Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
“I love you, Luca,” I reply.
My mom and Tonya surround us, and then Ivy and Harper join the group hug, and even Hans seems a little moved.
I stand in the center of my universe, and I don’t need a crown. I’m already a queen.
Confessionals
Shelby
Well, I said it would be a shit show, and it was. I mean we didn’t even get to film in the country we spent weeks talking about going to. That seems like poor planning. But yeah, I’m happy for them. I’m also available for other dating shows.
Hannah
I’m happy about how everything worked out. I learned so much about myself, and I can’t wait to see what life has in store for me. I came here to fall in love and I did. I fell in love with the city and the friends I made, and I fell in love with me for the first time. That’s what makes it possible to really love another person. I found out I deserve love, and there she was.
Riley
This was the best experience of my life. Hey, you know none of us got to do the crying in the limo thing. Why don’t you send me and Hannah out in one of them? Yeah, I just want to make out with her in a limo. Though in the regular seats. The trunk thing was weird.
Luca
I got everything I came here for. More, really, since I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure this would work. But I found my queen. I found a strong, beautiful, honest, and loyal woman to live my life with. I found someone I can’t ever sacrifice. With Anika, I can be a king, but I’m also a man.
Anika
I know. It’s huge. It’s like three carats or something. It’s kind of heavy, actually. How do I feel? Like I’m here for the right reasons. I’m here for him, for real love. Oh, is that Danish I smell? Because I lost a perfectly good Danish.
Joe Helms
On the advice of counsel, I plead the fifth.
Epilogue
The Royal Palace
Ralavia
“Fox, are you really wearing that? Did you murder the designers the studio sent?”
Patrick is still Patrick. Even six months and one criminal case in which he was the star witness—though not the only one—later, he’s still a pain in my ass.
I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that declares Ralavia is for Lovers. That was totally my idea. We have merch and everything.
And the tourists are pouring in for the royal wedding. We even have a couple of Windsors showing up for this sucker. Of course I’m not wearing jeans to my rehearsal dinner.
Which is being filmed along with the wedding for twenty million that’s going straight into the coffers. When Pinnacle dropped the project, another production company picked it up and paid through the nose for it. They re-edited it and The Road to a Crown became one of the biggest hits of the year all around the world. “No. There’s a nice dress waiting for me, but I got hungry. You know damn straight no one’s going to let me eat the food at the dinner.”
“Because it looks terrible on camera. No one can eat pretty on camera. It’s an awful gross process, and I won’t be filming it,” Patrick says, an implied duh in his tone. He glances over at the lighting crew. “Hey, be careful with the stained glass. Harper gave me a whole lecture about how it’s five thousand years old, and I’ll be stabbing history in the back if we break anything.” He sighs. “She’s going to be fun to work with.”
I smile. Patrick’s got a new job. He was hired to run production on the royal wedding specials, and he’s got a brand-new reality show. A Gilded Renovation.
Also my idea. What we realized was that Ralavian Production Studios didn’t have to just shoot in Ralavia. We have seed money and our first big project. We’ll be filming the renovation of a Gilded Age mansion with a world-famous designing brother duo and the most amazing construction manager I know. Harper. It doesn’t hurt that Harper and one of the brothers hated each other on first sight and have a whacked-out chemistry. I can’t wait to see where it goes.
We’re going back, all three of us. Me and Harper and Ivy. Back where our dreams began, where my love story grew, where we learned to dream. The mansion in the Upper East Side is getting a glow up.
But first I’m getting hitched.
“You could have taken the other job,” I say as I walk past the ballroom toward the craft service table.
“The Hannah and Riley Show?” Patrick shakes his head as though it’s the most terrible idea in the world. “Save me from small-town lesbians taking on the big city and fighting injustice.”
“I think it’s going to be fabulous.” Shelby is already dressed to kill. She’ll be starring in Island of Skanks…I mean Lovers. We joke, she and I. We’ve gotten kind of close, though she Karens out every now and then. “I, for one, want to see the moment she tells her preacher father that she went on a reality show to try to marry a king and ended up with a graphic designer with spectacular tits.”