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Alicia nodded. There was no need for me to explain to her the rules that would have been in place, barring intimacy between us. Truly unbreakable ones, in absence of a death wish, which neither of us had.
Not then.
“So… you’re telling me that the rogue Thorn I hired to follow your stubborn ass, thinking you wouldn’t catch on because he wasn’t a familiar face… was what… your first love or something?”
Only.
She was trying to talk to me like we were normal, which I appreciated, but was completely dissonant from reality. Her path had differed completely from mine, even though we’d come from the same place, and still… she hadonelove, which was all people like us were afforded.
If we got it at all.
Just Cree.
I shrugged, fidgeting with the straps of my padded sparring gloves. “I guess you could put it like that. But it was a decade ago, and like I said… we were kids. It doesn’t matter.”
“But you didn’t say anything to me about it. You would’ve said something if it didn’t matter.”
I smirked.
Damn.
Was I reallythateasy to read?
I wanted to tell myself it was less about me, more about the fact that she’d been a Rose too—the dangerous kind. Perception and profiling were engrained in her, skills imprinted into the core of who she was.
Of course she could tell.
“Maybe I’m not saying anything because itshouldn’tmatter.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Maybe you trying to convince me it shouldn’t matter is prime evidence that it definitely should. That itdoes.”
“Too much has happened since then.”
“And what exactly does any of it have to do with right now?”
Frustrated, I shook my head, turning to walk away from her. “Do I really have to explain this to you?”
“No, you don’thaveto, but if you don’t, I’ll be in the dark. Because—despitemy other objections with the possibility of what we’re discussing here—Idon’tsee what’s stopping two free adults from… doing whatever the hell you want.”
I pushed out a sigh, stopping at the rack that held the weights and other equipment. “He told me it was all in my head, okay? An… unrequited crush.”
“Well, of course he did,” Alicia scoffed. “From what you told me, you’d been given a special status because of your moth—because of Paloma,” she corrected herself. “I’m sure he wasn’t supposed to touch you.”
“Right. But… what I’m telling you is, it wasn’tjustabout us not getting in trouble. We never got into trouble, were never questioned, none of that. He just… changed one day. No more laughing, talking, and when I asked him about it, he… acted like I was crazy. Like I was making things between us out to be something they weren’t. And then, not long after… he was gone.”
Alicia’s lips parted, but she said nothing. Still, there was understanding in her eyes as she nodded. “He broke your heart.”
“Yeah.”
Before I even knew what that was, when I didn’t have anybody else, that rejection had… shattered me.
“If he’d just gotten his ink, he was probably about to be sent out for field work. And… Dosh, you know how it goes—no personal attachments. No liabilities. He did it because he had to.”
“Orthat was just his truth,” I shrugged. “And if that was his truth then,surelynow that I’ve… nevermind. It just doesn’t matter anymore. Period.”
Her eyebrows went up. “So, conversation over then? No room for me to push back on your unspoken assertion that somehow you might not deserve his returned affection anymore, because of something done to you? I don’t get to tell you how ridiculous that is?”
“Yes, yes, and no,” I answered with a pointed glare. “I didn’t want to talk about any of this, remember? I thought we were sparring?”
