Page 365 of Bad Prince
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tristan
The thing about choosing yourself is no one warns you how loud everything else gets after.
It’s not dramatic. It’s not fate playing games.
It’s just proximity.
A campus isn’t that big when there’s one person you’re trying not to see—and somehow keep seeing anyway.
The field house is the worst of it.
I’m halfway through drills, sweat already working its way down my back, shirt clinging, muscles warm and loose, when she steps onto the far court like she belongs there. No hesitation. No announcement. Just presence.
Stella.
Her hair’s pulled tight into that braid she wears on game days, a clean line down her back with a red bow tied at the end like a period at the end of a sentence. Finished. Controlled. No room for interpretation.
She doesn’t look at me.
Not once.
She moves through her warmups like I’m not here, like this isn’t the same space, like we’re not operating on the same air.
And somehow that’s worse than if she did.
She dropped the bomb that she’s ready to be with me. For real. And now she’s not even glancing in my direction after I rebuffed her.
It shouldn’t sting.
It does.
She’s strong. Not the type to grovel. Flirt or seduce. She played her cards and I walked away from the table. Now, she’s back to ignoring me.
I catch myself watching the way she plants her feet before a jump, the slight bend in her knees, the way her hands flex once before she sets. It’s all muscle memory, all discipline, all repetition—and it’s so precise it’s almost violent in how contained it is.
I turn away before it turns into something else.
“Vale, rotate!”
I’m already moving, sliding into position, calling for the ball, forcing my attention back where it belongs.
Drill. Pass. Cut. Shoot. Control isn’t hard when you don’t let anything in.
The cafeteria isn’t any better.
I see her before I sit down, even though I don’t look directly at her. You just know. You learn someone’s rhythm, the way they exist in a room, and your body picks it up before your brain does.
She’s a few tables over with her team, sitting cross-legged in her chair like she owns the space without trying to. Her hoodie sleeves are pushed up, exposing her forearms, still faintlymarked from tape and training. There’s a tray in front of her, barely touched.
She laughs at something one of the girls says, and it’s not loud, not performative, just real—and it lands somewhere under my ribs before I can stop it.
I shift my focus back to my plate.
Chicken. Rice. Measured portions.
Routine.
