Page 373 of Bad Prince
I lean back in the chair and look at her fully now, because restraint is already losing.
“No,” I say. “I’m trying to figure out if someone posted a Snap that this was our place. Because I’ve never once run into you here.”
That gets her attention.
I hold her gaze. “T and T…?”
Her mouth curves then. A smirk.
“How’s that going for you?” She evades my suspicion that she came here hoping to run into me.
I huff a laugh under my breath, wincing. “After you drove a dumpster truck through it?”
That almost pulls a real smile from her. “I’m… sorry? Nah, not really.”
“I do owe her…” I say, quieter now. “Something.”
Her expression shifts.
The teasing eases.
The room feels smaller.
“Closure?” she asks, softly.
There’s no mercy in the word. Just truth.
And that’s always been her most brutal weapon.
I glance at the coffee between my hands, then back at her.
“Maybe.”
She studies me for a long beat, and I can feel it everywhere—that look, the memory in it, the wanting she’s trying not to show, the same way I’m trying not to drown in mine.
Then she goes back to her notes like she hasn’t just opened a seam in my chest.
She admitted she wanted me back.
That’s the part that keeps wrecking me.
Not the flirting.
Not the tension.
Not even the memories.
The honesty. She gave me that truth, and I still walked away.
Because for once in my life, I was trying not to disappear inside wanting someone. And she hurt me, maybe more than I’ll ever admit when she chose herself over the possibility of us.
This, would be easier if she were less beautiful.
If she weren’t sitting three feet away with sunlight turning the loose strands near her temple to silk. If her lips didn’t purse like that while she read. If I hadn’t spent nights imagining thosesame lips parted under mine, her body arching into me, my name breaking from her on a breath.
I look away first.
Because I have to.
