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Well… no.

I met all of them two days ago at that event, but we weren’t alone there, and the attention wasn’t focused on me.

Here, in a space this personal, with just us together, I’m nervous.

First of all, I’m scared of getting used to this again.

I’m here temporarily. Once I finish my work with Theo, I’m going back to New York.

And even if the guys, Sierra, and Thalia will always matter to me, I won’t have the same relationship with them I had back when I was with Zayn.

They’re his brothers and sisters. Of course they’ll always be closer to him than me, and eventually, I’ll have to put some distance between us if I want to move on.

Especially because, from what I’ve seen, he’s completely detached. Like nothing ever happened between us. Like I don’t even exist.

Sometimes I think my presence annoys him.

The awful part is that, deep down, I really believed he would use my being here as an opportunity to ask for another chance. To ask me to forgive him.

Even though… what am I supposed to forgive?

I saw him having sex with someone else while we weren’t together. During that same time, I was probably with Axel.

But no matter how many times I tried explaining to my brain that it wasn’t something I had the right to resent him for, or feel jealous over, those images refused to leave my mind.

Or at least, they had.

Because I haven’t thought about that video once since arriving at Nick and Sierra’s house. The thing constantly on my mind now is his distance. The careless indifference in the way he acts around me.

And I don’t understand why it bothers me this much.

“Selene, are you listening to me?” Sierra asks, resting a hand on my shoulder.

The touch pulls me back into the room. I realize I’ve kept painting without answering her, my brush moving almost automatically as my thoughts spiral somewhere else.

“Yeah, sorry,” I murmur, facing her. “I’m done.”

The way she looks at me tells me she wants to ask more, but I quickly set the brush down, pulling off my gloves and heading to the bathroom.

“I need to wash my hands, and then I’m ready.”

She’s my friend, and I genuinely feel close to her, but Zayn’s her brother. I don’t know how I could tell her what I’m thinking without putting her in an uncomfortable position.

The best thing I can do is what he’s doing—pretend nothing ever happened.

Yeah.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do from now on.

✨

Oh… no. I can’t do this.

Not at all.

For the first thirty minutes after I came downstairs to the living room, everyone was here except Zayn.

He showed up right when the table was set, walking in with a wide grin on his stupidly handsome face, immediately slipping into conversation with the others.