Page 330 of Bad Prince
Now.
The room is busy in that late-afternoon way—track girls on the bikes, a baseball pitcher icing his elbow, a swimmer arguing with a trainer about shoulder mobility like his life depends on it. Nobody pays me much attention when I walk in.
That changes the second I change direction toward Stella.
She sees me coming and her whole body goes still.
Not soft.
Not startled.
Still the way a person gets when they’re already bracing for impact.
Good.
I stop in front of her.
Too close for casual.
Too close for deniability.
“What?” she says.
Straight to it.
No hello.
No game.
That should please me more than it does.
I brace one hand beside her against the supply counter.
Then the other.
Not because I mean to trap her.
Because I’m angry enough I don’t trust what my hands will do if I let them hang free.
She notices that.
Of course she does.
Her chin lifts half an inch.
Her eyes go colder.
“Move,” she says quietly.
“No.”
Her jaw tightens.
There’s too much noise in the room to hear everything clearly—ice machine hissing, tape ripping, music from somebody’s speaker bleeding in from the rehab side—but the air around us is dead silent.
She smells like clean skin, shampoo, and the faint trace of effort.
Not perfume.
