The hackney rolls. Outside, Foxtown is doing what Foxtown always does—couples promenading along the pavement in their finery, a flower girl somewhere calling out about violets, the chime of a clock from a distant square—and none of it touches me. It’s all happening behind glass even though there is no glass.
I know...
I know in my heart that there’s not a single word I said that was untrue. I know I’m going to be okay. I know everything will be okay. Someday. And I guess that’s the part that has my heart breaking to pieces. That someday feels so, so impossibly far.
Because right now—
God, oh God.
Was this how he felt that night?
Thinking that you’ve found the girl of your dreams, and you’ve even started planning an entire future with her, and just when you’re about to ask her to be your wife—
The girl of your dreams turns out to be an idiot who likes to waste kisses on almost-drunk frogs.
A weird sound escapes my lips. It’s like this sound between a laugh and a sob. But I just don’t have the energy, just can’t make my brain work to come up with a new word to describe it.
All I know is that I’m hurting so, so bad—
I can’t stop seeing it.
His lips against another girl’s lips.
God, it hurts so, so much.
Please make it stop.
Please.
I’m so sorry for being a coward, but I just want to stop remembering—
“Tiara!”
Or maybe I should start praying that I stop hallucinating—
“Tiara!”
The hackney driver glances at me over his shoulder, the brim of his Regency top hat catching the afternoon light. “I think he’s talking to you, miss.”
What—wait—he can hear it, too?
“Tiara!”
And I don’t even have to look around because Arkane is right next to our hackney, running flat-out alongside it on the cobbled street, and I...I don’t even know how that’s possible. Was he marathoning when he was young? Or had he been Hyroxing in the past six years? Granted, our hackney has to stick with the park’s speed limits, but—
“Will you listen to me?”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. There’s no—” My words end in a shocked gasp because Arkane’s—okay, I’ve figured it out! Parkour is his secret sport because that’s the only way for him to be running on the sidewalk one moment, and then he’s swinging right up onto the running board and right into the hackney next to me.
“Stop the car,” I cry out. “I mean carriage!”
But I forgot who I’m up against—
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you keep driving until I tell you to.”
—and he’s so, so unfair.
The driver doesn’t even pretend to think about it. He flicks the reins and the horses pick up to the fastest trot Foxtown allows.
