Chapter 245: undecided
Anthony had been thinking about the pool party since he left the table.
Not continuously.
He had other things to do.
Monday had arrived with the usual demands of St. Albion. Classes, Student Council matters, meetings, messages that needed answering.
Yet the memory kept returning.
Usually when he least wanted it to.
During his first lecture, he found himself remembering Vivienne beside Damian.
The food.
The towel.
The way she had asked Damian to feed her.
The way she had leaned toward him.
The way she kept glancing at Anthony afterward.
Anthony’s pen slowed over the page.
It was unbecoming.
That was the simplest explanation.
Vivienne had been behaving too freely at a public gathering, and Damian—his cousin—had been indulging her.
They were both old enough to know better.
Anthony had every reason to be annoyed.
Except—
That wasn’t the whole truth.
His jaw tightened.
Because before Damian, there had been Fred.
Anthony remembered seeing Vivienne laughing with him earlier.
Fred had been flirting with her.
And Vivienne had been enjoying it.
Anthony hadn’t liked that either.
He had noticed it.
He had disliked it.
And at the time, he had simply dismissed the feeling as irritation.
Now he couldn’t.
If this were merely about Damian being his cousin, Fred shouldn’t have mattered.
But he had.
That left him with an uncomfortable conclusion.
It wasn’t Damian.
It was Vivienne.
Anthony lowered his gaze to his notes.
He had been attracted to her.
There was no point pretending otherwise anymore.
The realization was not entirely new.
It had begun at the Founder’s Ball.
That night, for the first time, he had looked at Vivienne not simply as the woman his family had chosen for him, but as a woman.
He had wanted her.
And because he knew what that desire could become, he had deliberately restrained himself.
He had told her the truth instead.
He didn’t love her.
It had hurt her.
He knew that.
For the next several days, he had felt guilty about it—not because he had lied, but because honesty had still caused pain.
Then Vivienne had broken their engagement.
And he had agreed.
He had thought that was the correct decision.
It was.
He still believed it was.
He did not love her.
That had not changed.
But the engagement had given him a peculiar certainty for years.
Vivienne would eventually be his wife.
There would be time.
There was no reason to rush anything.
If attraction existed, it could wait.
Marriage would come later.
Everything would happen in its proper time.
Now there was no later.
Anthony’s pen stopped completely.
That was the part he hadn’t expected.
He had wanted her when he believed she would eventually be his.
Now she was no longer his—
and apparently, he wanted her even more.
His expression hardened.
That was inconvenient.
Very inconvenient.
And worse, he had no idea what to do with it.
He couldn’t suddenly decide that he loved her.
He didn’t.
At least, he didn’t think he did.
Physical attraction was not love.
He knew that much.
But neither could he dismiss the attraction simply because it was inconvenient.
He had spent years treating Vivienne with restraint because he knew what taking liberties with her would mean.
She wasn’t someone he could simply spend a night with and walk away from the next morning.
She had been his intended.
For most of his life, he had expected to spend the rest of it with her.
There would have been consequences—not merely social ones, but personal ones.
If he crossed that line, he could not pretend it meant nothing.
So he hadn’t.
Even when she had been his fiancée.
Even when, after the Founder’s Ball, he had realized that he wanted her.
He had still chosen not to act.
Now she was free.
And other men were apparently discovering what he had spent years refusing to acknowledge.
Anthony exhaled slowly.
He didn’t like the thought.
Not at all.
--
By late morning, he had convinced himself to focus on other things.
It lasted until he saw Vivienne across the courtyard.
She was walking with several other students, listening to someone speak.
Then she laughed.
Anthony’s attention caught before he could stop it.
He looked away.
A moment later, he found himself thinking about Sunday again.
Vivienne smiling.
Vivienne laughing.
Vivienne leaning toward Damian.
And then another thought surfaced.
She had been watching him.
All afternoon.
That much was undeniable.
The food had been deliberate.
The towel had been deliberate.
The teasing.
Asking Damian to feed her.
Even the way she had spoken about how helpful Damian was.
She had wanted Anthony to see.
She had wanted a reaction.
And she had gotten one.
Anthony frowned.
What exactly did she want?
Did she still love him?
Was she jealous?
Was she trying to make him regret ending the engagement?
Was she trying to prove that other men wanted her?
Or was she simply angry and determined to make him understand that she could move on without him?
He couldn’t tell.
But whatever the answer was, one thing was becoming difficult to deny.
Vivienne still cared about what he thought.
That realization should have been reassuring.
Instead, it left him even more unsettled.
Because he wasn’t sure what he wanted her to think of him either.
He had told her he didn’t love her.
He had agreed when she ended their engagement.
He had thought that would make things simpler.
Yet now, seeing her with someone else had unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
Anthony looked away from the courtyard.
This was absurd.
He was supposed to be relieved.
The engagement was over.
Vivienne was free.
He was free.
There should have been nothing complicated about that.
And yet he had spent the better part of Monday trying to understand why the sight of another man making her laugh bothered him so much.
He knew one thing.
He hadn’t been offended because Damian was his cousin.
That had certainly made the situation more uncomfortable.
But it wasn’t the reason.
It was Vivienne.
She was the reason.
And admitting that made everything considerably more complicated.
--
By lunchtime, Anthony had mostly buried himself in his responsibilities.
But the question remained.
What did he do with this?
He had no intention of speaking to Vivienne about it.
Not yet.
He wouldn’t know what to say.
What could he possibly tell her?
I don’t love you, but I don’t like seeing other men want you.
It sounded ridiculous.
Worse, it would be unfair to her.
He had given her no reason to remain faithful to a relationship that no longer existed.
If anything, he had been the one to tell her she deserved someone who loved her.
He had no right to object when she began behaving like a woman who believed she could find someone else.
Anthony rubbed a hand briefly over his face.
Then his thoughts shifted.
Damian.
That was different.
Damian was his cousin.
And unlike Vivienne, Damian was someone he could speak to directly.
There was something about his cousin’s behavior that had bothered Anthony beyond the obvious.
At the beginning of the afternoon, Damian had been openly interested in Vivienne.
By the end, he had become strangely quiet.
Anthony had noticed the change.
He knew Damian.
Something had happened at that table.
Something had changed.
And there was something else.
Vivienne’s remark about the balcony had made it obvious that she knew something about Evelyn and Anthony that Damian apparently didn’t.
That had complicated matters further.
Anthony frowned.
He didn’t particularly care whether Damian had feelings for Vivienne.
That was Damian’s concern.
But he wanted to know whether there was something more between them than what he had witnessed.
Because if there was—
Anthony wanted to know.
He wasn’t sure why.
Perhaps it was simply because Damian was family.
Perhaps because Vivienne had been until only recently his fiancée.
Perhaps because he had watched the two of them become increasingly comfortable with each other in a matter of days.
Or perhaps it was because he had finally admitted something he had spent years avoiding.
Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
Anthony took out his phone.
He opened his messages.
His thumb hovered over Damian’s name.
He considered waiting.
Then decided against it.
There was no reason to make this more dramatic than it needed to be.
He typed.
Anthony: Are you free this evening?
He stared at the message for a moment.
Then sent it.
A few seconds passed.
No reply.
Anthony slipped his phone back into his pocket.
Whatever Damian’s answer was, he would ask him directly.
No accusations.
No assumptions.
Just the truth.
And perhaps, after that conversation, Anthony would finally understand why his cousin had been standing beside Vivienne all afternoon—
and why the sight of it had bothered him so much.
--
Tbc
AN: haha now we will have the cousins talk, while vivien too busy liking christopher hahahaha!!!