Chapter 83

The night sucked. Cold sheets. No sleep. Just me and my traitor brain spinning circles. In the morning, I saw his shoes by the door. That meant he’d come back sometime in the dead of night but was now gone again. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. But work slammed into me, and I buried myself in it. I spent the next few days camped out at Moss & Flame, working ten-hour shifts hunched over gem settings and wax casts. Came home too wrecked to care about anything, let alone our ‘rehearsal’. Ashton was apparently busy too. No sign of him for days. Not even a shadow in the hallway. Our whole flirt-to-convince-the-family thing? Dead in the water. Which—fine by me. Sort of. Ashton was hot, yeah, but cuddling with someone that good-looking without actual benefits was borderline torture. Then, finally, something worth celebrating: I wrapped up the custom set for Octavia Grey. Handmade, hand-set, one-of-a-kind, absolute knockout. And too precious to be entrusted to couriers. I took them s