Page 135 of My Dark Prince
Briar Auer:So funny.
Ollie vB:I would love to take you on a date. To try again.
Briar Auer:No.
Ollie vB:In all seriousness, I’m not joking. I couldn’t find anyone I felt half as much for as I felt for you, so I didn’t try.
Briar Auer:Then, why did you dump me without as much as a goodbye?
I stared at the screen.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to ask him this face-to-face. In all honesty, I had to flip my phone over, too frightened of the answer that awaited me, even in text. After a few minutes passed without a telltaleping, I righted my screen.
The tiny dots danced at the bottom. Oliver typed and stopped, typed and stopped. With every cycle, my heart sank lower down my body. Finally, a message came through.
Ollie vB:I went through something very bad and traumatic that summer, almost as soon as I got home from Paris. I was ashamed, and I panicked. I did something horrible. I agreed to something I shouldn’t have. I didn’t want you anywhere near me. I thought I would ruin your life, and you didn’t deserve any more pain. I should’ve communicated this to you. But I was young, and confused, and in agony. I’ll never forgive myself for it, so I’m not going to expect forgiveness from you. But I’m not going to lie here and say that I don’t wish for it. I want you, Briar. For real.
Tears pricked the back of my eyeballs, but I refused to let them fall. No. I wouldn’t break. Wouldn’t make the same mistake I did as a teenager. Not when I didn’t even have the courage to ask him about the other girl. Why he cheated. If there were more and how many.
If Ollie had managed to destroy me so thoroughly back then, I could only guess the damage he’d inflict now.
Oliver von Bismarck would not find his way back into my heart.
He couldn’t.
I’d already locked it up and threw away the key.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Oliver
“I’m glad I don’t share a bathroom with you. You are, and always will be, a shit aim.” Sebastian squinted at the sky, leveling his shotgun at a circular clay disk before taking the shot.
It exploded in the air, floating to the grass like confetti. My temples throbbed from my hangover. If I hadn’t seen the texts on my phone when I woke up, I would’ve believed that I’d hallucinated finding Briar in my bed. And definitely vowing to make her fall in love with me again.
The booze wore off.
The sentiment didn’t.
I still wanted her, but I was too chicken shit to talk to Seb about it.
We’d decided to go clay shooting in the woods, as if nothing had happened last night. As if he hadn’t almost drowned me, and I hadn’t dished out some hard truths he refused to swallow.
Thursday, every other week, marked the only time Seb got out of the house during daylight. He knew how important it was to me. I’d drag him out the backdoor, kicking and screaming, if I had to.
It lined up well. No one would see him. I always made sure of it. My house manager fixed up the schedule so none of the staff would be here, and the security team kept a wider perimeter. Zach and Farrow shared fencing lessons until late into the evening, Romeo would be at work, and Dallas and Luca attended a Mommy-and-Me swim class for babies. Coast crystal clear.
Seb forced me into making it an entire procedure, too. I had to maneuver the eight-seater golf cart into the woods while Sebastian, swathed in dark clothes, laid on the floor of the back bench.
In the end, it was worth it.
I wanted the sun on his skin and the fresh air in his lungs.
The clay pigeon trap spat more orange discs into the air. They swirled round and round across the blue sky.
“I’m a great aim, and you know it.” I adjusted my noise cancelling headphones, aiming at one and missing it by at least three inches.
Sebastian snorted next to me, shaking his head. We both wore classic hunting attire in various shades of shit brown.
