Page 94 of Feral King

“He talks to me the way he once talked to you. You know, little comments about my body. And the way he looks at me when I say the ‘wrong’ thing in front of his mother. Laura. God, Laura is—” She stops and takes a slow breath. “She makes me feel so goddamn stupid. Not in an obvious way. She does it with just a look or a snicker. I hate it. And Alex just lets her.”

“I know exactly what that feels like,” I reply. Because I do.

“I know you do. That’s why I’m here.” Sophia’s eyes are damp. “I’m sorry, Ly. For everything. For Alex, for the things I said at the gala—all of it. I was cruel, because being cruel made me feel like I had power. But I didn’t. I never did. Alex holds all of it, and he has no intention of ever letting me have any, even just a little.”

The silence that follows is heavy. I look at her—my former best friend, the girl who used to braid my hair in the dorm at Hudson, the one who cried on my shoulder when her grandmother died—and I feel something that I didn’t expect.

It’s not forgiveness. Not yet, but maybe not ever. It’s recognition. A specific, painful recognition that she’s been through the same thing that I have and come out the other end, just like I did, with the same bruises, the same scars.

I shake my head. “I’m not ready to be friends again. And honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. What you did was cruel and it was calculated. If it had been some one-off thing, it still would’ve hurt, but maybe it would havebeen easier to understand. This has been years of looking me in the eye and lying every time we saw each other.”

She glances aside, biting her lower lip before turning her attention back to me.

“I… I know.”

“But I hear you. And I’ll think about it.”

She nods and wipes her eyes. “That’s more than I deserve.”

“Yeah. It really is.”

She turns to leave but then stops a few feet away and turns back.

“Ly, be careful. With Alex. He’s planning something. I don’t know what, but he and Laura have been having meetings. Late-night, closed-door meetings at his place. And he stopped telling me things. So whatever it is that he’s hiding, he doesn’t trust me to keep quiet about it.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do.” She smiles, and I can’t help but smile back. She’s a ghost of the old Sophia, the one who could be funny and charming.

She vanishes into the Madison Avenue foot traffic.

I stand on the sidewalk, slightly stunned, trying to process everything. Ethan steps up next to me, holding the Little Sprout bag.

“You know she’s playing you, right?”

“Yep.”

“And you let her talk anyway.”

“I wanted to see what her angle was.” I take the bag and start walking, Ethan falling into step at my side. “The apology is real, or at least part of it was. Alex and Laura have been grinding her down the same way they did me. It’s just how they are.”

“And the rest?”

“A con. I’d bet anything she didn’t just happen to find me at a maternity store. She doesn’t even know I’m pregnant. Someone knew I’d be here and sent her, probably because they want to see if I’ll take the bait and start trusting her again.”

Ethan nods. “Very likely. So if that is the case, what’s your play?”

“I’ll let her think it’s working, let her believe I’m really thinking it over, weighing the pros and cons. I’ll leave the door open a crack and see what she brings me next, because whatever Alex is planning, she knowssomething. And that means she might talk.”

Ethan is quiet for a few paces. Then he chuckles.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just that you’re more like Julian than you want to admit.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“It is, actually, and one of the nicest ones I could give.”