Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 310

Chapter 310

JASON

"The months we spent together — before the restoration. The conversations. The time in the greenhouse, the late shifts when you'd come find me after a difficult case. The way you'd tell me things you didn't tell other people." I held her gaze. "Were those real? Or were they just — were they filling space that something else had vacated?"

I watched her face as she considered the question. Watched her give it the honest consideration it deserved rather than giving me an answer that would be merciful to hear.

"Both," she said finally. "And I know that's not as clean as you'd want it to be. But both is the honest answer. They were real — you're someone I genuinely wanted to know, someone I respected and liked and found interesting in ways that had nothing to do with whatever I wasn't accessing about Kael. That part was real." She paused. "But there was also something in me that was looking for — for connection. For something solid to hold onto in a life that had gaps in it I could feel even when I couldn't identify them. And you were there, and you were steady, and it was easy to let more develop than I was ready for."

"You were using me to fill a hole you couldn't see," I said. Not accusatory, just naming it.

"Partly," she said. "I don't think it was only that. I think it was also genuinely you. But partly yes." She met my eyes steadily. "That's the honest version and I think you deserve the honest version."

I did. That was the thing about Ivory that had drawn me in from the beginning — this absolute, almost uncomfortable commitment to saying the accurate thing no matter what even when the comfortable thing was available. I had realized why the entire packhings on her words when she said something, she never backed down from the truth no matter how raw it was, and she didn't try to dissolve herself from anything. If she was wrong, she was wrong and would acknowledge it.

She didn't soften truth to protect you from it. She trusted you to handle truth, which was its own kind of respect.

"Alright," I said.

"Alright?" she repeated, and her expression was cautious, like she had been expecting more than that. Anger that would probably be justified or shouting.

"I appreciate the honesty," I said. "I'm not going to tell you it doesn't land — it does. But I'd rather have the honest version than the comfortable one." I sat back. "So where does that leave us?"

She seemed to relax a bit seeing this as she exhaled. Like she'd been braced for a worse response and was recalibrating.

"I don't know yet," she said. "I'd like — I'd like to not lose you. As a friend, if that's something that makes sense. If that's something you can do without it being —" she paused, finding words, "— without it being asking too much."

I thought about it honestly rather than just immediately reassuring her. She deserved it, an honest answer, rather than me just saying yes in the heat of the moment.

The truth was complicated. The truth was that I'd invested more than I was easily able trying to build a relationship with her,And I did not know how to redirect it into the friendship that she was asking for.

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