My eyes held hers as she looked up, her lips slowly popping. “Hey.”
That was an indifferent ‘hey’. And I’d encountered a few of them with her. Either she was about to rain fire on me, or that would be the only conversation we’d have for the rest of the day. I secretly hoped for the former. At least it was something.
“Hi.” I spluttered, those two letters cracking a thousand different ways.
It made her smile, at least.
Then her eyes flicked down to the flowers, and before she could ask, my mouth ran from me. “They’re for you.” I rushed, handing them over to her. But as my hand stretched out and I followed the line of her arm, I saw it.
Not that I would miss it. Because tucked by her side was a canvas.
And it wasn’t blank.
Swirls of purples and violets peeked out from where she held it, mixed with deep blues and streaks of white flowing between like a river.
She looked down at it before lifting her gaze back to me, quiet beauty wrapping around her like something she didn’t even know she carried. “I painted.”
My smile tugged free, unstoppable, no matter how tightly I tried to hold it down. “I can see.” My hand dragged through my hair, disbelief curling in my chest. “What happened?”
She shrugged, eyes slipping away, but when they returned, they burnt with quiet honesty, widening with the memory that had been replaying in my mind all night.
“Oh.”
Oh? That’s all I could say?
Have I always been such a loser?
Perhaps the answer was in the way I couldn’t look away from her, couldn’t breathe without the weight of her pulling at me. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but she cut me off.
“It’s fine.” Her voice was soft. Gentle. But that didn’t change how both of us knew it wasn’t.
And admitting that would make it real. It would make her real in a way I wasn’t supposed to let happen. But God, I already felt it happening, and I had no idea how to stop it.
She cleared her throat. “It shocked me at first. Really shocked me. But the more I thought about it, as odd as it sounds, I thinklast night was the first time in a while where I hadn’t felt like that broken girl I was so used to seeing every time I looked in the mirror. I felt… free.”
I nodded down at her, captivated, confused. “And how do you feel about that?”
The corners of her mouth curled. “Happy.” She shrugged. “Well, happier now that I have something to submit to the Nouvelle committee.”
My chest inflated with a deep breath, my smile pulling tight out of nothing but frustration that I’d unknowingly been sucked into her magnetic field. “You sure do.”
Why was she like this? How could she make me want to pull my hair out and then make me want to pick her up and spin her around at how good she made me feel? About the world. About everything.
She must’ve seen the war on my face because she tilted her head. “Look, the kiss caught me off guard, sure. And yes," She gestured to the canvas. "This happened because of it. But I get why you pulled away. And it's fine. You’re the bodyguard. I’m the client. It’s a conflict of interest. Bodyguard 101, right?”
She wasn’t wrong. But that wasn’t the reason.
My whole life since Lana had been about protecting women like her, about making up for the night I failed. My wants, my dreams—none of that mattered. The only thing that did was keeping them safe, making Lana’s pain mean something.
Wanting Cora felt selfish. Wrong. Like I was stealing something I had no right to. But with her, it wasn’t just protectionanymore. It was this impossible pull I couldn’t fight, no matter how many times I told myself I should.
Unfortunately, what we had was a fault line. One wrong move and the whole world would fracture. Those boundaries between us existed for a reason. They were supposed to keep us safe.
But who was I kidding? The second I kissed her, I’d already shattered them.
I looked at her then, really looked, and the weight of it settled heavy in my chest.
“It is,” I breathed, the words slipping out before I could stop them. “You’re right.” I cleared my throat, forcing the weight in my chest to settle.
