Page 69

When we got to the apartment, I killed the engine but remained in my seat, keys heavy in my hand. Maggie got out without a word. She didn’t wait for me. She didn’t even glance at me.

I did a few breathing exercises before I followed her up the stairs, but the weight in my chest kept getting worse with every step.

When I shut the door behind me, it was like a lock sealing around everything we weren’t saying. The apartment was dim and quiet, full of shadows and the ghost of everything that had happened. I took my boots off with more force than necessary. One clattered against the wall. I didn’t care.

Maggie walked straight toward the kitchen, putting a barrier between us. She still wasn’t looking at me.

My thoughts were a tangle of frustration and panic and the ever-louder echo of Lucien’s voice in my head. You need to claim Maggie as soon as possible. That stupid timer ticked down like a bomb I didn’t know how to defuse.

I couldn’t tell her. If I told her, she’d think I had manipulated her. Cornered her. That none of it had been real.

I couldn’t lose her.

I dragged my hands through my hair as I paced the living room once, twice, then spun and faced her, heart threatening to tear out of my chest.

“You really think I did that for her?” My voice was too low, too tight. “To make her jealous?”

Maggie flinched. “I don’t know what you did it for. But I know how it looked when we got back to the table.”

That hit harder than I wanted it to. She wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t make it fair.

I stepped toward her, jaw clenched. “You think I’d touch you like that, look at you like that, just to get under Seraphina’s skin?”

She crossed her arms like a shield. “I think you don’t know what you’re doing anymore.”

My temper flared. “You’re not serious.”

“Oh, I’m very serious.”

“You think I’d fake that?” I snapped. “You think I’d put my mouth on you for the drama?”

“I think you’re a walking contradiction, Roman,” she shot back, eyes flashing. “One minute you’re reminding me of our fake-dating rules and using me as an escape plan, and the next you’re acting like I’m yours. Which is it?”

I didn’t have a straight answer. What I did have was rage and confusion and an aching, clawing need to make her understand.

“You scare the shit out of me, that’s the problem!”

The words cracked through the silence. We both froze. Breathing hard. Eyes locked across the room like we were on opposite sides of a canyon.

She stared at me, lips parted, chest rising and falling too fast. “What did you just say?”

“I said,” I ground out, taking another step toward her, “you scare the shit out of me.”

I didn’t raise my voice this time. The words hung there, bare and honest and ugly.

Because it was true.

I didn’t know what to do about how she made me feel. I didn’t know what to do with the part of me that needed her—not as a fake girlfriend, not as a strategic out from Lucien’s mating mandate, just her.

I needed Maggie.

I stepped closer. She didn’t back away.

“Say it,” I growled. “Say you don’t feel it too.”

Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

That was all it took.