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My hand tightened in the foal’s mane. “Thespending time togetherthing?”

Lukas’s face dropped. “Yeah, that.”

“Right.” And then, because Lukas still didn’t move to stand, “I’ll make sure everything is tucked away down here.”

The end of my sentence was cut off by an involuntary smile, pulled out by the foal—July, I’d decided—starting to tickle my hand with her nose.

Lukas’s eyes dropped to my mouth. He nodded, the way one would after checking something off their to-do list.

Without another word, he stepped back through a portal.

I took another second to sit with June and July. There was a residual feeling of sadness deep in my bones. But the desire and adrenaline was still dominating my focus, preventing me from remembering what had caused it in the first place.

“How does July sound?” I asked June while I stood. June’s reaction was positive, so I asked August the same. He also seemed to like it.

“I’m sorry we didn’t give you a name until now.” She just swam in another circle, not even entertaining my apology.

I chuckled lightly, ushering them all back to the stables. August swam back to his stall and immediately curled into a ball in the corner. June looked about ready to do the same, tired from the race.

“Where is July’s stall?” I asked June. She sent me an image of the one next to hers, but guided July into her own. I walked over to the stall June had pointed me to, finding a bucket of treats and stacks of blankets in the corner.

She was one well-loved little hippocampus, wasn’t she?

I picked up the bucket first—all three of them deserved a treat, then leaned over to grab one of the blankets.

My breath hitched in my throat, my heart stuttering.

The blankets were a rich navy, made of a thick wool. But that wasn’t what shocked me into a stunned stupor. It was the name, embroidered in silver thread in the corner.

July.

Chapter 17

Daphne

The silence that fell over the grand room when I walked in made my stomach drop to the floor.

I forced a smile to my face even though I was running through ways to flee as fast as possible. I couldn’t focus on dealing with the thinly veiled tension right now.

Lukas was nowhere to be found.

SeeingJulyon that blanket punched me in the gut. It was yet another painful reminder of how similar Lukas and I thought. He’d always been the person I could trust to understand me, even to guess what I was feeling without a word from my mouth.

And these reminders of how much I loved that only made the absence of it hurt more.

I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to him, just that I needed to see him.

There was also the matter of that almost kiss. I didn’t think I was making it up. If anything, I would be looking for signs that he felt nothing for me, just to make it a cleaner cut.

But no, no, there was something there. Now that I knew what his desire looked like, it was hard to miss it. It was hard to ignore logic when he looked at me like that.

If that was his look when the desire was born from convenience, I didn’t want to know what he looked like in love.

I just needed to talk to him. Because last night only reminded me of how lonely I was, how starved I was for his friendship.

I’d resist anything physical because we were safe when we were just friends. Sure, the unrequited love was painful, but not as bad as not having him at all.

And if I could just leave this room without someone talking to me, I might be able to find him and get that.