“You wish.”
She quiets after that. Not completely, her fingers fidget with her sleeve, but she stops fighting me. The silence between us shifts, threaded with something I don’t name.
Her weight settles slowly, her body relaxing by degrees. Her hand ends up near my collar, fingertips brushing the fabric when the path dips. The memory hits before I can stop it—her half-asleep against my shoulder years ago with ink stains on her fingers.
We reach the back trail near the old gardening shed, and I finally stop, lowering her onto a flat boulder. Her hands stay on my shoulders a moment longer than necessary before she lets go.
She doesn’t speak right away. Just presses her palm to her ankle, jaw clenched.
I crouch to check the swelling—minor, manageable, but she won’t admit that.
“I’ll find the next clue,” I say, scanning the trail. “You stay here.”
She blinks up at me, eyes searching. “Why are you doing this?”
The answer lodges in my throat.Because you’re hurt. Because you won’t let anyone see you weak. Because I can’t stand to watch you pretend.
I meet her eyes. “Because I want to win.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tessa
He turns and walks off without looking back. No hesitation or second glance.
Because I want to win.
That’s what he said.
Not because he cares, not because he couldn’t stand to see me in pain, and definitely not because he still feels anything real for me. Just... win. That’s it. Strategy, not sentiment.
I sit here on this rock, blinking against the sting behind my eyes, trying to breathe through the ache in my chest that refuses to settle. The air feels too thin, and for a second, I hate myself for expecting anything else.
I’m an idiot for believing there was something in his eyes that he didn’t mean to show. For thinking that when he carried me, it was because some part of him still cared.
But Rowan King doesn’t care.
He calculates.
He wins.
That’s the difference between us.
I feel everything loudly, without permission, and he breaks it down into parts he can control. He takes what hurts and reclassifies it until it’s manageable.
I shift on the rock, wincing when pain shoots up my ankle. Maybe I’ll just stay. Let them find me later and write it off as exhaustion and bad judgment. The girl who believed in a man who stopped believing in her first.
My fingers curl into my sleeves, nails biting through fabric as I stare at the empty path where he disappeared. He didn’t ask if I was okay, didn’t slow down, didn’t look back. He just said what he needed to make leaving sound like purpose instead of avoidance.
And I let him.
I swallow hard, the taste bitter on my tongue. My throat tightens, not from emotion exactly, but from the effort of keeping every word I didn’t say where it belongs.
A twig snaps somewhere behind me, the sound sharp enough to drag me out of the spiral. I glance back, expecting Rowan. But it’s not him.
“Whitmore?” Camden’s voice cuts through the quiet. He sounds surprised to find me here, which is almost insulting.
“You okay?”
