life is going through an upheaval.

All of these new people entered my life recently and turned my whole life around. I’ve only known them for a handful of weeks, but they’ve shown me what love and compassion look like.

They’ve shown me what having a family can look like.