My Fated Mate Can Have Her-Chapter 218: A Heated Clash
Rowan
"Stop this! I talk to you. I am talking to you right now."
"Look at me," I hissed.
Perhaps a little too loudly.
I could already hear some of the whispers.
Her eyes flickered to mine for the briefest moment, then away.
"See?" I muttered.
"Oh—what—I literally just looked at you!" Her frown hardened. "Why are you behaving like this. Concentrate!"
"I should be telling you the same thing. If anything, you’re concentrating more on not looking at me rather than at the game."
"You are being ridiculous."
"You are hiding." I hurriedly drew out each word.
The tower wobbled. She overcorrected, and I had to jerk my end of the rod to compensate. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎
"Careful," the moderator warned, leaning forward with concern. "Is there... trouble?"
We ignored him.
"I am not hiding," Violet hissed, her voice barely audible. "I just need time."
"Time for what? To pretend nothing happened?" I snapped, as much as I would not have wanted to.
"Nothing should have happened."
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
The words hit harder than I expected, but I refused to let them land.
"But it did," I snapped. My voice was low and strained. "It happened. And you can’t just act as if it never did, or even better yet just act as if I don’t even exist."
"Can we not do this here?"
"You won’t do it anywhere else."
The tower reached the target. We lowered it with less grace than the first figurine, the base clunking against the glass harder than intended.
Scattered applause rose from the crowd.
"Final figurine," the moderator announced, though his voice had grown uncertain. He was watching us with a confused expression, clearly sensing something was wrong. "The golden wolf..."
The golden wolf was smaller than the other two objects, and it looked like it was actually made out of gold. Some of the similar pieces were buried under other objects, but one of it sat at a corner and looking at it alone anyone could tell it required operating the rod at a precise angle to be able to get it.
We approached it together.
"I have feelings for you."
Violet’s hands jerked. The rod dipped, nearly knocking the podium itself off the ground.
I could hear her pulse spiked. "Rowan—"
"You can’t—"
"Stop this, please." She sounded flustered and the hard frown had been swiped off her face, replaced with confusion and panic. "It is just the bond speaking. You—"
"Don’t tell me what I feel. It’s not just the bond. I do have feelings for you and I care about you." The words were spilling out now, low and urgent. "I know you want to believe it’s just that, but it’s not. The bond on its own isn’t even something so trivial for you to dismiss it the way you are doing right now. And I know you care."
"Rowan, stop."
"Everything we’ve been through. The running, the hiding, the fever, you even taking care of me when you didn’t have to. That wasn’t nothing. That wasn’t the bond making you care, was it?"
We were barely moving the rod now, just holding it in place, the golden wolf untouched on its pedestal.
"You don’t know what I feel," she whispered harshly, her annoyance slowly shifting to anger as her frown returned.
"I know you are confused, and I also know you kissed me back."
Her eyes went wide with shock and her face flushed.
And yet she still wasn’t even looking at me, her eyes were glued to the rod.
"Twice," I added. "Don’t act like it didn’t happen. You even pulled me closer when you could have pushed me away."
"That was—"
"Don’t say it was a mistake. Don’t say it was the bond." I gripped the rod harder.
The moderator cleared his throat nervously. "Excuse me... Perhaps you should—"
"I know you feel something for him too," I continued, ignoring the moderator entirely. "I am not clueless. I know he’s there, and I am not asking you to forget him. But you can’t keep treating the bond between us like it doesn’t exist just because you don’t know how to handle feeling something for the both of us."
Her eyes finally met mine with a stifling direct look.
There was anger there, along with a raw overwhelming feeling.
"You don’t understand." She glared at me.
"Then explain it to me. Talk to me. Stop giving me silence and expecting me to just accept it."
"I don’t..." She sighed, looking tired. "I am not—I am just processing—"
"Or am I an inconvenience to you?!" I snapped.
Her grip on the rod shifted. Her whole body had gone tense.
"I never said you were an inconvenience."
"More than three days of selective silence said it for you."
"That’s not fair, Rowan."
"Neither is pretending I’m not standing right in front of you."
"Stop this. I am already looking at you!"
We stared hard at each other, the rod suspended between us, the golden wolf forgotten.
The moderator took a step back.
My voice dropped lower. "You were hardly doing it until—you know what I am talking about, Violet! Stop acting like you feel nothing for me when we both know that’s not true."
Her breath caught.
"Stop treating me like I’m the problem you’re trying to solve by pretending I don’t exist."
"Let us talk about this later. You are—"
"And this isn’t even the first time you have kissed me."
She went completely still.
For a moment, she just stared at me. Then her lips parted, her eyes widening with shock that quickly shifted into something closer to outrage.
"What?" Her voice was no longer hushed. It came out at a normal pitch, and she leaned in closer. "What did you just say?"
I held her gaze, unflinching.
"I—" She shook her head, her grip on the rod tightening dangerously. She was trembling. "That is a lie. I have never—we never—" She drew in a sharp breath. "I cannot believe you would stoop to making things up. I would never have expected this from you, Rowan. Never."
The hurt in her voice almost made me falter.
Almost.
"I am not lying," I gritted out through clenched teeth.
Her voice cracked. "I would remember something like that!"
"Would you?" I stared deep into her eyes, holding nothing back. "The night of ’that’ festival. You were intoxicated. I had been looking for you everywhere and I found you stumbling through the crowd, barely able to stand."
Her face paled.
