Chapter Seven
IT’S OKAY, IT’S OKAY, it’s okay.
I didn’t really know what to expect after falling asleep in Arkane’s arms. But one thing I know I didn’t want to see waking up is the empty space next to me.
The sheets are cold. That’s the part I keep circling back to. Not just empty, butcold.He’s been gone long enough that the warmth he left behind has gone with him, and that’s how I know, without having to check a clock, that he didn’t linger. He didn’t wait for me to wake up. He didn’t think about sticking around for the morning.
But that’s fine.
I’m a big girl.
It’s not like he took my V-card last night or something. Things happened, but not all things. And that’s because—
He lost interest in me.
He realizes he’s not into me.
You know what?
I don’t care why that is. I’m just going to live with it, and keep moving forward, no looking back. It’s one of the few good things I learned from Mom, who is the world’s expert on not carrying any kind of baggage, never mind if said baggage are actual people with actual feelings.
So yeah...I’m gonna be okay.
I drag myself out of bed and head to the bathroom, and I’m halfway to the shower before my body catches up to my brain and reminds me what happened last night.
Which is when the shock finally lands.
I brace one hand against the cool tile, because my knees have stopped being willing to carry me without assistance, and for a moment all I can do is stare at the drain while my mind replays the worst of it—the way he saidlook at me, Tiarain a voice I’ve never heard come out of a human being, and my surrender.
How the moment his mouth touched mine, my whole body just...capitulated. Like it had been waiting for him.
The mortification is immediate.
How can I have surrendered myself so easily to him?
I, Tiara Sauller, who has made exactly one decent decision her entire life, which is to not turn out like her mother—
I just spent last night proving I’m no better at any of this than Mom ever was.
And now that same man I trusted is gone, and despair has started creeping in behind the mortification.
If he was going to stay, he would have stayed.
If he’d felt any of what I felt last night, he would still be here.
