I don’t need this from anyone.
“That’s fine, Jessica,” I say, my top lip curling in what I’m sure is an ugly caricature of a smile. “I know women like you have a need to be waited on hand and foot.” I saunter around the bed, throw my shirt over my shoulders, and step into my pants as she watches me, her mouth open, her hand over her heart as if I’m driving a knife into it, slowly, point first. “If that’s the case, then I’m not the man for you. I’m sure you’ll find someone who is just perfect for you back in New York.”
As I put my hand on the door handle and pull it open to leave, I hear a strangled sob escape her lips.
In a move I will regret forever, I leave the room, leave her alone, without another look.
Chapter 37
Jessica
I’m shattered.
Devastated.
Simply crushed.
All the air has drained from my lungs, and when I suck it back in, it feels like knives stabbing my chest.
Alec’s words–his cruel dismissal–have left me in shock.
“I’m not the man for you. I’m sure you’ll find someone who is just perfect for you back in New York.”
I don’t want to cry, but one ragged sob wells up and bursts from the very depths of my soul before I can stop it.
He doesn’t look back at me.
He doesn’t turn around.
He just…leaves.
He’s gone.
It has to be his grief, the absolute exhaustion he’s feeling, the weight of the world on his shoulders, that made him say those awful things to me. He couldn’t possibly have meant those things–any of it–not after all we’ve done together, not after this grand adventure of coming halfway across the world together, and definitely not after we’ve come to care so deeply for one another.
“I do mean it,” he’d said. He might not have meant those final spiteful words that came out of his mouth, but there was one thing he was adamant about.
“Maybe it would be best if you went back to New York for a while. Just so we could sort this out without so much bickering.”
His words continue echoing, snowballing one on top of the other inside my head, building into a cacophony of heartbreak.
What the fuck?
I can’t believe it’s come to this. That I’m the one he blames for all the bickering. That he said I was whining. I cough out a bitter laugh. Until yesterday, we weren’t bickering. We weren’t disagreeing. We were hardly speaking because Alec has been so consumed by his obligations as the crown prince and I’ve been dutifully following the relentless schedule of a royal trophy girlfriend.
Don’t get me fucking wrong. There are perks. There are glorious perks that I love. The beautiful clothes. The meals prepared just to my liking. The gorgeous, glorious rooms that I get to stay in at Sainthall Palace, which is an honest-to-God fucking fairy tale castle. Watching the sun rise over the rolling hills to the south is like being the star of a Disney movie, and that Disney movie is your life story.
What they don’t tell you in the movies is that being the prince’s girlfriend, much less a princess, is not always easy.
Once the initial waves of pain and shock subside enough for me to wipe the tears from my eyes and no more take their place, I shake my head in disbelief.
Think, Jessica.
My bruised, aching heart wants to run after Alec, to find him wherever he is, and plead with him that what he did, what he said, was a terrible mistake and we can get through it.
No matter how hard I try, though, I can’t convince myself that we can work things out.
How can I go out on a limb for him—again—if there’s any chance he could reach this point again where he thinks he’s not the right man for me, and I’m not the right woman for him?
I want Alec so badly. That’s what caused the friction between us to escalate, that I wanted more from him than what he can give right now.
Maybe he’s right.
Something has to change, and that something should be me. He can’t change what’s expected of him, so it’s up to me.
“Maybe it would be best if you went back to New York for a while,” I tell myself.
Yes. I’ll go back to New York.
Once I’ve made the decision, my body swiftly moves into action.
The motions seem familiar, somehow comforting. I’ve uprooted and changed my circumstances enough times over the years that I know the process as well as I know how to navigate my own room in the dark.