Chapter 44: GOOD GIRL

Georgia

He crossed the entire ballroom just to ask me one question.

The pin sits cold against my collarbone, cold enough that my fingers itch to press against it, when movement across the room catches my eye. Puck walks toward us, cutting straight through the crowd with something almost hypnotic in the way he moves - people step aside without seeming to register they’re doing it, like the room itself decided to make space for whatever he’s about to do. The pin’s chill sharpens with every step he takes, spreading from my collarbone down toward my ribs until it feels less like metal and more like frost creeping under my skin. My breath catches in my throat without permission, and I hate that it does, hate that some traitorous part of me still responds to him like this after everything.

Darcy’s hand tightens at my waist, barely noticeable, and his whole body goes still beside me, the same stillness I remember from that first day he transferred in, watching Puck approach with something coiled and careful behind his easy expression. It’s a small thing, that stillness, but I’ve learned to read the small things about Darcy tonight, and this one tells me more than anything he’s said out loud. I wonder how long he’s been rehearsing this particular kind of calm, how many rooms he’s stood in wearing it like armor.

Puck stops a few feet away, his gaze fixed entirely on me, like Darcy isn’t even standing there. Up close, he looks tired in a way I haven’t let myself notice until now. Shadows pool beneath his eyes. His jaw stays locked tight, bracing for something. A rawness clings to him tonight, stripped of the careful distance he’s kept between us for weeks, and it frightens me more than his silence ever did.

"Dance with me," he says, voice raw and stripped of its usual guard.

Not a question dressed as a formality. A real question, direct in a way I haven’t heard from him in weeks.

I stare at him, caught off guard by the simplicity of it after everything, the silence, the warning about Darcy, the strange half-human words he spoke and then ran from before either of us could address them. My chest aches with how badly I want to say yes, and that ache alone makes me suspicious of it. Wanting something this much has never once meant it was safe, not in this place, not with him.

*Why does it matter to you,* I think, the memory surfacing sharp and unwelcome. The fight in the hallway, his silence in response, the way he let the question hang there like it cost him nothing to leave it unanswered. Weeks of being managed and warned and shut out, never given one solid thing to hold onto. It would be so easy to forgive all of it if he’d just give me one true answer. He never does.

"No," I say, the word steadier than I feel.

For a fraction of a second, something crosses Puck’s face that he doesn’t catch in time, a flicker of open, unguarded hurt cracking straight through the composure he’s worn all night. It vanishes almost as fast as it appears, smoothed back into something flatter, more controlled. But I saw it. The sight lodges under my ribs like a splinter I can’t work free, and some small, vicious part of me almost takes it back just to make that look disappear for good.

"Okay," he says, flat and hollow, nothing okay in the way he says it at all.

He doesn’t push. He doesn’t argue or ask again or try to explain himself the way I half expect after everything between us. He nods once, small and contained, and turns to walk away, shoulders set in that same rigid line I’ve seen from him too many times now. I want to call after him. I don’t. I stand there instead, letting the distance between us grow with every step, telling myself it’s what I chose, what he deserves after weeks of silence.

I watch him go, something twisting uncomfortably in my chest. He crossed the entire room for this, for one question, one small chance, and I turned him away standing right next to the person he warned me about in the first place. The wrongness of it settles over me slowly, heavier with every step he takes, until it feels less like a decision and more like a wound I gave myself on purpose.

Beside me, Darcy watches Puck’s retreating back, something satisfied settling into the easy lines of his face, subtle but unmistakable if I look closely enough. I am looking closely. Some old habit refuses to let go of small details, even exhausted, even unsettled, even cold from whatever the pin at my collarbone keeps doing to my skin. That satisfaction sits wrong on him, too polished, too practiced, like a mask that slipped for half a second before settling back into place.

"Good girl," Darcy murmurs, the words low and almost fond, like praise given to something obedient.

The words are so quiet I can’t tell if I actually heard them or if some tired, overwrought part of my brain invented them out of nothing. A chill runs through me that has nothing to do with the pin. I turn to look at him, and his expression has already smoothed back into its usual easy warmth, nothing in his face suggesting he said anything at all. My pulse stutters, caught between my own ears and the practiced calm staring back at me.

"What did you say?" I ask, sharp with suspicion.

"Nothing," he says, light and unbothered, reaching for my hand to pull me back toward the dance floor like the entire interaction with Puck never happened. "Just glad you’re still here with me."

*I imagined it,* I tell myself, firm and deliberate, as he leads me back into the crowd and the music swells around us again. The alternative, that I heard exactly what I think I heard, that there was something in his voice sounding less like affection and more like satisfaction over a trained response, is a thought I don’t have room for tonight. Not on top of everything else sitting heavy and unresolved in my chest, not with Puck’s face still burned behind my eyes and the pin still aching faintly against my skin.

Still, some small, stubborn part of me keeps turning the words over, unable to let them go entirely. I hate how much they sound exactly like something he’d say. I hate more that some quieter, more honest part of me already believes it.