Evelyn POV
The ride back felt unusually quiet.
Liora sat beside me quietly.
Too quietly.
And that alone told me she was observing me carefully.
I kept my eyes fixed outside the window while the reflection staring back at me looked calmer than I actually felt.
But only on the surface.
Because Adrian's final words still lingered unpleasantly inside my chest.
Miranda and I were getting married soon.
The sentence had sounded simple.
Direct.
Polite even.
Yet somehow, hearing it from him personally had affected me far more than I wanted to admit.
I slowly closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat.
Maybe because part of me already knew.
The engagement between the Cross and Hart families had existed for years. Everybody around us treated it like something inevitable. Something already decided long before emotions became involved.
Still…
knowing something intellectually and hearing it directly from the person involved were two completely different things.
