Page 277 of Bad Prince

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I look down at my hands.

Then back up.

“My life was… simple,” I say. “Hard. But simple.”

A small exhale.

“Then everything got loud.”

He watches me carefully now.

“Boys?” he asks.

I laugh once.

Dry.

“A little bit of that—but mostly jealousy that I outworked the rich girls whose parents paid the best trainers.”

His expression darkens just a fraction—protectiveness—maybe even a little possessive as his eyes swept over me. Something ancient.

“I was focused,” I say. “School. Volleyball. That was enough.”

“And now?”

I hesitate.

That’s new.

“I don’t know.”

There it is.

The truth I don’t say out loud to anyone.

He studies me for a long moment.

Then says quietly?—

“You are not empty.”

I blink.

Because that’s exactly what I’ve been feeling.

“You are…” he pauses, choosing the word, “…unanchored.”

That hits.

Harder than anything else he’s said.

“Drive without direction feels like absence,” he continues. “It is not.”

I swallow.

Because—that makes sense.

He leans forward slightly. “You built yourself without me,” he says. “That makes you dangerous.”

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