Fake Date, Real Fate-Chapter 300: Washed Off Ink

"Like—possessive?" she asks carefully.

"No! No! Not like that. He didn’t mean it... like that. He just..." I am flailing wildly in the air with my hands.

"He seemed certain."

She nods slowly. "Okay."

"And when I asked what he meant, he did not just blow it off," I go on, the words spilling out faster now. "He didn’t joke. He didn’t flirt his way out of it. He just, like... told me stuff."

"Such as?"

"That he’s been coming to my bakery for months." I said, then laughed a little. "That he fell in love with me the first day he saw me."

Aria’s eyes widen. "Shut up."

"I can’t," I say miserably. "My mouth keeps talking."

"So?"

"So, he was too scared to approach me." I shake my head. "Which makes zero sense because you saw him. He looks like trouble but in a really rich way."

She snickers. "Accurate."

"And you—" I said, pointing at her. "You caught him staring and almost beat him up."

"Almost," she said like she was bragging.

"And then you set this whole thing up." I sighed. "The park. Today. All of it."

Aria nods. "Yeah."

I rub my palm again, not so hard this tiime. "But that’s not the weird part."

Her expression shifts. "Okay. Tell me the weird part."

"I keep getting these...I don’t know... flashes." I looked straight ahead. "Not like memories. More like I just feel things. Like my body reacting before my brain catches up."

She doesn’t interrupt.

"When he touched my arm," I whisper, "my knees almost gave out. And when he told me to breathe, I did. Like I’ve done it with him before. Like he’s calmed me down a hundred times."

Aria’s voice is gentle when she asks, "Do you think you have?"

"That’s the problem," I say, laughing shakily. "It feels real. Too real like something happened and then it was... wiped."

Silence fills the car, heavy but not uncomfortable.

"And the kiss?" she asks softly.

I close my eyes.

"It wasn’t meant to happen," I admit. "I was scared, and I am still scared. But when he kissed me, it was as if... like my body remembered him even though my mind did not."

I felt tight in my throat when I said, "And then he stopped. Right away. Apologized. Like he was afraid of crossing a line."

"Doesn’t sound like a bad man," Aria said, letting out a slow breath.

"I know," I said in a whisper. "That’s what scares me."

The light turns green and Aria drove through it.

I don’t look at her, but I feel the weight of what’s been said settling between us like dust after an explosion.

Then Aria says, softly:

"You know... sometimes your soul remembers things before your brain does."

I turn my head slowly toward her. She’s not smirking now. No teasing glint in her eyes.

She just looks... serious.

And that? That scares me more than anything else tonight has offered so far because *Aria* doesn’t get serious unless something real is happening—or about to happen.

"What?" I ask quietly, voice barely above a whisper over the hum of tires on wet pavement.

She shrugs one shoulder—a small motion—but it carries too much meaning for how simple it seems. "Just saying," she murmurs, "that if someone out there makes you feel like that—like you’ve known them forever even though you haven’t seen them until today?"

Her fingers tap lightly against the steering wheel once—a nervous rhythm only we’d recognize from years spent together late at night with bad takeout and worse decisions—and then:

"I wouldn’t question whether it was right or wrong," she says quietly. "I’d question why it found you."

I swallow hard around nothing—the kind where your throat clicks shut on empty air—and stare back out through glass.

****

I’m back home and it finally hits me. Again.

The silence.

It’s the kind that makes your ears ring and reminds you that you’re stuck with your own thoughts.

I stayed in the shower much longer than necessary, letting the water run hot until my skin prunes, until the echoes of the day dull into something distant. By the time I’m back in my room, wrapped in a towel with damp hair clinging to my neck, my body feels lighter—but my mind absolutely does not.

I now sat on the edge of my bed, listening to the last few drops of water slide from my hair and land with soft taps on the towel or floor. The room was dimly illuminated by the moonlight, and shadows from the moonlight were creeping across the walls and onto the floor.

I looked down at my palm.

It was the place where the ink used to be.

I rub my thumb over it, once, twice. Nothing there now. Just skin.

I turn my hand over. Flex my fingers. Rub my thumb against the center of my palm. But my hand tingles anyway, a faint buzzing sensation that hasn’t left since earlier, like my nerves remember something my eyes no longer can.

Ridiculous.

I tug on an oversized t-shirt Dad claims he bought for me himself. Then I flop back onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling. The room smells like clean cotton and faint lavender detergent. Familiar. Safe.

But then—

A knock cuts through the silence.

Not a polite knock.

A Leo knock.

Two taps and one more for the hell of it!

"Bella?" He calls from the other side of the door. "I’m back. You good?"

I close my eyes for a second.

I really don’t know why, but the question lands heavier than it should.

I clear my throat. "I’m fine," I call back. Then, because I can’t help myself, I add, "You faker."

There’s a pause.

Then the door cracks open just enough for him to lean in, one shoulder against the frame. He peeks in like he’s approaching a wild animal instead of his own sister. Backpack slung halfway off like he forgot to take it off, hoodie half-unzipped, hair a mess like he’s been running his hands through it all day.

He looks tired.

Not his usual I’ve-been-causing-problems tired.

Just... worn.

"Wow," he says lightly. "No ’hi’, no ’welcome home’. I see how it is."