Page 198 of Bad Prince
The girl who turned him down and suddenly cares only when another girl gets close.
I can already hear it.
I can already see the look on his face if I say her name and start spilling secrets overheard from behind a curtain.
No.
Absolutely not.
I am not going to become that girl.
So I keep walking.
Out the doors.
Into the heat.
Across the quad where the fountain’s running and freshmen are still getting lost and some guy is playing a guitar badly on a bench like the world is simple.
My shoulder aches.
My chest aches more.
And by the time I reach the far side of campus, I realize the part that won’t leave me alone isn’t that Isa wanted him.
It’s that she went after him on purpose.
With strategy.
With confidence.
And it worked.
At least enough.
Enough that I had to hear another girl say she’d keep trying until he told her not to.
I stop beneath the shade of an oak tree and stare down at the wet patch the ice sleeve left on my shirt.
I could tell him.
I could walk right back across this campus and say,she knew exactly who you were and came for you the second your name hit the portal.
I could still tell him her mother called him a prize.
That he was a target before he was a person.
That some polished woman in Texas probably already picked out baby names.
It’s the exact kind of play old money families like his take exception to. Loathe. And expected of someone like me. But I never tried to run any games. I was just too scared he’d steal my heart.
He’d hate her.
Run back to me?
Or maybe he’d think I’m trying to poison something because I don’t know how to ask for him back.
The thought makes my stomach turn.
