(Vince POV)
I slept even worse.
Which, frankly, felt like a personal insult from the universe.
The first night, I could justify. New emotions. Confusion. The existential horror of accidentally caring.
The second night?
That was just excessive.
I turned onto my back, staring at the ceiling of my room like it had personally betrayed me. The dim blue light from my phone cast faint shadows across the walls, reflecting the kind of thoughts I usually avoided by drowning them in alcohol, noise, or extremely bad decisions.
Lara.
Again.
Why was my brain treating her like a recurring theme instead of a situational character?
I replayed yesterday at the restaurant — the way she laughed when I made a joke about Anthony's driving license being purely decorative. The flicker of amusement in her eyes when Kate rolled hers at me. The fact she had stayed a second longer than usual before standing when the dinner ended.
Little things.
Stupid things.
Things that didn't matter.
