“Alex?” My voice comes out sharper than I intend, and I cross my arms, instinctively putting up a wall between us. “What are you doing here?”
He lets out a sigh, his gaze dropping to the floor for a second before he meets my eyes. “Kylie…I need to talk to you.”
My stomach twists. It’s the last thing I want to hear, especially now, but he looks so different — less arrogant, less sure of himself. Almost…vulnerable.
“I know I’m probably the last person you want to see,” he begins, taking a hesitant step closer, “but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About us. About…everything.”
I raise an eyebrow, not willing to let him off easy. “Really? I thought you’d moved on with Eliza,” I say, my voice laced with sarcasm. “Isn’t that why you left me in the first place?”
He grimaces, and a flicker of shame crosses his face. “I left because I was a fool,” he says, voice thick with regret. “Eliza…she was nothing but a distraction, a mistake. I thought she could make me forget about you, but I was wrong.”
A part of me wants to laugh, to tell him how pathetic he sounds, but another part of me — a small, deeply buried part, the part that once really did love him — is rattled by the raw honesty in his voice.
This isn’t the Alex from the party the other night, the one who only cares about appearances and family prestige. This is…someone else entirely. The Alex I first fell in love with…