I said, “Max left, it was really interesting meeting him, but it wasn’t for long. He went to go handle some stuff, I guess.”
Cooper’s eyes were narrowing as I spoke. “So Torin is going to be here for a while, I guess?”
Torin’s brow lifted.
I said, “Yes, he’s going to be here. Can we talk about this later, Cooper?”
“Nah, no need, it’s fine. I knew it from day one, I told you, and you denied it, but here you are. At least I’m not crazy.”
He turned to Jen, “You coming to Andrew’s bash tonight?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Great,” He said, “See ya, Lexi,” he nodded curtly at Torin, and left the kitchen, stalking down the hall.
I glanced at Jen. She read my intent, and stepped in to cook while I ran after Cooper to talk.
I caught up with him on the steps of the porch. “Cooper!”
“What, Lexi?”
“I just, I just wanted to tell you I was sorry. You were right, I was… I wasn’t truthful. I was… I don’t know, it was complicated, but I’m really sorry that I hurt you.”
“You’re with him now, officially?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Well, I learned a valuable lesson.” He stalked across the grass to the driveway.
I raced after him.
“Wait, Cooper!”
He exhaled and turned around. “Haven’t we said enough?” He leaned against the side of his truck.
I said, “Not really, honestly we need to talk a lot more. This is just really sad how we’re ending.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I agree.”
“I wanted to talk to you, privately about all of this, about Torin coming back. I didn’t mean for it to happen now, here.”
“I get you.”
He looked away.
“And… so I… I’m just sorry, and I don’t know what else to say.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s fair. I don’t know what to say either. I keep replaying everything — us, what happened after… trying to figure out where I lost you.”
“Everything in the world just changed, you know? None of it is your fault. Not really.”
He gave me a half smile. “I know, that’s my conclusion too.”
I chuckled. “I’ll take the blame, that’s fine.”
“It’s more like this — I keep thinking that we could try again, we could go back and be together, that I should change how I behaved, be more considerate, but then I remember you’re a princess now. You’ve been kidnapped by time traveling assholes, and… it’s hard to get past the fact that you have a huge royal trust fund, you’re not even Lexi anymore, you know? I don’t know, even if we wanted to, how wecouldgo back to that with this new information.”
“Yeah, everything gotreallycomplicated.”
