“It was never—” His voice cracks. “Wren, I swear, it wasn’t like that?—”
“When did it become real?” I’m shaking now, vibrating with something too big for my body. “Before you fucked me to win a bet? Or after?”
He flinches like I slapped him.
“Because from where I’m standing, you completed your objective.” My voice drops to something cold and dead. “You won.”
“No. Wren, listen to me—” He’s moving closer, hands reaching. “I’m in love with you. I love you, Wren.”
“You were my first.” The confession rips out of me, raw and bleeding. “My first kiss. My first everything.” My voice shatters completely. “And it was all just a sick game to you.”
“It wasn’t.” He’s close now, too close. “It stopped being a game the second I?—”
“Liar.” The word is a knife. “You made me believe?—”
I can’t finish. The nausea rises fast, bile burning my throat.
His hand reaches for my arm—the same hand that held me, that felt safe, that traced patterns on my skin while he whispered things I thought were promises.
“Don’t touch me.”
But his fingers close around my wrist anyway—warm, familiar, pleading.
And my body moves before my brain catches up. Fifteen years of training—when grabbed, defend. Parry, pivot, break the grip. Sweep the supporting leg.
He goes down hard, one knee hitting stone with a sound that makes people gasp.
For a heartbeat, we’re frozen—him on his knees, me standing over him, the small girl who just dropped the cocky hockey star in front of a hundred witnesses.
Laughter explodes, phones capturing the scene.
“Damn!” someone trills. “She just?—”
“Did you see that? Jesus.”
Kieran looks up at me from his knees—shock and hurt and something desperate I can’t let myself see.
“You wanted me to fall,” I say, voice shaking. “Congratulations. I did.” I take a breath, force the next words out even though they’re killing me. “I fell for you.”
His face crumbles.
“God, I’m so stupid. I thought you felt the same way.” The confession tastes like blood. “I thought we were real. I thought?—”
The nausea wins. I turn, stumble to the hedge, and my body rebels. Quick. Quiet. My stomach giving up everything while the crowd watches my humiliation.
He’s there in a heartbeat, hand hovering near my back.
“Don’t.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist. “Don’t touch me. Don’t?—”
I straighten, throat raw, the world spinning in corrosive yellow and white.
“You were just trying to win a bet.”
“No.” He’s standing now, hands shaking. “At first, maybe, but then?—”
“Then what?” The laugh that escapes me sounds broken. “Do you even believe yourself?”
“I didn’t—” His voice drops, desperate. “Isabelle—I didn’t?—”
