Page 182 of Revenge Puck

“Well, to answer your question, even though you already know the answer because I have told you already—I think about him constantly. I replay our conversations. I think about him all day.”

“That’s very annoying of you,” she says lightly. “Don’t go replacing me with a slab of man meat.”

We giggle, and I take a small bite of spring roll.

“You are irreplaceable.”

“Correct.” Blaire presses a hand to her chest dramatically. “Thank you for acknowledging the obvious and, for the record, you’re not obsessing over his abs?”

“I mean, yes? But no.” I smile. “Though those are a perk.”

“Obviously.”

I set the spring roll down and wipe my hands.

“I hate that this is the situation,” I admit. “Because if it weren’t for the Declan part of it all, I’d be on cloud nine right now.”

“Or, you would have never had the chance to hook up with him.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“If your brother hadn’t stuck his dick inside Aaron’s girlfriend, he would probably still be dating her, and you would be on another bad first date with some dating app loser.”

I wince. “When you say it like that, it sounds so crude.”

“Itiscrude.” Blaire gestures wildly with her chopstick. “It’s also the butterfly effect—one terrible decision leads to you getting spectacularly laid.”

I choke on a laugh. “Do not glamorize this.”

She shrugs. “I’m not.”

Liar.

“So,” Blaire says, nudging my knee beneath the coffee table. “You’re thinking about him constantly, you don’t want to explode his career, you’re terrified of looking stupid, you’re mad. And you don’t think it was fake.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Great.” She claps once. “Call him.”

My mouth gapes. “W-what would I say?”

“Nothing! That’s the beauty of it—you did nothing wrong. You get to bask in silence and be gorgeous while he grovels at your feet and begs your forgiveness.”

Is it that easy?

Blaire says words like “grovel”and “beg”as if this were a fantasy daydream where the man shows up with flowers and a heartfelt apology and everything magically resets.

Real life isn’t like that.

Real life is messy and humiliating and full of things you cannot unhear once they’ve been said.

“I don’t know,” I murmur, tracing the rim of a coaster with my fingertip. “What if he apologizes and it doesn’t fix anything?”

Blaire blinks. “Well, yeah. That’s possible.”

I frown because she’s right; an apology doesn’t rewind time. It doesn’t give me back the version of him that existed before I found out he was dating me to get back at Declan.

I need to think.