Page 88 of The Princess and the Fraud

“Stop.”

“She’d want you to tie yourself to her dream? To give up your own?”

“This is my dream.”

Aaron sounded sad. “Your dream was the cello.”

As soon as he spoke it, it was like I was transported back in time to the last time I’d picked up the cello. The final time I’d played.

Elgar’s Cello Concerto. It was the last piece I’d ever covered, the last one I uploaded to my YouTube channel before Mom died. Mom had been on a steady decline, but she’d pushed me to play so she could sit and listen. I almost refused—she’d been so weak. I’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to make the drive to the studio. She’d never understood classical music as I did, but it’d been the only thing she’d wanted to do that day—to sit and watch her daughter play her favorite piece. She’d had me play it through twice, convinced I’d screwed up somehow the first time.

I could still remember the way she’d looked at me when I played the final note. Her eyes had been full of tears. Even though I’d performed many recitals, played in grand halls, I’d never seen her look so proud. She’d said something to me when I’d finished. I couldn’t remember what.

And then she’d died one week later.

“Last June, you told me you were at a metaphorical bridge. Do you remember that?” Aaron ducked his head, leveling his face with mine. “To buy a house, or to return to the cello.”

I forced my gaze away from him, hating that he, too, went back to that same June night. “I was being selfish.”

“Back then, you knew the house wasn’t the right path. And this?” He gestured to the room around us. “This isn’t what you want. It’s what youthinkyou should want. But tell me—if your mother were standing here right now, would she want you to spend your whole life chasing her dream instead of living your own?”

“Is that why you brought me here?” I demanded, anger filling my words. “To tell me to say ‘screw it’ to the one thing my mother always wanted? To get out of buying me the house?”

“I’ll buy it.” Aaron’s steady stare never wavered as he took a step toward me, the seriousness in his expression inescapable. “On the day of the auction, I’ll make sure I’m the highest bidder. But you will berootedhere for the rest of your life. Rooted to the fact that you’re stuck at Alderton-Du Ponte, stuck in a place your mother never got to enjoy, stuck in how unhappy you are.” Aaron’s words lowered to a tone just above a whisper. “And then it will be too late to jump.”

I looked away from him to glare at the stained-glass window, at the sink my mother would’ve loved washing dishes at. She would’ve loved peeking at the bay through it, seeing the waves crash against the shore.

“I didn’t tell you to screw everything back in June because I thought it’d be fun to say.”

She would’ve opened the window on warmer spring days, smelling the salt air. She would’ve complained it made her hair frizzy, but she would’ve secretly loved every second of it.

“I said it because I can see you, Lovisa.”

My mother would’ve called me to talk to me about her day, because whenever she spoke of her dream before, whenever she spoke of this house, she never talked about it as if I was staying in it with her.Her house. Notourhouse. Because she knew, throughout all her dreaming, that her daughter envisioned concert halls and orchestras, opportunities that small-town Connecticut did not offer. She knew I’d always come back to visit, but allowed me to come up with my own dreams.

“I can see youdrowning.” Aaron’s voice was suddenly so soft and quiet and close, and through the blur of the mist pooling in my eyes, I could see him in my peripheral. “And this house? It’s ananchor.”

A tear trekked its way down my cheek, the pain in my chest cracking open like broken glass, tearing open old wounds with ease. “I’m supposed to just walk away?” I tried to keep my words stable, but my lower lip quivered. “To turn my back on her?”

“You keep her with you always,” he murmured, reaching out and gently swiping his thumb along my cheek, chasing away the tear. Another chased its heels, and he swiped at that one too. “You’re clinging to this house like it’s some last piece of her, but your mother isn’t in these rotted walls, Lovisa. She’s with you in all the places you go.”

I choked on the breath I tried to pull in, one that turned into a sob. My face crumpled, along with everything else inside me, caving in as if someone wrapped their hand around my frame and squeezed. The truth, as obvious as it was, had no mercy as it hit me.

A magnetized pull drew me into Aaron’s chest without warning. His arms wrapped around me in an instant, embracing me as if he could embrace my pain, too. I gripped the back of his jacket, feeling as if the second I let go, I’d be swept away by the tempest inside me.

Aaron’s hold was equally as tight as he pressed me to him, weathering the storm with me. “She’s in the moments you smile,” he murmured directly in my ear, lips brushing my skin, barely audible through my sobs. “She’s in the music you play.”

My mother could never buy the house she’d spent decades imagining herself in. She’d never be able to fix it up, to enjoy the sea breeze as it coasted off the bay. She’d never get to grow old in this house. I’d never get to see her live her life in these walls.

My mother was gone, and her dreams went with her.

But she’d also never get to see me play again. In an audience or on the other side of a camera, she would never see me do what I loved. In her final moments, she didn’t muster up the energy to see her dream. Instead, she chose to listen to mine.

My mother never wanted me to have her dream. Every step of the way, she just wanted me to have one of my own.

I cried harder into Aaron’s chest, surrounded by his strong arms and lulling scent. Through the thick tears and the razor-sharp ache in my chest, I could hear Aaron’s heart thump, a fast, steady pace that paired with his hand coasting down my back. He let me cry it out, allowed me to feel it all for the first time.

And I did. I felt the weight of every sacrifice, every moment I had spent chasing something that no longer existed. The grief I had ignored for so long swelled and cracked open inside me, unrelenting. But beneath it, there was something else—a quiet relief, like taking a deep breath after holding it for too long.

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