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My jaw tightened.

A bitter edge crept back in, sharper now, easier to hold onto than the hollow ache that clawed its way up my throat.

They would all spin it.

Clips would be cut, narratives shaped, speculation encouraged just to keep people hooked. There would be think pieces and reaction videos and endless commentary from people who never met either of us but would speak like they knew exactly what happened.

What it meant.

What we meant.

A muscle ticked in my jaw.

They’d turn it into something consumable, digestible. Something simple.

Enemies to lovers. Rivals with chemistry. A slow-burn revelation just waiting to be revealed.

A story.

All of it boiled down to just that.

A story.

Not the truth.

The truth was too messy for thirty-second videos and social media captions.

The truth was standing on that stage, feeling something inside me crack open as I realized the woman I had been arguing with, philosophizing with, growing with… wasn’t some stranger.

She was the same woman chiseling her way through my walls until she was inside them with me.

All the while watching, waiting, knowing.

My grip tightened harder, the leather creaking under my palms.

And not only watching, waiting, knowing, but pulling things out of me I’d never told anyone else before, curling into me in bed, making me start to believe—

No.

I forced that thought down, hard.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. That was the point. It was always the point.

I didn’t believe in this.

Any of it.

Not in fate, not in love, not in whatever fragile, fleeting thing people tried to dress up as something more.

And this was exactly why.

Proof. Clear, undeniable proof that there was always something beneath, calculated and self-serving.

My gaze flicked to the empty passenger seat. For a second, just a second, I could almost see her there. Her legs cocked up at a forty-degree angle, her hands splayed on the shiny paperback cover, her voice soft and halting as she read the first intimate scene. A blush crept over her cheeks. Her pulse fluttered as heat bloomed through her. Her gaze shot over toward me.

My chest tightened, something lodging itself there.

I looked away.