Chapter 20 Alex
ALEX
I woke up in Paris, sprawled on the uncomfortable hotel settee, already braced for another day of avoidance once I opened my eyes.
Avoidance had become a skill—one of my best, honestly. I’d been perfecting it ever since we arrived in Paris: staying holed up in the hotel room to heal, answering work calls no one actually needed me for, letting Jonathan and Devin be the ones orbiting Frankie while I kept a safe, cold distance.
She didn’t seem to notice how deliberately I’d been pulling away, or if she did, she didn’t say a word about it.
But I could tell that she was…checking on me. Every night. Every morning. Every time she walked past me, caught a glimpse before I made some excuse to be gone all day on “business” I never explained, she’d give that soft, earnest look like she was trying to make sure I still existed.
It shook something loose in my chest in ways I didn’t want to think about. Growing up, that kind of warmth didn’t exist. And when it did, it came with a price I was never willing to pay.
So when the knock sounded at my door just after breakfast, I had a whole speech ready about how I was busy, or tired, or both.
But then it was Frankie.
And Frankie smiled at me like I was something fragile.
“Alex?” she asked quietly. “We’re getting ready to go to Shakespeare Devin snapped pictures of her when she wasn’t looking.
I stayed close but not too close, hands in pockets, watching the way she touched every book with that same reverent gentleness she gave people. It made me restless. On edge. Like the space around me was too small.
She’d look over her shoulder sometimes just to make sure I was still there, and every time she did, something soft and dangerous unfurled in my chest.
“Alex, look,” she whispered at one point, tugging me toward a display of old poetry editions. “They’re all annotated. Someone left whole stories in the margins.”
She handed me one, eyes bright. So trusting.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. It’s…nice.”
She beamed.
I was in trouble.
We wound up spending almost two hours there, Frankie collecting a tiny stack of books she absolutely did not need but loved anyway. I watched her more than I should have.
The way her eyebrows knit when she focused. The way she hummed when she found something she wanted. The small smile she’d aim at the guys—the kind that made them both turn stupid-soft.
Then she came to me with two books pressed to her chest.
“Last decision,” she said. “Which one should I get?”
Her hair fell into her face, and when she brushed it back, her fingers were ink-smudged. My chest tightened. She was so damn cute it felt like a threat.
And threats? I knew how to handle those.
I looked away, jaw tightening, trying to build the distance back up before I drowned in her earnestness.
That’s when it all broke.
She was talking about how magical the place felt, how the whole trip felt like some fairy tale, how she couldn’t believe everything that was happening—
And something ugly in me snapped.
“Frankie,” I said, too sharp. “Stop with the fairy-tale bullshit.”
She blinked. “What?”
“This isn’t magic,” I said, voice low and cutting. “This trip. Us. We’re not your goddamn princes.”
A flicker of hurt across her face. “I know that.”
“But you don’t know that you’re not some heroine in a story, either,” I said, my mouth a runaway train, my brain buzzing. “You’re just some regular girl wrapped up in our bullshit because of an auction. You’re…you’re someone we bought, Frankie. That’s the reality.”
The words hit the air like a gunshot.
I regretted them the instant they left my mouth.
Her face went pale first. Then pink around the eyes. She looked down at the books like they were suddenly too heavy to hold.
“Oh,” she whispered.
My stomach dropped.
“I didn’t mean,” I started, just as automatic as all the vitriol had been, but she shook her head quickly, swallowing whatever expression tried to rise.
“I’m just going to—I need a restroom.”
She handed Jonathan the books with trembling fingers and slipped away before any of us could stop her.
I felt the bottom fall out of me.
Devin turned on me immediately, fury sparking. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Jonathan’s glare could’ve cut glass. “That wasn’t necessary.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What excuse was there?
I’d been cruel.
Heartless on purpose, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
None of my coldness had ever felt deliberate before.
It felt like a birthright.
But this…I’d lost control instead of keeping an icy fist over it.
“I just,” I managed. “I didn’t want her thinking this was something it can’t be.”
“She wasn’t thinking anything except that she was happy,” Jonathan snapped. “And you destroyed it.”
Devin shoved my shoulder, hard enough to jolt me. “You made her cry, man.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
My chest constricted. I stared at the aisle Frankie had disappeared down, feeling something cold settle over me. Not the comfortable cold I built around myself. Something sharp. Punishing.
“I’ll fix it,” I said quietly.
Devin scoffed. “You better, or we will.”
They turned away from me, both of them furious, both of them worried for her in a way I should’ve been from the start.
I stood there alone in the middle of a shy, romantic librarian’s dream bookstore feeling like the biggest bastard alive.
And for once, the idea of that—being an unfeeling, ruthless asshole like the family I’d been born into hoped I would be—bothered me on a deeper level than I could process.