Page 42 of Taming Dahlia

I stretched out my arms, feeling awfully sore, but so very satisfied.

Maybe it had been a bad idea, but it was so,soworth it.

I glanced at Jack for a moment, at his face that was bathed in the golden glow of the morning light. Although I didn’t really want to move quite yet, I knew that it would be for the best to leave before he woke up. As stealthily as I could, I carefully got up and started to look around for my underwear.

“We both know that this changes nothing. I mean…” I whispered quietly to Jack, making sure not to wake him up. “It can’t. I’m still stuck here and you’re still the one keeping me here, so…”

And wasn’t that the depressing truth?

Last night had helped greatly with breaking the monotony, to be sure, but I couldn’t even truly enjoy it as the reality of my situation weighed heavily on my mind now.

Could a person even be alive if everyone else thought they were dead?

It was the same conundrum as the tree falling in a silent forest, just leveled up to the extreme.

Or maybe it was more like Schrodinger’s cat — I was both alive and dead at the same time.

I pulled my pajama shorts up my legs, deciding that maybe it was too early in the day to be philosophizing about dead cats.

I glanced down at Jack one last time to make sure that I hadn’t woken him up, but after seeing him looking so soft and rumpled, however, I couldn’t help but bend down to give him a sweet kiss on the cheek before I left.

It was for the best if this was just a one-time thing, anyway.

* * *

Ace was pacing from one end of the living room to the other, with no apparent purpose. Someone might think that there was something bothering him, but I had learned his little tells by now, so I could tell that he was just feeling restless.

He came to stand by my armchair, tilting his head to the side as he tried to make out the title of my book from the low angle I was holding it.

“De… ca…”he tried to spell it out, squinting his eyes. “Decameron.” He straightened up again and nodded. “Raunchy.”

“Don’t call a classic like Decameron raunchy,” I scolded him as I moved onto a different page.

“A guy literally pretends to be mute and deaf so that he can become a gardener for a convent, and later, all the nuns have their way with him. What are you talking about?”

“You’ve read it?” I looked up at him.

His mouth pulled into a cocky smirk. “No need to sound so surprised. I do have layers, you know.”

His shirt was hanging loosely around his collarbone, revealing a glimpse of black ink, the color stark against his skin. He must have noticed me looking because his smirk widened.

I huffed and turned back to my book. “I meant no offense. It’s just that I’ve never seen you read a book before.”

“It’s a good thing that there exists an object that lets you read whatever you want, whenever you want. It’s called…”

He let the tension build for a few moments.

…aphone.”

The last word was said with a false note of awe in his voice. “Embrace the new age of technology, Blondie.”

“Ok. But that doesn’t really count, does it?” I said, just to annoy him.

Just as expected, he narrowed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest. “What the fuck do you mean that doesn’t really count?”

I just shrugged my shoulders in response. Just as Ace opened his mouth to no doubt continue the argument, King walked out of the kitchen.

“What are you two bickering about now?”

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