And yet he only goes off that one act from Dray.
He hasn’t been around all the other times Dray has cornered me—all the other times he’s dropped hints.
“You understand, Liv,” he starts. “There is no negotiation here. You are not to let on that you know.”
“What if I figured it out?”
Oliver tilts his head. “But you didn’t figure it out. You were told.”
The look he gives me is utterly condescending, dripping with mockery.
“Liv,” he says with a growing, vicious smile, “Dray has seen your grades. He has seen your stubbornness throughout the years, putting yourself in his path over and over. Do you think he would believe you to be some secret genius? Do you think any of us would expect you to figure it out all on your own—no matter how many canes he stops?”
My throat thickens.
Well…
Fuck.
That stings.
That was a carving knife to my chest cavity.
The breath I loosen is shaky, not with only the tears I feel stirring in me, but with rage too.
I have been judged by others my whole life.
Not just as a Videralli heiress, but as the deadblood, the one who attends the academy, the one who mingles with the diamonds on the crown, but will never really fit the design.
I never knew I was judged as stupid.
Oliver forgets his insults too easily, like they haven’t struck me deep.
He looks over at the mantel, gaze snagging for a beat on the gold framed photograph of me on the yacht two years ago, perched beside Oliver on the bench.
I trace his gaze to the picture, the sincere smile that softens his face in it, the pinned one on mine, forced.
It is natural on him, the smile, the loosely gripped tumbler of scotch that he rests on his thigh, his arm around my back and hand gentle on my waist—and beside him, I am stiff, a statue, forced to endure the photograph Mother insisted on getting of us.
“That was a nice week,” he says, distant. “Do you still have the collection of Byron?”
Every day, the yacht would dock, and we would wander the streets of some town or city along the coast.
It was in a little bookshop that Oliver found a dusty, rotted copy of Byron’s poetry—and bought it for me.
Never cared much for poetry.
And I don’t know where it is now.
Maybe I threw it out when we returned home, or I tossed it overboard when we were still on the yacht.
Not sure.
So I stick to silence and wait him out—wait for his gaze to turn back to me.
There is more softness in him now as he considers me, his gaze drifting over my face before tracing down the over-the-shoulder braid that’s frazzled and poorly done.
I hate when he looks at me with softness, like he has these moments of genuine care.
