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Maybe that second option isn’t so bad.
Rowan is a good businessman. If this has severed the feelings he’s been toying with recently, that doesn’t mean he’d opt out of finishing things up with the Maxim Project. Clearly, he’s not pissed enough to throw me out of his room.
Things in Veleno are more stable now.
I’ve done enough.
He can probably stand on his own.
He doesn’t need me meddling in his affairs anymore.
If he tries to forgive me, I should…I should pretend that he’s learned the truth, and there’s no reason for us to keep playing this game.
It’s for the best, for him. I just…
I don’t know.
It still feels so cruel. I made him cry. He’s come to care so much about me that whatever I said made him cry. I never started any of this with the intention to hurt him. I was supposed to help. I guess I never expected that he’d become someone so precious to me that just the idea of him leaving would make me panic in the only way I know how.
Dramatically.
Pressing my hands to my face, I battle the pain and the aches and the threat of more tears.
“Princess?”
My heart jolts at the sound of Rowan’s voice, and I pull my hands away from my eyes. Seated in the corner of the couch nearest to me, with Bugsy atop his head, is Rowan. The little bird preens strands of his hair, causing them to stick out like a dark anemone. It’s ridiculous. And dear.
And I really, really, really don’t hate him.
Not even a little.
Not even if he had betrayed me.
Rowan stands, and Bugsy trills, abandoning his nest in favor of returning to a perch in his cage. Every one of Rowan’s footsteps echos in my chest, dull thud after dull thud.
My heart lurches when he sits on the edge of the bed, dipping the mattress and drawing me into his gravity. Rustling the nest out of his hair, he searches me with stringent intent. “How are you feeling?”
Like garbage. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I want to go back to bed. I want to undo last night. Honestly, not having an undo button in real life feels like a major design flaw. “Good.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Cowering isn’t exactly my style, but it is truly the only word that describes my physical response to the way he’s looking at me. To fight my own self-loathing and battle for a sense of normalcy, I say, “Fantastic.”
Silently, with his eyebrows alone, he dares me to continue down this path of destruction.
He’d be an amazing father.
Dropping my gaze, I murmur, “My head hurts.” And there’s a lingering chasm of shame and sadness in the pit of my chest. “Does Lace really willingly opt-in to this experience? Crazy.” No wonder she doesn’t wake up till noon. I forgive her for stabbing me that one time.
Wholly justified.
Rowan plucks a glass of water off the nightstand and offers me a pill.
“Poison?” I ask, hopefully.
His jaw clenches. “Advil.”
Easing myself upright, I murmur, “Drug dealer seems a little under your pay grade.”
