I gaze at those three words until they blur. Then I cross them out hard enough to tear the paper. Sorry. What does sorry even mean? She already knows I'm sorry. She knew it the moment I walked away from her in the café, saw it written all over my face. That's not what she needs to hear from me now. Sorry is whatyou say when you've broken a plate or stepped on someone's foot. This is bigger than that. This cuts deeper.
I try again, forcing my hand steady as I form the letters.Maris, I love you.
Better. The words feel truer, heavier. But I sit back and look at them, and they still feel hollow somehow. Still not right. Still not enough to cut through those walls she's built around herself, brick by careful brick. She'll read it and think it's just words. Just me trying to fix things the easy way, with a confession that costs me nothing.
I crumple the paper in my fist. The sound of it is loud in the quiet room. I toss it toward the corner where the other failed attempts are piling up like evidence of my incompetence.
Start over.
Maris,
I don't know how to write this. I'm better with my hands than words. Better at fixing things than explaining them.
But I need you to know something.
I'm terrified.
Terrified that I'm not good enough. That I'll mess this up. That I'll fail you the way I failed everyone in the arena who counted on me and didn't make it out.
Terrified that if I let myself love you the way I want to, something will take you away. Because that's what happens. Good things get ripped apart. People get hurt. And I can't protect you from everything, no matter how hard I try.
But I'm more terrified of losing you.
So I'm going to fight. For you. For the café. For the kitten. For the life we could have if we're brave enough to take it.
I'm going to the gala. I'm going to find proof. I'm going to fix this.
And when it's over, I'm going to ask you to forgive me.
Not because I deserve it. But because I love you. And I think maybe you love me too, even if you're too scared to say it.
Wait for me.
Grath
I fold the note carefully, creasing each edge with deliberate precision as though the sharpness of the paper might somehow lend weight to the inadequate words I've scratched across it. My hands—these blunt, scarred things that have broken bones and torn flesh—tremble slightly as I tuck the letter into an envelope I bought specially for this purpose. The paper is cream-colored, smooth, nothing like the rough scraps I'm used to. It feels fragile between my thick fingers.
Tomorrow, before the gala begins, before I have to put on that suffocating mask of civility and pretend to be something I'm not, I'll leave it at the café. I'll slip it under the door in the early morning dark, when the street is still empty and no one can see the way my chest aches at the thought of her finding it. She'll discover it there when she arrives to start her day, probably with flour already dusting her apron and that determined set to her jaw that means she's ready to fight the world with nothing but coffee and spite.
And then I'll go do the thing I'm worst at, the thing that makes my skin crawl and my teeth grind together until my jaw hurts.
I'll be charming. Polite. Invisible in the way that matters,a curiosity rather than a threat, an ornament rather than a person.
I'll be whatever she needs me to be, even if it means swallowing my pride, my anger, every honest word that wants to claw its way out of my throat.
Because she's worth it. Worth every moment of discomfort, every second of playing pretend, every breath I take in that gilded cage of a gala.
She's worth everything.
CHAPTER 11
MARIS
Istand backstage at the gala, my palms sweating against the silk of a borrowed dress that's too tight in the shoulders and too loose everywhere else. The fabric whispers against my skin like a warning. This is a terrible idea. All of it. The dress, the plan, the notion that I can somehow waltz into this glittering snake pit and distract an entire room of people while Grath crawls through air vents like some kind of enormous, well-meaning raccoon.
But the alternative is losing everything. The café. The rowhouses. Him.
So here I am, about to humiliate myself in front of Coral Bay's wealthiest residents, all so my orc can commit light breaking and entering.
