Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 545

Chapter 545

ARIA

"There's no sequence," Kael said.

"The window leads naturally to—" Jordan said.

"It doesn't lead to the hallway scene," Kael said.

"The hallway scene is a direct consequence of the window," Jordan said. "The reason the hallway scene happens is because Everest refuses to go through the window in chapter eight, which means he's still going through the door in chapter seventeen, which means the sequence of events in chapter seventeen produces the hallway situation, which—"

"Stop," Kael said.

"I'm demonstrating the narrative logic," Jordan said.

"The narrative logic doesn't require—"

"It absolutely requires—"

"The hallway scene," Ivory said, and her voice had the quality of someone who'd made a decision and was implementing it, "is not primarily about the physical situation. The physical situation is incidental. What the hallway scene is about is what both characters say in the aftermath. Which is also what neither of them says. Which is the whole point."

The room went quiet.

"The unsaid things," Nina said.

"Yes," Ivory said. "The hallway scene produces a moment in which everything that hasn't been said has to be navigated in real time without the cover of normalcy. And the characters do it. Badly and then better. And what they arrive at in chapter eighteen isn't a resolution — it's an acknowledgment." She paused. "The acknowledgment that the thing between them is real and that they're both going to have to stop pretending it isn't."

"Chapter eighteen is my favorite," Jordan said. "The way the author handles the conversation—"

"It's my favorite too," Nina said.

"I thought chapter nine was your favorite," Jordan said.

"Nine and eighteen," Nina said. "I have two."

"You can't have two favorites," Ivory said.

"I can have as many as I want," Nina said.

"That's not how favorites work," Ivory said.

"I'm redefining the category," Nina said.

"The category—"

"Nina has two favorites," Jordan said. "That's the position. We move on."

Aria cleared her throat.

I had been quiet for most of this. Listening, watching the specific dynamic of it, holding the book Nina had given me and occasionally looking at it and occasionally looking at the people arguing about it.

"I have a question," I said.

Everyone looked at me.

"It's about chapter eight," I said. "The window."

"Yes," Ivory said, with the focused interest of a teacher whose student has arrived at the relevant material.

"Everest knows the window is faster," I said. "He knows it's the obvious choice. And he understands, somewhere, what it means about him that he keeps choosing the door." I paused. "But the question I have is — does he know why the window feels different from the door? Does he actually understand what he's avoiding? Or does he just know that he's avoiding something without knowing what it is?"

The room was quiet.

"That's the question," Ivory said. "That's the actual question the book is asking."

"Which is it," I said.

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