you hate the crash, but you love the rush
Flora’s heart drops like a stone, plummeting straight through her ribs into the pit of her stomach. It sinks heavily, painfully, and for a moment everything else is drowned out by the dull roar of blood rushing in her ears. She stares at Jack blankly waiting for something to somehow make this all better, but nothing comes. He'd slept with her. Actually fucked her. Safrin.
It’s worse than anything she imagined. So, so much worse, because at least before there’d been the fragile comfort that whatever Jack might have said to her, at least it had only been a handshake like before. Flora's mind reels, spinning wildly as thoughts pile up faster than she can process them, panic and humiliation intertwining in a tangle of insecurities she’s worked so desperately to bury beneath a veneer of confidence and bravado.
Jack had been with a goddess. And she… gods, how could she possibly compete with that?
Her eyes sting, vision blurring as tears threaten to spill over, and she stubbornly blinks them back, focusing instead on the tightness in her chest, the ache in her throat, the tremble she can’t quite steady in her fingers. Flora isn’t angry, exactly, or at least not in the way Jack might have originally thought she'd be. It's not cheating, not in the simple, easy way it would be with anyone else—but somehow this is worse, because how could he ever look at her the same way again after being with Safrin? How could anything she offer possibly measure up? What could Flora—the emotional, needy queen who ran away from arguments and picked fights over stupid insecurities—possibly give him now?
Flora clutches her knees to her chest, instinctively making herself smaller as if she could somehow hide from the weight of inadequacy pressing down on her. "Right," she breathes finally, voice thin and brittle.
It’s worse than anything she imagined. So, so much worse, because at least before there’d been the fragile comfort that whatever Jack might have said to her, at least it had only been a handshake like before. Flora's mind reels, spinning wildly as thoughts pile up faster than she can process them, panic and humiliation intertwining in a tangle of insecurities she’s worked so desperately to bury beneath a veneer of confidence and bravado.
Jack had been with a goddess. And she… gods, how could she possibly compete with that?
Her eyes sting, vision blurring as tears threaten to spill over, and she stubbornly blinks them back, focusing instead on the tightness in her chest, the ache in her throat, the tremble she can’t quite steady in her fingers. Flora isn’t angry, exactly, or at least not in the way Jack might have originally thought she'd be. It's not cheating, not in the simple, easy way it would be with anyone else—but somehow this is worse, because how could he ever look at her the same way again after being with Safrin? How could anything she offer possibly measure up? What could Flora—the emotional, needy queen who ran away from arguments and picked fights over stupid insecurities—possibly give him now?
Flora clutches her knees to her chest, instinctively making herself smaller as if she could somehow hide from the weight of inadequacy pressing down on her. "Right," she breathes finally, voice thin and brittle.
