Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 312

Chapter 312

JASON

I wasn't devastated. That was the thing I was testing, sitting with the discomfort to see what was actually underneath it. I was processing this in the way that I processed things that were hurting me, but pointing out the hurt was diabolical because I knew what I was getting into.

I'd been paying attention. I'd known, some careful observational part of me, that there was something complicated in the architecture of Ivory's life that I didn't have full access to. Had chosen to proceed anyway because she was worth knowing and the time with her had been real regardless of context.

"The thing about the other books," I said carefully.

Ivory looked at me, and there was a wariness in her expression that was genuinely endearing. "Yes?"

"I noticed two of the titles," I said.

A pause. "You noticed two of the titles."

"I did."

Another pause, longer. The wariness had become something between mortification and the resigned acceptance of someone who knew they'd been caught and was working out how to proceed with dignity intact.

"I will neither confirm nor deny the content of any reading material that may or may not be in my possession," she said, with the precision of someone constructing a legal statement.

"That's completely fair," I said. "I will neither confirm nor deny having seen anything."

The corner of her mouth moved. "You're a good man, Jason."

"I've been told," I said. "By you, actually. Earlier today."

"It bears repeating," she said, and she looked at me with something that was genuine and direct and not performing anything. "I mean it. You've been — the months we've spent talking, you've been genuinely good for me. Not just as a placeholder for something I couldn't access. As yourself. That's real and I don't want you to discount it."

"I don't discount it," I said. "I just — need some time. And some clarity. And maybe some distance before the friendship version of this becomes natural instead of something I'm actively building toward."

"That's fair," she said. "That's completely fair."

We sat in quiet again, and it was a different quiet than the one before Margo had arrived. Less weighted, somehow. Something had been named and it had made the unnamed things easier to carry, which was generally how it worked when you had conversations like this with people who were capable of having them honestly.

She looked at me then, and what was in her face was the combination that I'd come to associate specifically with her — the exhaustion and the humor and the genuine warmth and the careful, honest intelligence all present simultaneously, arranged in the particular way that was just Ivory, that wasn't quite like anyone else I'd known.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "And for the food. And for —" she paused, "— for not making this harder than it needed to be."

"Thank you for being honest," I said. "I mean that. The honest version was better."

I stood, because she was tired and because we'd done what we needed to do and because sitting longer would start to be the kind of lingering that made things complicated again.

"I'll check in," I said. "Not every day. But — I'll check in."

"I'd like that," she said, and she meant it in the particular way Ivory meant things she said — completely, without performance.

I pulled the curtain back and stepped out into the healing bay's ambient sounds, letting the curtain fall closed behind me.

I straightened, and started walking, and tried not to think too hard about a man who'd read his way through a seven-book series during the months of his own curse because someone he loved had mentioned them in passing and they'd seemed worth knowing.