Page 57 of Soulless Rivalry

“What happened, Mia?”

She shook her head, doubling over and crying hard. I hugged her and brought her in, not wanting my cousin to become the source of gossip from the girls in our dorm.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid, Lyssa. You warned me but I did it anyway.”

A knot caught in my throat as I helped her sit down on my bed, because I immediately knew what she was referring to.

“I sent him this stupid message, confessing how attracted I was to him, how gone I was for him, all that to be left on read!” She sniffed. “And then last night I—I looked him up and…”

Her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs. Unrequited love was a bitch and my cousin was learning it the hard way.

I couldn’t help but feel responsible for her state, I should have been more honest with her. I should have told her that whatever connection she had imagined between the two of them was just that: imagination. But I didn’t. Instead, I said nothing and let her hurt her feelings stupidly. I honestly didn’t catch onhow serious she was about him until this year, and by then she was already a goner.

“Mia, babes.” I wiped the tears under her puffy eyes. “Don’t you think that, maybe, you didn’treallylove him? Maybe you liked the idea of him more than anything else.”

She closed her eyes and shrugged, tears still sliding down her face silently. “He’s just so… fascinating. Like nothing can touch him. I feel like I could be safe with him, he—he would keep me safe,” she hiccuped the last part, breaking my heart a little bit.

The thing when you grew up with a violent father was that the one place where you should have felt safest, your home, became an arena. Every day you had to do everything in your power not to trigger a fight. Walking on eggshells was not the best way to be living life.

It might sound crazy, but sometimes I thought that, compared to her, I’d had it easy. My exile in the confines of the family estate meant I didn’t bump into my grandfather, cousins, or uncles very often. That much couldn’t be said about Mia.

So it made sense, her obsession with Dominik Korolov. He seemed so responsible, strong, and even maybe respectful in his way.

“I looked him up last night because he’d been working on this huge deal for his family’s firm for months and I wanted to know where that was at. I thought maybe that was the reason why he was not answering me. Maybe he was too busy with it. But the first article I saw was about his—his…” she sobbed. “His engagement.”

Mia went back to crying, hiding her face in the crook of my neck as she shook.

I closed my eyes, imagining how this could have felt like the last nail in the coffin for her.

“Maybe you’re right and I shouldn’t have fallen in love with him. Maybe I fell in love with an idea and not his realpersonality, but the fact is that Ididfall for him,” she chuckled, self-deprecatingly. “That’s such a stupid thing to do. Maybe Dad is right and I am dumb.”

She let her head fall against my shoulder tiredly.

“Don’t say that. Your father is an asshole and he isnotright. Never. You’re beautiful, smart, and literally the funniest person I know. You bring joy wherever you go. So what if one guy didn’t see it? There are plenty of other fish in the sea. You’ll find your soulmate, Mia. I know you will.”

She stared at me for a few seconds before a small smile made it through her tears. Sniffling, she grabbed my hand and squeezed.

“Thank you. It feels weird for you to say that, I thought you didn’t believe in love.”

Her words gave me pause. I did believe in love, had witnessed it first hand actually. But I also did believe that love destroyed you. Love made you do things you would have never done under normal circumstances.

Love builds you up… but as soon as it disappears you come crumbling down, unable to get back up.

KONSTANTIN

She was avoiding me.

After waking up alone this morning, that was abundantly clear.

I knew I had no right to hate it or be annoyed with her, but I did. I thought last night meant something to her, at least as much as it meant to me.

And fuck, it meant a lot to me.

I had never felt the way I did last night. Had never wanted something as bad as I wanted to touch her, taste her.

Just like the first time we kissed, I waited for disgust to hit me, but nothing came. It was crazy how anyone grazing me in the hallways made me want to retch, but the thought of touching tongues, licking and sucking every inch of Elyssa’s body only made me fucking horny.

This morning was the first time since I was fifteen and started discovering how my body worked that I had to rub one out.

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