Exiles of Tabat by Cat Rambo

Author:Cat Rambo [Rambo, Cat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

Chapter 22

The Tiny Pearl (Bella)

When I first went to the Southern Isles, I was in my early twenties, full of arrogance and desire. I’d practically set off sparks when I crossed a room, that was what I was like.

I never allowed myself to be bedded but did the pursuing myself. The more timorous, the rarer, the more coaxable the better. Adelina played down the list of broken hearts in her accounting of that time, but, thinking back, I can’t help but wonder if it had been then, the time I told her all those tales so they might be put down into yet another book, that her own heart cooled towards me and any trace of infatuation faded.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t broken off the sexual side of things by then already. But the person-who-wants-to-fuck-you-yet-is-aware-that-the-closest-they-will-ever-come-again-is-friendship was by now a familiar one to me and I could tell that there was a point where friendship had attracted Adelina more than my body.

The realization had even piqued my interest in a contradictory way, making Adelina seem worth revisiting for the sake of the new conquest. I refrained, though. That surely showed that I’d grown somewhat over the years. Young Bella wouldn’t have thought twice about breaking Adelina’s heart multiple times and erasing the friendship entirely. It wasn’t that she didn’t value the friendship highly. Just that my younger self had been so brash and unaware of consequences.

When did that change?

As recently as the Duke’s cells?

My mind shies away from those dark memories like a panicked horse. I pull it in another direction, wrestling it into control even as my fingers tighten on the ship’s wooden railing to the point of pain.

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