Rival Hearts

Chapter Five: Enemy, Confirmed

He called the next morning, which surprised me more than it should have.

"We need to talk," Kael said, no greeting, no acknowledgment of the plaza scene beyond the flatness in his voice. "Not like yesterday. Somewhere private."

"Fine." I agreed mostly because I wanted this handled before my father found some new way to insert himself into it. "Where."

He named a coffee shop two streets from my building, neutral ground, and I got there early out of pure stubbornness, unwilling to let him beat me to a table and control the terms of the conversation before I even sat down. He walked in anyway, right on time, and something about the sight of him in daylight, sober, composed, made the whole thing feel even more absurd than it had in the plaza. This was the man my father expected me to marry. This careful, controlled stranger in a gray coat, sliding into the seat across from me like we were meeting about a business deal instead of a wedding neither of us wanted.

"So," he said. "This is happening."

"Apparently."

"I want to be clear about something." He folded his hands on the table, and the gesture felt rehearsed, like he had practiced this exact opening in the mirror before he left the house. "I didn't ask for this. I found out about the arrangement the same way you did — parents deciding my future and informing me after the fact."

"That makes two of us."

"Then we're on the same side of at least one thing." He said it without warmth, a fact laid on the table rather than an olive branch. "I don't want to marry a stranger. I especially don't want to marry a stranger who's already made it clear she wants me arrested."

"You called me a prostitute in a bar." My voice stayed level, but only barely. "Forgive me if I'm not rushing to forgive that."

"I apologized."

"You apologized because your assistant showed up and you got caught." I leaned back, arms crossed. "That's not the same thing."

Something flickered across his jaw, tight and controlled, and for a moment I thought he might actually argue the point. He didn't. He exhaled instead, slow and deliberate, the posture of a man choosing his battles with more care than I had expected from someone who had insulted me within thirty seconds of meeting me.

"You're right," he said finally. "I apologized because I got caught. I'm apologizing again now, properly, because it was a genuinely awful thing to say to anyone, and I mean that. I was in a bad place that night. It doesn't excuse it."

I hadn't expected that. The real apology sat strangely in the space between us, and I didn't know what to do with it, so I ignored it entirely and moved on.

"Here's what I know," I said. "Our families have decided this is happening whether we like it or not. My father's already talking dates. I assume yours is doing the same."

"He is."

"So what exactly are we supposed to do about that?"

"Survive it, I suppose." He said it dry, almost bitter. "Play along in public. Keep our actual opinions of each other private. I don't see another option that doesn't blow up both our families' finances."

"You make it sound so romantic."

"I'm not interested in romantic." His tone sharpened, just slightly. "I'm interested in getting through the next several months without either of us making this worse than it already is. Can we agree on that much?"

I studied him for a long moment, looking for the version of him that had leaned toward me at that bar with a careless, ugly comment on his lips, and found instead someone precise and guarded, clearly capable of composure he hadn't bothered showing me the first time we met. It was strange, sitting across from a man I hated on principle and finding him, in this one narrow sense, easier to deal with than I had braced for. He wasn't groveling. He wasn't performing regret for my benefit. He was simply stating terms, the same way I might have, if our positions were reversed.

"There's something else," he added, quieter now. "Whatever happens between our families, whatever this marriage ends up looking like — I'd rather we not humiliate each other in public. I've had enough of that already, and I imagine you have too."

"Agreed." The word came out clipped, but I meant it. Whatever else this arrangement was going to cost either of us, I didn't need an audience for it.

"Fine," I said. "We can agree on that."

"Good." He checked his watch, already halfway to standing. "I have somewhere to be. I assume we'll see each other at the dinner, whenever our parents finalize it."

"I assume so."

He left without another word, and I sat there alone with a coffee I hadn't touched, turning the whole conversation over in my head, trying to decide whether I had just made a truce with an enemy or simply postponed the war.

I didn't get long to think about it. My phone buzzed before I had even finished paying, Ivy's name lighting up the screen.

**Ivy:** ok don't hate me but I need a huge favor

**Ivy:** the community celebration committee is a disaster and they need someone to run the food coordination and I may have already told them you'd do it

I stared at the message, grateful for something that had absolutely nothing to do with weddings or Voss men or careful, rehearsed apologies.

**Me:** you told them I'd do it before asking me?

**Ivy:** you love this stuff. you basically ran every event we did in school. please. it's one afternoon.

I thought about it for exactly as long as it took to finish walking to the corner, and then I typed back before I could second-guess it.

**Me:** fine. send me the details.

**Ivy:** YES. you're a lifesaver. I'll bring you up to speed tomorrow, it's honestly the easiest job on the committee, you just have to make sure the food actually shows up and gets set out on time.

I slid my phone back into my pocket, feeling something close to relief for the first time in days. A party. Food logistics. Something normal, something mine, something that had nothing to do with the mess my father had dropped into my life. For an afternoon, at least, I could be the version of myself that knew exactly what she was doing — the one who used to run every school event without breaking a sweat, who could organize a room full of chaos into something that worked. It felt good to remember I still knew how to be that person.

I had no idea, walking back toward my building with the late afternoon sun cutting long shadows across the street, that I had just agreed to stand in the exact place someone else had already decided to make sure I regretted.