Page 83 of Fate, Interrupted

“How eventually?”

“Late enough to be embarrassing,” I say. “And then I decided if I couldn’t unseat him, I wasn’t going to compete at all. So, I stopped trying.”

She waits before speaking.

“The playboy thing.”

I glance at her.

“Henry said something,” she says. “In passing. At trivia.”

“What did he say?”

“That you were the entertaining one. I read between the lines. And I’m not immune to wolf gossip. Wolf gossip travels. I’ve never figured out how.”

I let that sit for a moment.

“It was easier,” I say. “Working because I was expected to and living the rest of it how I wanted. Not caring as much as Logan cares.” I pause. “It’s a comfortable position, not trying for the thing you can’t have.”

“Is it still comfortable?” she asks.

“Less than it was,” I say.

The blanket is over both of us—crocheted granny squares in eclectic colors that she pulled up from the end of the bed.

She is the most honest person I’ve been around in years. She edits, she deflects, she makes jokes at exactly the right moment to avoid the question she’s not ready for. When she does say something, it’s the real version. No construction around it. No careful management of what the other person takes away.

I have been careful about what people take away from me for my entire adult life.

I am not doing that right now.

And the thing I notice, sitting here with the quiet around us and her worst moment becoming a shared memory instead of an immediate threat—is that it doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels like the first unguarded thing I’ve done in a long time.

“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I think street smarts are underrated.”

“You’re biased.”

“I’m observant,” she says. “There’s a difference.”

I look down at her. “You’re going to be difficult about that distinction.”

“For as long as it takes,” she says pleasantly.

She closes her eyes, a relaxed smile at the corners of her mouth. I lean my head back and breathe out.

I’m not ready to say the word to her.

But I will be.

At some point she finds my hand. I don’t know exactly when. I’m just aware of it—her fingers over mine, the warmth of it, easy and unannounced, like it’s been there before and is simply returning to its place.

I don’t move.

I stay with that. In her home, with her hand over mine and the evening creeping in around the edges of the room, I let it be what it is without putting a name on it.

Not yet.

But soon.