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“What?” She tries to jerk away, green eyes flashing in panic. “That’s not the deal.”

“It’s only a couple weeks,” I argue as I tug her back, but it’s weak. I already know it’s not possible. “It’s… warm,” I say of her belly, forehead screwing up. “Is it supposed to be this warm?”

In a wry voice, she offers, “I do have body heat.”

Oh.

Right.

There are long creases in her skin where the waistband of her leggings has made an impression, and I wish I could smooth them away. My fingertips glide across them, watching as her stomach twitches in reaction.

They look like scars.

Clearing my throat, I release her, reaching behind me to open her door. “Try not to get everything soaked,” I mutter as she snaps the umbrella shut and stuffs it on the pristine floorboard.

“Me?” she snorts, adjusting her pants again. “I’m not the one who can’t control my fluids.”

“Yeah, well,” flustered, I start the car, the windshield wipers scraping smoothly across the window, “I don’t hear a lot of complaints out of you when you’re begging me to plug them inside.”

She scowls, but I bet if I checked her cunt right now, she’d be dripping, dying for me to be inside her.

No.God, stop thinking about her pussy.

It’s impossible, though, with her sitting next to me, her scent ripe and raw from the rain. She’s been away from the palace for two weeks, and I don’t like it. My hands tighten on the wheel as I remember waking up in her bed this morning—just like I have for the past week—Wicker clutching me like a fucking octopus as Lex showered just beyond the bathroom door. That’s another change. It barely feels like ‘her’ room anymore. How could it, when she’s not in it?

Wicker’s new sheets don’t even smell like her.

And it pisses me off.

I force myself to focus on the drive, not the girl next to me, ready to tick this chore off the box.

“We don’t have to do this,” she says suddenly. Her hair is damp and frizzy, the humid May heat rolling into Forsyth like a damp exhale, and she’s staring at her fingernails, picking at a cuticle. “You don’t want to. I don’t want to. You should just take me back to campus.”

I glance over, trying to suss out what’s going on here. When her expression reveals nothing useful, I break, too impatient for games today, “Because you’re desperate to get back to your gutter rats, or because you’re scared of going to the spa? Because I assure you, nothing’s happening to you at the spa except some garden variety pampering.”

It’s a little comical, stepping away from all my obligations in order to have my Princess plucked and shined. Danner or her handmaid could have taken her, but she asked me to be here. Specifically. And now that I’m here beside her, something inside the core of my being begins unwinding. Relaxing. Calming.

It’s the first time I’ve seen her in person indays.

There was a time when a glimpse of her on the monitors would have settled the restless storm in my chest, but it’s stopped being enough.

I need to touch her.

Reaching over, I place my hand on hers, stilling her picking fingers. “We’re here.”

I ease the car to a stop in front of the Gilded Rose. The only private appointment we could get was during her time in West End. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but that was before she risked Effie’s life.

Her palm flattens over her stomach, green eyes scanning the parking lot. “You promise you won’t leave?”

So sheisscared. Begrudgingly, I promise, “I’m not leaving you in there alone.”

“It’s just…” She chews on her lip, eyes tight. “The girls are still really mad about the whole thing.”

“Have they done anything—specifically?” I ask, willing to go nuclear on some prissy bitches if I have to.

But she shakes her head. “No. Just bitchy girl stuff. They’re pros. I know their anger is misplaced. I didn’t force their boyfriends to be total jackoffs, but things are tense enough that if they found out I was coming back here, they may look for a way to retaliate.” She looks at me, holding my gaze. “And things are hard enough, you know?”

Looking at her then might be the hardest thing I’ve done all week because I know that look in her eyes. Tired but persistent, weak but fierce, defeated but determined. This is how it gets you. First, it’s the obligations, and then the enemies, people on all sides. One day, my brothers and I just stopped caring about the future because we didn’t have the capacity. Not when all of our energy was spent making it through the week—the day—the hour.