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“A lot of thinking, like I normally do,” I clarified, feeling some of the peace returning to my body. “And I obviously have a fear of not being good enough. Not being wanted. My whole life has been that.”

“That’s very reasonable, Daphne.” Rose set her own cup down, repositioning herself on the couch to settle into the conversation. “People decided a lot before you had the chance to defend yourself.”

“I know.” I sniffled a little, the tears still not fully gone. “But I thought Lukas was different. He never made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. But that was when we were just friends. When I moved back from university, things started to change.”

“How so?” Rose prompted.

I shifted a little bit, already dreading having to relive the memories. “I realized I was in love with him, for one.”

Rose caught her cringe at the very last second. But it was still enough to show on her face.

“I know,” I said, letting out a disbelieving laugh. “But I didn’t do anything because we were friends, you know? And to him, I was probably the girl he got stuck with.”

“Why do you think that?”

I took another sip of tea. “He was ten when our arrangement was finalized. His whole life I was attached to him like a barnacle. He didn’t get a choice in any of this.”

Rose’s eyebrow was creeping up, a sure-fire sign that her feisty side was about to come out. She only really got that way with me when I was in a hate spiral, and she was trying to shake me back to reality. “You realize you could feel the same right? You were younger.”

“Maybe.” I shivered involuntarily at the memories. “But I had this hopeless crush on him most of my life.”

Rose scoffed. “Like that means anything. You wouldn’t be in your right mind if you didn’t have a crush.”

“You have a point.” I had to agree. Lukas was so nice to me and looked…well, he was easily the most attractive person I’d ever met. “I would have been fine letting it sit as a crush. But then he started fucking things up.”

Rose let out a grumble, low in her throat. “What did he do?”

Her question broke my restraint. “He was just soconfusing.” I set my tea down to avoid spilling it. Exasperation was crawling up my throat with each passing word. “One day we’d be all buddy buddy and he’d treat me like a friend then the next he’d be putting his hand on my lower back and telling me I looked beautiful but then he’d neverdoanything about it.”

When I paused to take a breath, Rose blinked once. “Well, I can imagine that wasn’t great.”

“And people would treat us like we were in an actual relationship. When people would try to flirt with him and I walked up they looked so guilty.”

I left out that the guilt would normally be accompanied by a saccharine smile and a deep-seeded urge on my end to knock teeth out. In a nice way, obviously.

“People would flirt with him in front of you?” Rose asked.

I nodded. “I think they thought he’d eventually realize that my Athena blood was poisonous and he’d ditch me. Then there would be a line out the door to replace me.”

“Well that’s disrespectful,” Rose all but growled. “I mean, for fuck’s sake.”

The corner of my lip quirked up in the shadow of her agreement. “Not to mention it made me want to light them on fire.”

“I think that’s a perfectly reasonable response.” Rose said it with such intensity I had half the mind to ask if she had the bodies of Dominic’s past lovers hidden in her closet.

I nodded. It seemed reasonable to me too. “He shut it down every time though. That was part of what was so confusing. He’d just put a hand around my shoulders and make it clear to everyone that there was something there. Even if nothing was happening behind closed doors.”

Rose grinned. “Knew Lukas was smart.”

I felt the corners of my eyes crinkling. “If only I remembered that he was doing it to honor our arrangement. That, combined with everything else, was making me lose it. Then I just had to go and work up the courage to do something myself.”

Rose laid a hand on my forearm. “Oh, sweetie, what did you do?”

My cheek twitched on a reflex, bowing to the embarrassment and pain in the memory. I stalled for a second longer, my throat feeling like it would close up if I told her what happened. “I knew better. But I started to ignore the fact that we were supposed to stay just friends,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure we ever really were.Justfriends.

“But toward the end…” I trailed off, unsure how to explain what had shifted those final weeks. Why the betrayal hurt so much.

Rose cocked her head a little to the left, thinking. “The wordfriendstarted sounding like an insult.”