Page 383 of Bad Prince
Because she’s right.
Again.
She picks at the cuff of her sweater once, then meets my eyes one last time. The fountain keeps moving. The sky deepens toward blue-black. Campus lights flicker on one by one. Then Isa gives me the saddest little smile I’ve seen in a long time.
“Good luck.”
Then she walks away.
No scene.
No tears.
No backward glance.
Just grace.
I stand there long after she disappears down the path, hands hanging useless at my sides, chest carved out, knowing I did the right thing too late.
And in the silence after Isa, there is only one thing left, bright and merciless and impossible to outrun:
Stella.
Not as fantasy.
Not as punishment.
Not as the girl I keep finding in coffee shops and training rooms and every room I enter before I’m ready.
As truth.
The one I keep trying to deny because I know exactly how much damage truth can do when you mishandle it.
I drag both hands through my hair and look up at the darkening sky.
Choosing myself was supposed to make things clearer.
Instead it’s stripping everything down to the bone.
No Isa.
No safe option.
No clean little distraction to hide inside.
Just me.
My game.
My future.
My mess.
And one girl I have wanted in too many versions, for too many years, with too much of myself on the line to keep pretending she isn’t the piece that never stopped missing.
