“I’m tired of you ignoring me, Axel. It’s exhausting always having to watch what I say or worry that we might bump into each other.”
“I don’t ignore you.”
“Fine. But we’re not friends. Not like we used to be. Not like we promised we’d be.After.”
Every word was the truth.
“Talis, I—”
He held up a hand and shook his head. “Please. Let me just say what I’ve come to say.”
I nodded, drawing my knees up to my chin, not liking the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Talis drew in a shaky breath, hands fisted on his thighs. “I went home with you that night with no expectations other than a good time. That’s all. I don’t know what I did to piss you off—”
“You lied.”Shut up, Axel.
His head snapped up. “What?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes flashed, anger replacing the hurt from before. “Yeah, I don’t think so. You can’t call me a liar and not explain yourself.” He spread his hands wide. Waiting.
I screwed my eyes shut, wishing I’d done the same with my stupid mouth.
“Mine.”
I’d heard it as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud that night.
And a part of me had liked it.
But I couldn’t tell him that without revealing what only a handful of people knew about me.
He can never know.
Any of it.
The last time I’d let someone in like that, it had almost cost me my life.
Hating myself a little bit more, I pulled my steely fae indifference around me like a cloak. “You agreed it would just be sex, nothing more. But it wasn’t, was it? You might not have said anything out loud, but you didn’t need to. It was there in the way you touched me that night, the way you looked at me. The way you’restilllooking at me.”
He scowled.
Good, because as much as I liked Talis—and I did—he was the closest I’d ever come to breaking my own rules. I couldn’t go there again. “You like me more than you should. More than thejust friendsthatyoupromisedme.”
Talis’s lips curled into an almost snarl. “Got to say, I’m liking you less and less the longer you talk.”
I swallowed down the urge to take it all back, ignoring the parts of me that ached at his words, and the hurt he couldn’t hide. “I’ve kept my distance in the hope that whatever it is you think you feel for me will fade and we can go back to being the friends we were. We made a mistake. One that I bitterly regret because I miss being your friend. But that’s all we can ever be.”
I stood there and watched the hurt in his green eyes morph into something I didn’t recognise, something that I’d put there.
“I’m not sure we can even be that anymore.” He closed his eyes, sucking in a breath that took all the warmth out of the air around us, leaving behind an emptiness I felt in my bones. When he looked at me again, anything he’d felt for me was gone, chased away by me and my harsh words.
I felt sick.
I hadn’t lied though.
I did regret that night, just not for the reasons I’d let him think.
