"Kate…"

I whisper her name to myself, like a broken prayer.

An impossible wish, a wound that never heals. I don’t have the courage to tell her how I feel, and I’m not even sure if what I feel is love. Maybe it’s just obsession, or need, or maybe only loneliness dressed up in something cleaner. But not the way she believes. She thinks I'm a good guy, someone noble, someone who looks after her. Her adoptive uncle’s protégé, her vulnerable charge, her silent shadow. She’ll never know that every