Page 117 of The Princess and the Fraud

Paige nodded. “Fate.”

“My mother’s house going up to auction the day before Aaron’s birthday.”

Paige shook her head. “Coincidence.”

She didn’t elaborate on why. I guess I could see the difference—slightly. Itdidfeel like I was destined to leave Alderton-Du Ponte, and it’d been too perfect that it’d been just before I renewed my lease. And my mother’s house going to auction the day before Aaron’s birthday, well… that wasn’tpredestined, right?

I thought of more moments. “Grant finding me in the elevator the first night he got to Addison.”

“Coincidence.”

I frowned a little. That had been a coincidence? Of all the people who could’ve been staying in that room, asking for pillows, it’d been Grant—thatwas a coincidence? “Aaron being the one to find me back in June at one in the morning.”

Paige turned to look at me, thinking. “Coincidence.”

Now I knew she was just making it up as she went. I pushed up to my elbows. “How is that acoincidence?”

Paige poked me with her spoon. “I thought you didn’t believe in fate.”

I opened my mouth, fumbling for an answer to the snare she trapped me in. Ultimately, I fell back onto the bed. “I didn’t say it was,” I grumbled. “But meeting him felt too… important to be a coincidence.”

Paige laughed, setting her ice cream on the floor before falling onto her back beside me. “In my opinion, meeting him for the first time was a coincidence. But him coming back to Addison… that feels more like fate.”

I still didn’t understand the way Paige qualified things, but ruminated on it, nonetheless. I suppose she could’ve been right—meeting Aaron back in June might’ve been a coincidence. I’d been looking for anyone at that moment. But our paths crossing again… maybe that was something more significant.

Perhaps it hadn’t been fate until he’d become more important to me.

“I’m really sad about him,” I whispered, the words barely audible over the weight pressing me into the mattress. It felt like grief—not just for a person, but for a possibility. “I’m sad it had to end before it really began.”

Paige didn’t speak. She just reached over and laced her fingers with mine, grounding me with quiet comfort.

“I don’t blame him.” I paused after I spoke, waiting for the words to feel like a lie, but they didn’t. “Maybe I should. Maybe I’m supposed to. But how do you blame someone who’s been taught to be terrified of standing alone? Afraid of existing without the approval of his family?” My voice trembled. “I spent five years scared to let go of the dream my mom had for me—and she’s not even alive anymore. So I get it. I get how fear can feel like duty, and that—” Pressure pinpricked behind my eyes. “That makes me really sad.”

It wasn’t just one kind of sad. It was layered, aching sadness—the kind that buried itself deep. I was sad that I’d let myself fall for someone who was never mine to keep. That I’d finally let myself dream, only to watch the whole future vanish like smoke. But I was also sad forhim—for the boy who couldn’t see that he was already enough. Who still measured his worth by the weight of a last name that never loved him the way he deserved.

I couldn’t save him, though. Not from the cage he’d been raised in. Not from the shadow of his family’s expectations. Not even from himself.

And maybe the cruelest sadness of all was knowing I’d never get to play beside him again. That the first note we struck together had also been the last. A debut and a finale—no encore, no second verse. Just one breathtaking crescendo, and then silence.

“And he might even be married by now,” I said to Paige, sniffing. “His birthday is on Sunday, so he needs to elope before then. They might’ve done it by now.”

“I can’t imagine Caroline Holland eloping,” Paige muttered. “She seemed like the type to want a huge wedding.”

“She is. If she goes through with it, I’m sure they’ll have a wedding after the fact. Her mother will probably insist on it. The newwedding of the century.”

Paige shifted. “You think she might not go through with it?”

“For Aaron’s sake, I hope—” The words got stuck in my throat, refusing to be spoken aloud.I hope she does. I couldn’t say them, unsure if I truly believed them.

I felt hollow, like something vital had been torn from me—something I hadn’t even realized I had until it disappeared. The thought of Aaron, of never seeing him again, hit me in waves, sharp and unrelenting. Because why would I? I wasn’t going back to Alderton-Du Ponte, and he surely wasn’t coming here. It might’ve been fate that’d brought our paths together again, but it was something worse at work that’d pried us apart.

But even though my days felt empty, and even if I never saw Aaron again, I wouldn’t go back and change it. I’d still go out to sit in front of the firepit all the way back in June. Because if I hadn’t met Aaron, I never would’ve jumped. I never would’ve remembered how it felt to live like my heart was mine again.

Promise me that you won’t look at the cello and resent it, Aaron had said as he’d trembled in my arms.Because you’ll hate me.

But I couldn’t hate Aaron Astor. Even if I had every reason to. Even if he left me with nothing but the echo of a song we never got to finish.

A knock at my door startled me from my thoughts. “Are you expecting anyone?” Paige asked.

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