Page 65 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
Delaney spoke, her voice barely above a murmur. “Do you really remember me pulling mushrooms out of my food?”
“It’s disruptive.” It wasn’t, but my emotions were rioting, and I couldn’t come to terms with everything that had happened tonight. Keeping our antagonism going seemed easier.
“That’s not an answer,” she said.
She hadn’t put up her armor. Her face was soft and thoughtful. She wasn’t closed off or defensive. Just open in a way that it never had been before.
“I remember a lot of things.”
The restless energy that lived in her hands went quiet. She didn’t reach for her wine glass. Didn’t shift in her seat. Didn’t clear her throat. “Why?”
The word was quiet. Genuine. Just a question, plain and real.
I didn’t have an answer that was safe to give. So I gave her the closest thing to the truth I could. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I just do.”
Delaney held my gaze. Then she looked away. And part of me wanted to say something to draw her attention back to me.
But I stayed silent.
It was probably for the best. Tonight had already been confusing enough.
Chapter Eleven
DELANEY
When we finished dessert, Glamma and the girls waved me away when I tried to get up and help. Now it was just me and Marc.
Staring at each other.
Things had changed. Slightly.
A shift had happened—microscopic, the kind you feel before you can name it. The way you move the couch a few inches, and then can’t stop noticing the impression it left behind in the carpet. Evidence of what used to be somewhere else.
He didn’t annoy me as much, which was deeply inconvenient. Scratch that—he still annoyed me. The annoyance just felt different now. Less nails on a chalkboard. More like a song stuck in your head that you secretly don’t mind.
I hated that.
It had beenone night.One conversation that didn’t end in irritation or eye rolling, or me mentally drafting a speech about how he’d ruined my childhood. One night didn’t rewrite twenty years.
Marc looked at me from across the table. “So?—”
“Do you?—”
We both stopped.
I reached for my wine glass and then didn’t drink from it, which told me more about my current state than I wanted to know. The silence hummed with things neither of us were saying yet.
“You go first,” Marc said, leaning back with the careful precision of a man creating deliberate distance between us. As though he’d noticed the shift too and had decided to be cautious about it.
Smart man.
Infuriating, but smart.
I cleared my throat. “Your grandmother mentioned that these yoga sessions needed to go well for you too.”
An emotion shifted across his face. Not quite discomfort, but close. He nodded, glancing away before meeting my eyes again with that particular directness he had.
Marc didn’t talk to impress people. He talked to solve problems.
