Page 66 of The Princess and the Fraud

“It’s a lot of pressure. To be a save the marriage baby.”

“Is it?” His shoulders rose with a deep inhale, brushing mine. I could feel the long pause as he held his breath, almost too long, before he let it back out. It seemed to be like a reset button for him, that breath, because when he spoke next, his voice was lighter. “They’re still together, so it seems it worked for them.”

Perhaps you’d change your mind if you knew how sad and twisted my insides are. These past few days showed me just how much he’d meant that. “Do you resent your parents for cutting you off?”

“No.” Again, he spoke with zero hesitation. “They did what they thought was right. Same with my brothers, they… they’re just doing what they think is best.”

Even after everything, he wasn’t upset with them in the slightest? That almost made it worse. That their hooks were so deep that he could wave away any crappy thing they did. “And you marrying Fiona for her money? Is that you doing what you think is right?”

I didn’t know why I had to say it. We were having an okay moment, and I had to let the judginess drip into my voice. I couldn’t help it, though. It felt like a fatal flaw, one I couldn’t look past no matter how much I didn’t like Fiona.

If I thought Aaron would snap at me, or let out an exasperated sigh, I was wrong. Instead, his voice became much quieter. “You liked me before. In front of the fire. We talked then. We laughed then. You liked me before—we could go back to that.”

“We—we already talked about that. That was before?—”

“Before you saw how desperate I am?”

My breath caught, and I blinked toward him in the darkness.

“Five older brothers.” Aaron sounded hollow. He let the words linger for a moment, as if they spoke for themselves. “Five brothers who had already secured their legacies before I could even spell my name. Every title at Astro belongs to one of them. Every ounce of respect, earned or inherited, went to them. I was a mistake my father was ready to walk away from, and a bargaining chip my mother used to make him stay.”

There was no bitterness in his voice, not really. Just the dull ache of someone who’d lived with that truth too long.

“I didn’t get into an Ivy League school. Didn’t earn the right grades at the college I did attend. I wasn’t a prodigy. I wasn’t impressive. I was just… there. I got a desk at Astro because my grandmother took pity on me. That’s the only reason I had a job.”

Growing up, I’d been used to looking at things through the lens of a cellist, to equate everything to the instrument, but in that moment, Aaron was not a cello string on the verge of snapping. Strength swelled in his voice like the discordant clash of piano keys played with too much force—jarring, unsteady, teetering on the edge of chaos.

“My parents didn’t cut me off because of what I did,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “They cut me off because I failed them. Because I was never what they needed me to be. I wasn’t the son they could be proud of. Their other sons were successful, and I must be, too.”

“And marrying Fiona is suddenly going to make you successful?”

“My only hope of impressing them, of getting them to finally see me, is to run a company of my own. I’m not marrying Fiona for hermoney—I couldn’t care less about her money. She can keep it all, and take mine, too. It’s the winery—thebusiness. That’s what I want. What Ineed. I can help run it well, and maybe I’ll become an impressive enough son for my parents to want to invite home for Christmas dinner.”

A pang hit my heart. “Aaron?—”

“So, no, Lovisa, I’m not asking you topity me.” His voice almost became ragged, and though his words were sharp, it wasn’t from anger—it was from horribly disguised desperation. “I’m not even asking for you to understand me. Judge me. Resent me. But at least know that I’m equally aware of how pathetic I am.”

The elevator fell quiet, silent save for the gasping breaths Aaron took, like a pianist who’d raced through a piece too fast. I could hear him struggle to calm his breathing, the shaky way he released the air before drawing in more, but he couldn’t. I wished, more than anything, I could’ve gotten a glimpse of it—his mask falling off.

But I had to rely on sounds, and he sounded like a composition unraveling—one that had started with careful precision before spiraling into something frantic, trying to keep pace with an impossible tempo. He sounded like music played on shaking hands, a song that had lost its rhythm, a piece that fell apart before it could reach its final note.

I wondered if this was what I had sounded like the night in front of the fire in June, when all the pain I’d kept inside rushed out like its own raging river. I wondered if this was how Aaron had felt, then—leaning in, searching for a solution for someone that he shouldn’t have cared about.

I reached over and found his hand where it rested on the trembling ice bucket, stilling him. “Aaron.”

He let out a breath that sounded like a weary sigh.

His fingers were cold underneath mine, the chill from the ice swallowing his warmth. I pressed down on his knuckles, sharing my heat. “You can’t just make your own company from scratch?” I asked him in a quiet voice. “Wouldn’t that impress your parents more?”

His laugh was shallow. “I have no originality to me, my dear. I am not anything near that special.”

There was no teasing to his words now, no bitter amusement to his self-deprecation. He truly meant what he said. I thought of him performing the Rachmaninoff piece, the piece of his heart—thought of us eliciting the notes together. Getting me to perform for the first time in five years.That’s not true, I wanted to say.That moment was special to me, and it was all your doing.

“You said you wanted to know me—here’s the truth.” Aaron turned toward me, and I knew it because his leg bumped into mine as he shifted, his shoulder pushing in deeper, almost as if he were leaning in. “I don’t want to marry Fiona. She’s rude, and she’s haughty, and she’s awful to be around. But I’m out of time. I turn 26 in fourteen days—fourteen days before I have to be married, according to my grandmother’s will. Or then I’ll really have nothing left.”

I could hear the panic in his voice, a tremble in the chord. The desperation to please his family, to impress them—he couldn’t see that it was wringing him dry. He chased his family’s approval the way I was chasing my mother’s dream house, even at the extent of his own happiness. What dreams had he laid down for this one?

It was almost breathtaking how sharp the pain was behind my chest at that realization—that, while in drastically different ways, Aaron and I were like two sides of the same coin. Hecouldunderstand me, because his life was like this. And I could understand him.

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