Page 79 of Dissent

He lifted himself in the bed, leaning forward as he stared at me. “Those scars…”

Understanding snapped through me and I whirled around, reaching behind me to close the flaps of my gown. “They’re nothing.” He didn’t need to know about that. It wasn’t his business. I knew what it looked like back there—a landscape of shimmery, raised scar tissue.

Wes’s stoic expression slipped into place. “I assumed the First Daughter of Telvia would have been spared corporal punishment.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t count. I’m only half noble—amutt, remember? The other half is Dissenter material.”

He was silent for a moment, his face calculating. “Did my brother know?”

My breath caught as the thought of Chase came to mind. I remembered lying on the turf in the park, tears filling my eyes as Chase coaxed me to talk about it. To share what Belinda would do to me, but I was always too scared to tell him. “A little, but not much. I didn’t want him to…to think less of me.” I pressed my lips together. It was hard admitting this, admitting what I really felt. “I…was afraid if he knew I was only half noble that he wouldn’t want me anymore. That he would change his mind about me, and I…I wanted so badly for someone to want me.” I closed my eyes, willing myself to be real with him, pushing against the fear screaming within. “I was afraid that if he knew how my parents treated me, that he would treat me that way, too.” There it was. I admitted it.

Chase had only ever been good to me and had only ever told me I deserved better. But I knew he didn’t know the entire story. That I was a bastard child, only half noble and half subclass. That I was a disappointment. That, despite being the First Daughter of Telvia, I had no rights to any of my family’s wealth because of who I truly was. And I was scared he’d back out…or worse, that I would be matched to him and discover that the hands that caressed my face would draw blood from me as well. After all, if my own parents treated me that way, why wouldn’t he when he discovered what I really was.

“I’m sorry.”

Wes’s voice caught me by surprise, bringing me back into the present. And when his words finally registered in my mind, my jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

He looked away from me briefly before returning his gaze with a deep breath. “I said I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been such an ass.”

“Oh,” my eyes widened, and then I cleared my throat, trying to brush off my surprise. “It’s fine.” My fingers found their way to my pendant, running it back and forth slowly on the chain.

He shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He looked at me again, and this time, his eyes were softer, warmer. The golden hues circling the black of his pupils glowed like liquid gold. And just like that day in the gym, the day when I discovered his eyes were genuinely different from his brother’s, I found myself captivated. “You’re fiddling again.”

My fingers halted, still holding my little heart. “I beg your pardon?”

Eyes zeroing in on me, he cocked a brow with the tip of his head. “You’re fiddling,” he repeated. “You’re always playing with it.”

I blinked. He noticed? How often was I playing with it? “It’s just something I do sometimes when I’m…”

“Nervous,” he offered, though the way he said it wasn’t a question.

My lips parted as I angled my body away from him, feeling too exposed for comfort. “I was going to say when I’m thinking.”

A knowing smirk on his face caused faint echoes of my past to flutter. “Why did you want to come see me?”

“Oh…well, I wanted to make sure you were okay. And, and I wanted to say that I’m sorry about everything that happened that night.”

His brows knitted together in confusion. “Why? You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“I do. I’m not stupid, and I know it’s my fault that you got shot and that Chelsea is gone. And I’m just…just sorry.”

He studied me for a moment, but I couldn’t read him at all. He looked away then. “You don’t have to be sorry. I didn’t want you there, but how all that shit went down wasn’t your fault.”

I was stunned. This was not how I expected this conversation to go. Just a few days ago, while he was bleeding out everywhere, it seemed he had stated the exact opposite. I opened my mouth to say as much, but faltered. Noticing my inner turmoil, Wes smiled.

Nothing big, just a pull at the corner of his lips, drawing them up into a crooked grin. And my god, when he did that, I felt my knees weaken. Because it turned out, when Wes didn’t look like he was about to destroy the planet with amazing badassery, he looked like an angel sent down from the heavens—absolutely breathtaking. Or, as Edith would say,sexy as hell.

“You can close your mouth any time now.”

My cheeks burned, and now I was officially embarrassed and ready to crawl under a table and die. My mouth snapped shut, leaving me to scramble for an excuse about why I looked like an idiot. “I’m sorry, it’s just I’m confused. Last time I saw you, you said—”

“I know what I said,” the smirk disappeared, and a pained expression replaced it. “You shouldn’t have been there. It was dangerous, and you’re not sufficiently trained to be on a mission like that.”

I nodded, agreeing with all that, but I thought… “You said that it was my fault Chelsea was caught.”

His face did the most unusual thing. Eyes glowing a brilliant amber, he frowned in a way that made it look like…like maybe he felt bad? “Is that what you think I meant?”

Was this a trap? A joke? I rubbed my lips together, unsure. This felt like completely new territory with Wes, and I didn’t trust myself to say more than one word. “Yes.”

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