Page 54 of Her Red Hot Secret Royal Fling

“It’s out of love,” Portia said, almost apologetically. “Moricosia,” she tapped her finger to the side of her lips. “Let’s start there, then. How was your trip?”

And Sofia began to cry loudly, shaking her head, because it was all building up inside of her, and each question from Portia was like the breaking of a dam wall, so she wasn’t able to hold the water back.

Finally, the words tumbled out of her, all of them. How Salvatore had gotten sick and sent her hiking with Ares, and how it had been about business at first, but then it hadn’t been, because there was just something about him, and they’d had so much fun together, and he was different to anything she’d expected. She told Portia how they’d sat up late at night, staring at the stars, talking as if they were old friends, or had known one another in a past life, and how he’d seemed to understand what she was thinking without her needing to say a word. She told Portia about the palace, and their dinner, and his offer that she stay longer, because neither had been ready to walk away.

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“Self preservation,” she said with a roll of her eyes and then a soft laugh, because it had felt cathartic to blurt everything out. She waved her hands at her own face. “Can’t you see how well it’s working?”

Portia’s smile was sympathetic. “I’m serious. Why did you leave, when you so clearly wanted to be with him?”

“It wouldn’t have worked. He’s theKing, Portia. He has obligations, expectations. He has to marry, and probably someone like Louisa.” She groaned. “And he’s back together with her anyway,” she said, reaching for her phone and loading up the picture. Portia read it with a grim frown on her face, then passed it back.

“Not necessarily,” but there was ambivalence in her tone. The photo showed the one-time couple leaning closer together—clearly on intimate terms. Sofia couldn’t think of that without a wave of nausea flooding her.

“It’s okay. It was only a holiday fling. My…heart just didn’t get the memo, that’s all.”

Because wasn’t that the truth of it? She’d fallen in love with him, despite the fact they’d been so clear that it was a temporary, meaningless fling.

“It sounds like his heart didn’t either,” Portia said.

“He’s back with her now. It’s over.”

Portia’s lips pulled to the side. “And if he wasn’t with her?”

Sofia’s eyes widened but she shook her head again. “It wouldn’t make any difference. It was never going to work long term. We’re from different worlds.”

Portia came around the counter and put a hand on Sofia’s shoulder. “No, you’re not. It sounds like you and he discovered you were from exactly the sameplanet. You found your other half. Why are you running away from that?”

Her lips parted.

“You don’t understand,” she insisted, trying to cling to all of the logical reasons that had seemed so important almost a month earlier. “He can’t just date someone then break up again. His country needs him to get married.”

“So, marry him,” Portia laughed. “You’re in love, right?”

Sofia’s brows knit together. “You’re making it sound so simple.”

“When you love someone, it’s exactly that.”

“But what if—,”What if he doesn’t love me? Or, what if he loves me now and doesn’t in a year?

Sofia shook her head, more than a decade’s worth of pain hard to erase.

“What if everything works out perfectly,cara? What if you get the kind of happiness you absolutely deserve?”

“But Louisa…”

“It’s just a photo. You don’t know the truth behind it. I wouldn’t factor that into my decision making.”

“But—,”

“If he’s with her, then the worst-case scenario is he tells you that and you feel like crap. You already feel like that, so…what’s the harm in going to him, and finding out how things stand? Tell him you made a huge mistake, and that you love him, and want to spend the rest of your life with him.”

Sofia squeezed her eyes shut. “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not easy,” she said softly. “I remember this feeling. But I’m also so, so glad that Marco was brave enough to wake up and realise how he felt, and that he made sure I knew it. Because this feeling, this happiness…there’s nothing like it, my love.”

And for a moment, just a single moment, with her fairy godmother Portia right there, Sofia allowed herself to imagine that she and Ares might have their own happy ending. To imagine that none of the reasons she’d walked away from him mattered after all. In her mind, he smiled at her, and she smiled at him, and all was good and right in the world.

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