“You are not an idiot!”
“I am, though. Because I had the thing I wanted most in the world, and I let it slip through my fingers.” He gives a heartbreaking laugh that catches in his throat, one hand reaching up to thread through that thick head of blond hair — his trademark nervous habit. “I mean, how fucking stupid is that? Waiting for the right time? Assuming the universe would align just because I wanted it to?”
“Owen…”
“Don’t. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I have no one to blame except myself.” His head shakes. “For the rest of my life, I will regret waiting to make you mine. I just needed you to know how I feel. Just once. Because if I could go back… if I could do things differently… God, Ems, I would break every fucking clock in the world if it meant fixing our shitty timing.”
I’m doing my best to keep my emotions tightly in check, to keep my expression empty, but it’s a struggle. I don’t know what to say to comfort him. If this were any other moment, I’d reach out and pull his tall frame into an embrace. Scruff his hair and say,Hey now, don’t beat yourself up, we’ll fix this together.But this is no normal moment. The thing that’s hurting him here is…
Me.
We fall into a stilted silence that lingers a little too long, neither of us sure how to navigate back to safer waters. It’s strange — feeling uncomfortable in Owen’s presence. For as long as I can remember, he has been my default. My comfort zone. My safe place to land. With him, I’ve always let my walls fall away and been my most authentic self.
But this new tension in the air between us tells me things are different now. That, through no fault of our own, we have found ourselves on opposite sides of an emotional blockade, unable to break through to each other without damaging ourselves beyond repair. As I look up into brown eyes as familiar as my own in the mirror, I wonder if I could ever scale this new wall between us.
Or if I’d even want to.
That girl who crawled into his bedroom window during thunderstorms, who climbed the ladder of his treehouse, who needed him to soothe away every bout of social anxiety and public humiliation at the hands of the popular kids in secondary school…
She no longer exists. Not anywhere except in memory.
And that woman I likely would’ve become… Not Emilia Lancaster or Emilia Lennox but EmiliaHarding, a wife who’d walk down the aisle in a ball of white, a mother who’d raise three towheaded boys in the exact image of their father, a psychologist who’d laugh lightly over the blind luck of meeting her soulmate in the backyard treehouse…
She’s slipped out of reach, as well.
I cannot reclaim her. I cannot go backwards to a fate that no longer fits, a favorite jacket outgrown after an unexpected growth spurt. And I cannot tailor my new self into a shape that bears any resemblance to the life I might’ve fashioned with Owen.
He is at once the water-colored echo of my past and the gossamer dream of a future that might’ve been. I can see no tangible place for us in the harsh light of this new reality. No concrete path for us to walk forward, side by side, hand in hand. And I know, as he holds my stare in the yawning silence, those brown eyes full of resigned melancholy…
Neither can he.
“Owen,” I whisper, shuffling a cautious step forward, careful not to touch him. “I don’t know what to say to make this better for you. I don’t know how to fix this. I’m just… I’m sorry. You’re hurting, and I know I’m the reason for it. I know nothing I do will make this better right now. But I still hate seeing you upset.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.” He’s staring at the ground, not meeting my gaze despite my efforts to catch his eye. “I know none of this is your fault. It was out of your control from the very beginning. And, yeah, maybe if you’d never become the heir, if your father hadn’t died and a kingdom hadn’t fallen into your lap… if we’d just been two childhood friends with simple lives and straightforward jobs… things would’ve been different.” His mouth purses painfully. “But they aren’t. You’re the Queen. And I’m nobody… I’mnothing.”
“You aren’t nothing. You’re my best friend. You will never not be a part of my life. No matter what happens.”
“But things are different now. You’re different now.” His eyes finally flicker up to mine and for the first time, I recognize the gloss of tears on their surfaces. I’ve known Owen my entire life and I can count the number of times I’ve seen him cry on one hand.
“I…” His voice is a croak. “I’ve lost you.”
My heart cracks wide open when he says that. It takes a moment to gather my words. “Just because I’m the queen doesn’t mean you’ve lost me.”
“It’s not just about your title. It’s about…”
My brows lift, waiting.
“Him.”
I flinch back. “What?Who?”
“You know who I mean, Emilia.”
“I don’t.”
“Thorne! Carter Fucking Thorne. It’s obvious, the way you feel about him. I knew it the first time I ever saw you together. Though what you see in that prick, I have no fucking idea.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, heart thumping so hard I can barely hear Owen’s scoff over the pulse roaring between my ears. “There’s nothing between me and… and…him. It’s ridiculous to even suggest something like that.”