Page 162 of Playing Dirty

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But now I knew she wasn’t disconnected.

She was just pausing.

Like I was.

I leaned back slightly.

But didn’t lie down.

Neither did she.

And that became the new pattern.

Not distance.

Not silence.

Just shared awareness that neither of us broke first.

And I didn’t know when that started.

Only that it had.

Twenty Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

MASON

I didn’t mean to get up.

That was the honest version of it.

One second I was sitting there, listening to the quiet, and the next I was standing without really deciding to.

The room didn’t change.

But I did.

Rowan noticed immediately.

Of course she did.

Her head lifted slightly from where she was sitting on her bed.

Not alarmed.

Just aware.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

I paused near the desk.

“I’m not.”

That earned a look.

Not confusion.

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