remembering what I’d done the last time I’d been in here.
Between the echoes of that embarrassment and the battering my ego had taken on the yacht yesterday, Noah’s bright gaze seemed to flay me to the bone.
Even if things had been different between us, I didn’t really deserve him, did I? He could view my past through rose-tinted glasses all he wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that the only things I’d done with my life that’d been good for anyone other than me had still been out of selfishness or built on lies. Noah was so good down to his core. It came to him as naturally as he breathed.
I’d wanted to be the girl he saw, a girl who matched him perfectly, but deep down I knew that wasn’t true. I was more like Emeric, wounded and wary and grabbing my opportunities as I saw them.
“It’s no big deal,” I said, dodging those thoughts. “Maybe I’ll find out more. We don’t have enough information to prove any of the reaper families were out to harm the pentacle yet.”
“Don’t worry about that. Stopping them was always the main goal.”
“Right.” I exhaled in a rush and tipped my head toward the door. “Well, that’s everything. I should probably get back to my room to keep up appearances and all.”
“Cressida…” Noah took a small step toward me, his hand twitching at his side as if he’d caught it before he could reach for me. His eyes held mine, seeing far too much and not enough at the same time. “We’re okay. Just so you know. However you want us to be—as just colleagues, as friends.”
I wished I could believe that was really true. I forced myself to smile and told one more lie. “Of course. I’m still a little wiped from the party—that’s all.”
He accepted my excuse graciously, even though I suspected he could tell there was more than that going on. I hadn’t told him exactly what I’d had to do to gain the Saber’s trust, only that I’d talked about regretting going over to the new barons’ side.
How could he understand how it’d felt anyway? To him those lies would be the most blatant ones I’d ever told. It wouldn’t make sense to him that they’d gnawed holes in my heart. I suspected if you could look at a person’s soul, at this point mine would be absolutely moth-eaten.
I was actually tired, but not in any way that resting would help. Back in my own room, I wandered around the bed, from the window to the bathroom door and back again, my hands fidgeting as if waiting to be put to use.
I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
When a knock sounded on the door, I halted in my tracks. My first thought was that Noah hadn’t bought my reassurances at all and was risking our covers by coming to me—but I dismissed that idea a moment later. He might have been willing to compromise his own safety out of concern for me but not mine, and he’d have been putting me in even more danger this way.
Who else knew which room I was in?
My parents had proven that they did.
Just as I froze up even more, my pulse hiccupping, the voice of the one other person I’d actually told my room number to carried from the other side of the door. “Are you in there, Cressida? It’s just me.”
Emeric. Of course. I didn’t know what he was doing here, but I’d take him over what the other Warburys might have wanted to throw at me a thousand times over.
“Yes, just a second.” I hurried over to let him in.
It was only after Emeric had ambled into the room that I fully processed that I was now alone in a space that’s centerpiece was a bed with a guy I’d been making out with nearly naked less than two days ago. His ruddy brown hair was in its usual tousled state, his gray-green eyes as brooding as ever, but I recalled far too well how that hair had darkened with the ocean water, how those eyes had lit up with passion. Heat crept up through my chest.
“Is everything all right?” I asked. He’d never dropped in on me like this before. Maybe he hadn’t thought it was safe to reach out by phone for some reason.
“Yes, of course, I just was running an errand nearby and figured this was easier