Page 67 of The Princess and the Fraud

And in the darkness, where my brain could do nothing but connect the dots, I remembered our conversation from last June.

Do you ever feel like you wake up and realize that this isn’t the life you thought you’d have?I’d asked him.That you just… resent it all?

Aaron hadn’t hesitated.All the time.

What do you do about it?

Absolutely nothing.

“Jump,” I whispered.

Aaron paused. “What?”

“Jump,” I repeated, and this time, my hand slid up to grip his wrist. I could feel his pulse underneath the skin. “Don’t marry Fiona just because you want to make other people happy. Don’t choose a life that you’ll resent.”

“It isn’t that simple?—”

“It is.” I turned fully toward him, too, leaning closer as if that would help me see him better. My other hand dug into the towels, pushing them to the floor. “You told me to jump, back in June. You think marrying Fiona and becoming part of their family business is the magic fix-all you need, but what if it isn’t?”

Aaron shook his head; I would’veswornI felt the air move. “Me telling you to quit your job isworldsdifferent from what you’re telling me to do. I can’t just?—”

“You will be miserable the rest of your life if you marry Fiona.”

His voice was sharp. “Lovisa.”

In the dark, I forgot who I was speaking to. His desperation had jumped over to me now, and for some reason, an eighteen-year-old Lovisa popped up in my mind’s eye. “You will be,” I insisted. “And you’ll feel so lonely, because you’ll have no one you can share it with. You couldn’t tell her your struggles or worries, because she would never understand.”

Aaron’s other hand came and wrapped around my wrist, about to pull my grip off. “Lovisa?—”

“You have to jump.” I put my hand down, meaning to brace myself on the ground, but instead, my palm came down on the soft material of his pants—on his thigh. The mental image of my younger self vanished like smoke, replaced by the very real man beside me. I didn’t pull away, something foreign seizing me now. A different sort of need, one I barely understood. It was more than just fear for him. It was the bone-deep ache of seeing someone spiral into something they’d regret. Because hewould. “Don’t marry her if you don’t love her.”

“I have to marry someone!” he burst out, voice echoing in the elevator. His hand came down on top of mine, but didn’t remove my fingers. His cold skin almost seemed to brand mine, sending small shocks up my arm. “What my grandmother left me—it’s not five dollars, Lovisa. It’sfive million dollars. I—I can’t just—Ihave to?—”

“Don’t marry Fiona.” And then I said the stupidest thing possible. Plainly. Clear as day. As if it meant nothing. “Marry me.”

Silence.

The oxygen evaporated from the small elevator box. If I’d thought it’d been silent before, you could’ve heard a pin drop now. I blinked at the darkness, half convinced I’d hallucinated, that I hadn’t just said what I thought I did.

But, oh God. I had.

I had.

Heat rushed up my neck, my pulse hammering so hard it drowned out everything else. Why did I say that? What had possessed me to?—

Because I meant it. In the split second, where rational thought conceded to the almost suffocating tension, I meant it.

Marry me.

The lights flicked on, the elevator lurching back into motion, but I hardly registered it, because Aaron’s face was inches from mine. Somehow, in the urgent back and forth, we’d found ourselves close—closer than we would’ve gotten had the lights had been on. Aaron’s mask was nowhere to be seen, leaving him defenseless under the stark fluorescent glow. My hand was still on his thigh, and I should’ve pulled it off, but my confession had frozen me solid.

His wide eyes were wholly on me, as if nothing else existed. I could almost see my words echoing in his mind.

Marry me.

The thought slammed into me. I saw myself in Aaron—the way he deflected, the way he pretended like none of it mattered. And maybe that was why I cared, because hearing the way he spoke sounded too familiar. He was too similar to the young Lovisa Hahn who laid down everything she loved to chase her mother’s dream. Aaron was doing that now, but instead of another’s ambition, he sought their approval. Their acceptance. The way he wanted to believe he could be fine without love, without something real. But I’d heard it in his voice. The unraveling. The resignation.

My words had been a compulsive, desperate grab for him. A last-ditch effort to fix something before it broke.

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