I quickly wiped beneath my eyes, hoping to remove only the tears and not the rest of the damage on my face, but wishing and doing were two entirely different things. My skin felt tight, raw from salt and stubborn mascara, and I could only imagine what I looked like under the dim bar lighting. However, not a single muscle shifted in Mathéo’s face. His dark brown eyes remained locked on me, steady and unblinking, and the weight of his gaze made me feel as though he could see through every fragile layer I had so desperately tried to hold together.
Since Marcus had dropped me off here—at some sleazy bar far away from anyone I knew—I had done nothing but sit in this very booth, crying quietly into a cosmopolitan the bartender had to Google in order to make. I had watched her frown at her phone
