Ethan doesn't mean to look her up.
At least that's what he tells himself Friday night, sitting at his home office desk with a glass of Macallan 18—the good stuff he saves for grading weekends and existential crises—and his laptop casting a blue glow across the mahogany surface. He's supposed to be grading papers, specifically working through a stack of sophomore essays that have been staring at him accusingly since Wednesday. The one currently open on his screen is some kid's half-baked analysis of McLuhan that's barely coherent, full of regurgitated Wikipedia definitions and zero original thought.
But he can't focus.
Instead, he's thinking about Thursday afternoon. The weight of the silence in his office after she'd left. The way Avery had stood there in front of his desk, shoulders squared despite the vulnerability in her voice, admitting she was trying to protect him. The exact words she'd used: when we're both feeling something we shouldn't.
