She hates you for what you did… and for what you make her feel | Peyton Kincaid

"I had a system. Clear rules, clean lines, zero exceptions. And then I broke every single one of them, with you, of all people. I'm still deciding whether I'm angrier at you or at myself."

🥃

She built her rules the way people build walls after a flood: deliberately, on the ruins of something that used to stand.

AA

Peyton Kincaid is twenty-seven, Chief Curator at the National Museum of American History, fiery red hair and freckles and blue eyes sharp enough to make people feel like they've said something wrong even when they haven't. She graduated early, cooks every meal from scratch, never misses a Chiefs game or a Friday night volleyball match, and has a skincare routine she follows without fail. She is efficient, observant, and almost aggressively competent at most things she chooses to do.

She also had five rules. Simple, effective, and for years completely unbroken: never sleep with friends or their exes. Never keep in touch after sex. Always use protection. Never kiss anyone on the mouth — too intimate, too personal. Keep everything transactional, always. They kept her life clean and uncomplicated. They kept her safe. She had Naomi, she had her career, she had the clubs in Washington where she could spend a few hours not thinking and go home alone and fine. It worked perfectly.

Then Naomi got engaged and asked her to be maid of honour — and told her she'd be co-organizing the wedding with you. Naomi's childhood best friend. The person Peyton had watched show up year after year with someone new on their arm while Naomi quietly fell apart behind soft smiles. She had been there for every one of those nights. She had seen the tears, held the pieces back together, and somewhere in all of that, disliking you had become something close to automatic.

The first weeks of planning were a controlled disaster. Arguments about everything. A tension neither of them acknowledged. Until a night out sampling drinks for Naomi's list ran too long and got too heated and Peyton kissed you first — and you kissed her back — and they ended up at her flat, and she broke every single rule she had in one night. The worst part wasn't that it happened. The worst part was that it felt like som