Page 116 of The Princess and the Fraud

Caroline gave a loud scoff. “You don’t even know how expensive these are. These—these arebrand new!”

For the last time, my gaze slid to Aaron, unbidden. The pain from last night still rested in his eyes, etching into his face, as if it were a part of him now. But it didn’t hurt enough to change his course.I’m nothing if not an Astor.

If he wanted to sell his soul, that was up to him. I couldn’t make that decision for him. I couldn’t push him off his metaphorical bridge—he had to jump himself. And if he didn’t want to, there was nothing I could do but walk away.

There were so many things to say, with no time to say them. So I memorized him instead—every line of his face, the way his hands hung uselessly at his sides, the shadows in his eyes.

It’d be the last time I’d see him, after all.

I turned back to Caroline. “Send me a bill,” I told her in the most uncaring voice I could manage, and then, without waiting for her to respond, I walked away from them both.

Caroline still stammered behind me, trying to come up with an insult before I moved out of range, but she couldn’t think of one fast enough.

CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT

“Ididn’t think she’d actually send me a bill.”

Paige sat on the corner of my bed, her legs crossed, a pint of Cherry Delight ice cream in her lap. She’d found it in the back of my freezer, and even though I’d warned her that I had no idea how long it’d been in there, she still attempted to saw out a piece of freezer-burned dairy. “It’s a good thing you dropped it and didn’t throw it on her,” Paige said, brow furrowed in concentration. “It’s aggravated assault in Connecticut if you throw a drink on someone.”

I froze. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Don’t tell her that. She’ll change her story of what happened.”

Paige snorted.

All in all, a two-hundred-dollar bill for a pair of shoes—which, admittedly, was cheaper than I thought—that arrived in my mail today wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the money. I was irritated to be paying Caroline for replacements, but it was also a knock to her pride that she even asked for it.

I turned back to my open closet, propping my hands on my hips and staring into the mostly empty depths of it. I was surprised how much I’d gotten cleaned out in the last three days. It wasn’t like I had that much to go through to begin with, though. But to see it so empty, with one filled trash bag of folded clothes on the floor beside it, was an odd sight.

“I can drop it off at Goodwill on my way back home,” Paige said, gesturing at the bag with her spoon. “There’s one right on the way.”

“Thanks.” I walked over to my bed and flopped down on top of it, bouncing Paige. The water stain greeted me as I stared up. “I feel like there’s so much to do still.”

“I’m actually surprised howunfurnishedyour place is.” Paige successfully pried a sliver of ice cream free, popping it into her mouth. “You don’t even have a dresser. Or a desk. Or a kitchen table. For five years, you ate at yourcoffee table?”

“I’m a bare minimum kind of girl.”

“No kidding.” Paige scooted around so that she faced me, still cross-legged. “It’s kind of like fate, the fact that your lease is up right when you get fired. It would’ve sucked if you got fired next month and had to wait a whole ’nother year before your lease was up.”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Ooh.” Paige popped her lips. “We’re a pessimist now, are we? I guess it makes sense, considering.”

“Not believing in fate doesn’t make me a pessimist.” And then I looked at her. “You believe in fate?”

She made a face, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the question or the old ice cream. “In some situations.”

“You’re allowed to pick and choose what’s fate and what’s not?”

“You take everything so seriously, Lovey. Here. Open.” She offered the spoon out to me, with another sliver of cherry ice cream on top of it. I obeyed, letting her pop the spoonful into my mouth, and realized that she must’ve made that face because of the awful flavor. “Sometimes things are a coincidence. Sometimes things are fate. One has no connection, the other one ispredestined.”

“So how do you tell which is which?”

“You just do.”

Her ambiguity seemed like it was cheating. According to her, anything could be fate. “So, getting fired from Alderton-Du Ponte three weeks before my lease is up?”

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