That smirk. The napkin wipe. The timing. It all lined up too perfectly. What if it wasn’t about me? What if it never was? What if everything that had happened between us was part of the game? Was it just a well-timed move on a board I had never agreed to play?
My heart dropped straight into my stomach, and the food on my plate suddenly nauseated me. I couldn’t even look at the eggs, toast, or the berries swimming in syrup. My appetite had vanished.
So had the warmth.
I stared at my plate, trying not to let it show. Trying not to crumple right there in my chair, surrounded by whispers and half-sipped cocktails and the man who’d just made me feel like the only woman in the world.
The man who’d now made me feel like the stupidest woman in the world.
Was that what I was? A tool? A performance? A stunt to make Seraphina choke on her drink and storm off in defeat?
Roman took my hand under the table. I flinched. It was subtle, but I felt him pause long enough to clock it. He didn’t push or say anything, but he retracted his hand slowly, like he hadn’t just seen me retreat from him as if he’d burned me.
Good. Let him wonder. Let him sit in the confusion for once.
Because I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. Not the smile. Not the softness. Not the way he’d said,
Let me take care of you. And I couldn’t tell if the ache in my chest was heartbreak or embarrassment or the crash of coming down from something that felt too good to be true.
Probably all of it.
I sat perfectly still, breathing shallowly, hands folded in my lap so I wouldn’t remember tangling them in his hair. So I wouldn’t remember falling apart with his mouth on me. The satisfaction was gone now. I felt used. Hollow. The heat in that room had burned away the last fragile bit of dignity I had left.
And the worst part?
He was still sitting next to me, so close. And I couldn’t stop remembering how it felt when I thought I mattered to him.
Roman
I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other clenched tight in my lap, knuckles aching from the strain. The silence between us wasn’t peaceful. It was sharp-edged and brittle, like a pane of glass someone might breathe on wrong and crack straight through the middle. Every few seconds, I glanced sideways at her, hoping she’d turn her head, say something, look at me… but Maggie just kept staring out the window like she couldn’t bear to exist in the same space as me right now.
Her arms were crossed. Jaw set. I kept hearing the words over and over, looping in my head like a curse I couldn’t shake.
You just did that to upset Seraphina, didn’t you?
She’d asked that the second we were in the car, yanking the ground out from under me and leaving me flailing. That was not what it was. Not even close. But the fact that she thought it was, that she could go from unraveling under my mouth to thinking she was a pawn in some pissing match with Seraphina, made me want to scream.
I clenched my jaw, kept my grip on the wheel steady, and drove.
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.
We collided like magnets, mouths crashing together in a kiss that was more war than peace. Her fingers dug into the collar of my shirt, mine found her waist and hauled her closer. I couldn’t stand there being even an inch of space between us.
We stumbled toward the couch, bumping into the corner of the table, still half-arguing through the kiss. Still wrapped in tension and heat and things we didn’t want to say.
Maggie shoved me down and straddled my lap, hair wild, breath ragged.
I looked up at her, dazed and laughing through my disbelief. “So, this is how we’re handling things now?”
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