Page 61 of Rules, Roses, and Rivals
I didn’t have the energy to pretend tonight.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I feel like no matter what I do, I’m going to mess it up.” I looked down at our hands. “I want to go. But I also want to hide under my bed and pretend none of this is happening.”
“Ah,” he said, his voice dipping with something like amusement. “So you are like every other teenage girl in the movies, then.”
“Rude.”
“But true.”
I elbowed him lightly. He didn’t let go of my hand.
“Frankie,” he said softly, “they are not your responsibility. How they feel, what they want—that is not yours to carry.”
“But I still feel it.” I swallowed hard. “Every look. Every question. Every time I get a rose on my windshield or someone calls and says ‘you home yet?’ I feel like I’m about to fail someone.”
“Then fail them.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“If they put you in a position where your happiness depends on them not hurting—then let them hurt. Because that is not love. That is guilt dressed up in affection.”
I looked away, jaw tight. “You don’t know them.” It felt disloyal as hell to talk about them now. Earlier in the summer, when I’d been so angry with them, I managed to avoid it. But now?
“No,” he said. “But I knowyou.”
Fuck, that was worse.
I let my head drop onto his shoulder, the only safe place I’d found in days. “If I—we go, it’s going to be a mess.”
“If you don’t go, it will still be a mess,” he said, light. “But you’ll miss the pizza and I’ve heard American pizza is a reason to live.”
I let out a weak laugh.
“I’ll go,” I said eventually, heart twisting. “But I’m not promising I’ll survive it.”
Mathieu kissed the top of my head—soft, careful, like a promise he hadn’t said out loud yet.
“You will,” he murmured, his voice all quiet certainty. “Even if you don’t want to.”
I huffed a laugh, because of course he thought he knew better than me. “I like your confidence.”
He slid an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in until I was tucked into his side like I’d always belonged there. When I tilted my head back, I found his gaze waiting for me—steady, unshaken. Like he was already imagining the version of me that didn’t flinch from the spotlight.
“It’s a pool party though,” I said, trying for casual, even though my heart had started kicking like it was trying to outrun the moment. “So that means... bathing suits.”
A slow, wicked smile crept across his face. There it was—that spark. That Mathieu mischief that always made my stomach flip in dangerous directions.
“Could I persuade you,” he said, drawing the words out like a dare, “to wear the bikini you had on when we first met?”
Oh, hell.
My face went warm instantly. “Maybe?” It came out like a question I didn’t know how to answer. That bikini had been a whole situation—and I’d only worn it because Schlitterbahn was two hundred miles away and no one there knew my name.
“I don’t usually dress like that here,” I added, like that might protect me from whatever reaction he’d give.
Mathieu didn’t miss a beat. “Then all the more reason to wear it.”
His voice dropped, and so did my defenses.
