Page 70 of Resisting my Forbidden Fae

“Good morning,” she greeted back. Confusion muddled her features as she tried to figure things out. Then she did figure it out, the clarity a bright flash as her eyes widened in stupefaction. “Oh, my God. I was drunk.”

“Yep.”

She rolled, groaned into her pillow, and squared her shoulders to peer at him.

“Was I so drunk that you had to carry me here?”

“Pretty much.” He bit back a smile at her mortification. “Am I to assume you weren’t the only one drunk?”

“No. Sona had it worse.”

“Sona?” he asked, incredulous.

“She was giggling like mad.”

She grinned at whatever his expression was, jolting his loins. It left him speechless, but he was wrenched out of it when a pressing matter pushed at him.

“We need to talk about Hayley.”

Just like that, the grin died, and her walls were up. Whatever intimacy there was vanished as she visibly pulled away and cleared her throat.

“It’s none of my business—”

“It is when it involves you.”

Daria froze. “What?”

The scenario from last night replayed in his mind, encased in so much brutal honesty. Hayley’s angry face glimmered as she had walked away from him, and that stung—that no matter how hard he tried to make it work, she just saw his career abandonment as an insult to her and couldn’t be bothered hearing about his feelings. But the thought of Daria being the one to walk away from him hurt him so much more that it became difficult to breathe, and it took him a while to steady himself before he spoke again.

“She has been texting me for days, and I thought it was only decent to let her know I was safe. She wanted to speak with me after and see where we stood.”

“How does it involve me?”

“She asked about work.”

She blinked. “Work?”

“Yes.”

“After everything you have been through, all she wants to know is if you got the job?” Her bristling anger blazed before she tamped it down. “I suppose you are going to find a way to make it work? Surely you can get another interview easily.”

“No. I broke up with her. For good.”

Daria did not look at him. “Why?”

“Because I realized that even if I make her happy, I won’t be happy—not when what I feel for her is nothing compared to what I feel for you.”

The release felt freeing, as if the knot in his chest had been dislodged, and he could take in air again. Now she did look at him, and he saw what she had been hiding: Hope. Fear. A bracing to get hurt all over again, and it ate at him.

“What do you feel for me?”

“I don’t know, Daria. You tell me. Surely those nights I fought off trying to touch you in sleep and yanking you in the shower with me gave you an idea.”

She gasped softly, then swallowed hard. The swirl of emotions disappeared and trepidation curled, and now it was him who braced for the rejection. Daria’s voice was light.

“They were pretty vague.”

“What about the kiss?”

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