“Are you telling me you were faking your behavior?” His jaw is tight, the earnestness from a few moments ago gone.
Oh no.
We’d never talked about anything from before, and I just slowly changed after spending time with the Castaways, but now that I just admitted to him what I had been doing, I’m worried this will start yet another argument.
“Maybe,” I mumble, and look away.
“Are you faking now?”
“No,” I say firmly, with a shake of my head. I meet his stare again, hoping he can see that I’m telling the truth.
“What made you change your mind?” His face remains stoic, but his forearms ripple again, like he’s clenching his fists where I can’t see.
“Honestly?”
“Always, princess.”
“You.”
Surprise flickers over his face, and is gone in the next second, his emotionless mask back in place.
“Me?”
“And the truth. You, and the truth.”
“Why me?”
A sigh heaves from my chest, and I cross my arms now, trying to hide myself and rein in the vulnerability I’m feeling take over.
“You’re really going to make me say it?”
“You’re not just going to admit that you were pretending with all of us and get away with it. Tell me.” The subtle command in his voice makes me bite my tongue and push away thoughts of him using that tone for other reasons.
“Fine,” I huff, and the words come tumbling out, fast enough that I can’t stop them and hopefully intelligible enough that I won’t have to repeat them. “I saw you weren’t at all how Dane described. You care about everyone around you, and while you piss me off to no end with your overprotective First Guard bullshit” —He cracks a close-lipped smile at that but doesn’t break eye contact—“In a way I think that is how you show you care and I was just not willing to accept it because I was trying to break out of the overbearing wrath of my father. I didn’t need it from you too.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I don’t know what Rem did or how he made you feel, but I wasn’t trying to do that to you again.”
My jaw falls open. “Did you justapologize?”
“Don’t get used to it,” he says with a grin. “I’m usually right, remember?”
I roll my eyes and he laughs. Not a quiet one, an actual Weston laugh that I’ve only heard him give to other people, or when he was drunk.
“Thank you for the apology,” I say.
“I will do my best not to be overbearing, but I can’t just stop, princess.”
“Can you stop calling me princess?”
“No,” he says and steps away from the rail, closing the distance between us. My body stiffens as he leans closer, and his voice lowers to a rumble.
“I think you like it. Princess.”
My knees threaten to buckle and my abdomen tumbles. I need to take a step back, to get farther away from him so I can think straight again, but I don’t. And neither does he.
“Do you think he will hurt you?”
My brain stutters as I try to figure out what he is asking.
