“Well,” Ella said, slowing to a stop as they reached her hotel. “This is me.” She rocked back on her heels. “Today was really great.”
“It was,” Nate agreed.
They lingered by the sliding door, too close. The kind of close where his imagination supplied a crystal-clear image of how easily he could dip his head and kiss her.
“So,” Ella said, “I was thinking, you’re leaving soon.”
Nate’s heart slammed into his throat.
“So am I,” she continued, her fingers brushing his collar. “So, I was wondering, would you maybe want to come up?”
“I, uh…” He let out a nervous laugh. Why the hell did he laugh? “No.”
There was a beat. Ella’s expression shifted, like a light flickering out. “Oh,” she breathed.
“I mean, not no like no no,” he rushed on. “No like… I’m really tired, you know?” God, that sounded worse.
Her voice wavered. “It’s fine.”
He dragged a hand down his face. “What I’m trying to say…” He stopped, took a breath. “I think you’re incredible. And today was perfect. I just…” He shook his head, frustrated. “I can’t.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said quickly, waving a hand. “I overstepped. Forget it.”
“You didn’t,” he said immediately. “I just… this is a me thing.”
The silence between them was brittle.
“But maybe,” he added, scrambling, “we could meet up tomorrow? If you’re free. Coffee or something?”
Her smile was slow to arrive and quick to fade. “That would be nice. I guess.”
The hotel doors behind her slid open with a bright chime, letting out a rush of cold air. Ella glanced toward the lobby, her eyes already distant.
“Good night, Nate.”
She turned and stepped inside before he could respond, the doors sealing shut behind her.
Nate stood frozen, staring at his reflection in the glass, wondering how something could be so near and yet so impossibly out of reach.
Chapter Eleven
The bed didn’t so much welcome Allegra as ambush her. She hit the mattress with a groan. Through the threadbare fabric, something metal dug into her spine.
No. I can’t.
Nate’s voice echoed in her skull. Not teasing. Not even a maybe if you beg. Just an unyielding nuh-uh. Like she’d asked him to solve world hunger instead of—
She stared at the ceiling, following a water stain shaped like a continent she’d once holidayed in expensively. Her eyes burned hot, her throat itching as if she’d swallowed sand.
This was unprecedented. Princess Allegra of Valenstadt had been patronized, underestimated, and micromanaged into oblivion. Never flat-out rejected. She was used to men throwing attention at her feet like it was confetti. Because of her name, her title, her bank account. Strip all that away, and what was left?
A girl with hair that refused to behave, a grin that leaned more lopsided than charming, and a laugh that apparently wasn’t the universal cure-all she’d assumed.
Ugh. Men were allowed to say no. Of course they were. She’d literally written think pieces about enthusiastic consent. But knowing it in her brain and feeling it in her chest were two very different animals.
She grunted again and smothered herself with a pillow. “Get a grip, Allegra.” But her brain had latched onto the ugliest takeaway and was swinging it like a weapon. If Nate didn’t wanther, what did that say? That without a tax haven sweetening the deal, she was forgettable?
She ripped the pillow away and flung it across the room. It hit the wall with a uselessthud. Since when did she measure her value in erections? Since when did one man’s disinterest get to bulldoze her self-esteem?
