Chapter 21

TESSA POV

"This competition will be unfair if Tessa was given the first position."

The moment I heard that voice, the happiness inside me disappeared. I turned slowly toward it.

Soren.

He stood among the students, his face set into something deliberately serious as he addressed the judges. For a moment I simply stared at him. I had genuinely forgotten about him, not because I'd forgiven what he did to me, not because the memory of it had faded, but because he hadn't disturbed me once in two whole months.

Neither he nor Maya had tried a single thing, and somewhere in that silence I'd stopped giving them...