Page 379 of Bad Prince
There’s no venom in it.
That’s somehow worse.
I nod.
“Yeah.”
She looks past me for a second, toward the path cutting through the grass, like maybe she needs something in the distance to focus on so she doesn’t have to focus on the exact shape of this ending.
Then she looks back at me.
“Did you ever really choose me?”
That one goes in clean.
No way around it.
No polished answer.
No version that lets me keep my dignity.
“I think I wanted to.”
She laughs, but it’s small and joyless.
“Ouch.”
“I know.”
“No,” she says quietly, “I don’t think you do.”
And fair enough.
Because I’ve spent most of my life being praised for damage I knew how to hide.
I take a step closer, not enough to crowd her, enough that she’ll hear me clearly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Don’t,” she says immediately. “Don’t hand me that line like this is some generic breakup scene in a bad streaming show.”
I wince. “I’m serious,” I say. “This isn’t about you lacking something. It’s about me being honest too late.”
She studies my face.
“What changed?”
Everything.
Nothing.
A girl in a coffee shop with sunlight in her hair and my self-control in a chokehold.
The fact that I am so tired of being a man who reaches for the safer option when the truth gets expensive.
I look down at the stone edge of the fountain, then back at Isa.
“I’m trying to stop living in halves.”
Something shifts in her expression.
