colliding and retreating, but always in each other’s orbit, always connected by the energy that hovered between us.
Would it always be that way?
What were we supposed to do with that?
Even if they earned my trust again, even if they proved themselves worthy of it, what then?
I had kissed them all in the ocean that night. The night I had felt wild and free, the night I’d done whatever I wanted because it was my birthday and fuck the consequences. But I couldn’t live like that all the time, could I? I couldn’t have all of them.
Somewhere along the line, in my head and in my heart, the Princes had become a package deal. They functioned best as a unit, and when I’d thought I was a part of that unit, it had felt… good. I had felt cared for and protected for the first time in my life.
It doesn’t matter, Talia.
You don’t have to worry about which one you’d choose, because you won’t get to choose any of them.
The little voice in the back of my mind brought me back down to reality, and I glanced over at Leah, wondering if she’d noticed me come crashing back to earth. But she was stretched out on her chair with her face tilted up to catch the sun and a contented smile stretching her face. The freckles across the bridge of her nose already looked darker from just the few hours we’d been out here.
The truth was, it didn’t matter whether the Princes had crushes on me or not. Whether they cared about me or not. The things I had written in the little notebook in my backpack would guarantee their hatred one day. Between the notes, the photographic documentation of hard proof, and the videos I’d managed to capture, I probably already had enough to bring all four of them down. Or at least to guarantee public humiliation, which in a town like this, meant more than it would’ve in Sand Valley.
Jacqueline had lost her shit after the Princes showed their video of me because reputations were like currency here—and that video had rendered her currency useless.
I couldn’t actually take the Princes’ wealth and privilege away. But if I damaged their reputations, it would have something like the same effect.
So why am I still sitting on it?
For a long time, I’d waited because I needed more. More dirt, more damaging information. But I had enough now.
Why wasn’t I doing anything with it?
The little black notebook, which had once felt like a shield or a weapon, my most valuable possession, was starting to feel like a lead weight in my backpack. A constant reminder of what I’d come here to do, of the path I’d set for myself.
They deserve it, Talia, the voice whispered in the back of my head, and I closed my eyes, letting the salty air caress my face.
So much had changed since I’d come back. My feelings about the Princes had shifted again, and I wasn’t sure of my footing in this strange new territory.
But for all the things that had changed, the one thing that had remained constant was my determination.
It’d gotten me this far.
It was too late to change course now.
On Saturday, I snuck into the gym and spent several hours in the studio. Because Finn didn’t know I was there, it was just me in the small room as I ran through my routine several times, making tweaks and adjustments, smoothing out rough bits, and changing the ending.
He had asked me how I choreographed a dance piece, and I’d given him the best answer I could, but it was hard to put the process into words. It was a melding of intuition and technique, of art and science. And his observation had been uncannily accurate. A good dance piece was like a story—a conversation between the audience and the dancer.
What I hadn’t realized until the day he said that was what story my piece told.
It was about me and the Princes.
About hate, hope, betrayal, and heartache.
I hadn’t set out to tell the story, had simply built the choreography out of the raw materials of myself and my emotional state. My view of the world.
But what I hadn’t recognized was that the Princes had influenced all those things. That the story living under my skin, waiting to be told through the graceful lines of my body, the shapes and rhythms I created on stage, was theirs.
Mine.
Ours.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t get the damn ending right.
When