Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I was looking at the castle, but all I could see was him.
Sebastian was the one person who had made me forget my home life. A person that loved me, as a given, unconditionally. I knew he loved me, even when I wasn’t sure anyone else did.
I could still remember the look in his eyes, the evening we had planted the pine tree. The look that I’d thought was sadness as we finished planting it, when in reality, Sebastian had been longing for me like I’d longed for him.
He hadn’t spoken to me since, and I likely never would talk to him again. But he had known me better than anyone.
That life had ended long, long ago.
Sebastian was in there somewhere, roaming the halls. And yet I’d never felt further away from him.
When I saw Sebastian’s face my heart skipped a beat.
I’d only been back in Berrydale for a few hours when I saw it. Not in real life, but looking out at me from the front page of the Berrydale Bugle front page.
I squinted as the afternoon sun reflected off of a bank of snow on the sidewalk nearby. I’d come into the center of town to pick up groceries, but the newspaper outside the front door had caught my eye.
My instinct was to ignore it. Sebastian had always been embarrassed when royal family news was covered in the village paper. He knew it singled him out. He knew that half the time, the news was wrong, or just silly gossip gone awry. Every time I tried to pick up a paper and read about something his mother did, he’d bat it out of my hands.
But that was a long time ago.
My chest tightened as I picked up the paper. It was a picture of Sebastian at some sort of fancy dinner in the castle.
Ambrose Royal Family Hosts Belorian Diplomats, In Talks to Join Families
A tightly wound spool inside me unraveled in an instant the second I let my eyes focus on the photo of Sebastian.
It was the first time I’d let myself look at a picture of him in years. For so long, I couldn’t stand to look at anything that reminded me of him. So much desire and so much anger welled up in me every time I tried, until eventually I stopped trying at all. I treated Sebastian like a locked box stuffed somewhere very deep in my heart. A box I never opened. A box I’d die with.
In this photo, he was standing next to his mother. Three other important-looking people flanked him on the right. One of them was a young woman with golden blonde hair, in an elegant deep purple silk dress.
In the picture Sebastian looked… every bit a prince. He was dressed to the nines, in a suit perfectly tailored to his body. His dark brown hair was in a perfect swoop on top of his head, perfectly manicured to look effortless.
He’d grown into his body like I’d known he would. He’d been a little gangly as a teen, but he had filled out his tall frame, lean and well-postured.
His face was the problem.
It was arrestingly beautiful, to be sure. But his eyes were haunted. He didn’t even look like he was trying to smile.
Like he couldn’t even fake a sense of joy for the split second the picture was taken.
I started skimming the article even though every modicum of good sense in my brain was yelling at me not to.
“The Ambrose Royal Family makes an international splash again … Prince Sebastian and Princess Emma Janssens of the European Kingdom of Beloria were said to be cuddled up by the fire, rekindling a romance that’s been smoldering for years … Queen Charlotte is hopeful that a marriage isn’t too far off!”
I shoved the newspaper back onto the stand, taking off down the street. The clouds had shifted again, covering the sun and casting the small street in a grey haze. It was a short walk back to my mom’s house—my house—and by the time I got back, I had worked up a sweat under my flannel.
My heart pounded as I closed the front door behind me.
As a kid I’d always been so scared of ghosts, but now the things that haunted me in real life were so much scarier.
Sebastian haunted me. No matter how hard I tried to forget him. It was like a piece of his soul had ended up in me that night, so long ago, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I still needed him, somehow. He’d been my first kiss. My first love, to be sure.
I tried to tell myself I didn’t fucking need him now. At all. The thought of going anywhere near the Ambrose Royal Family made my stomach turn like I’d had sour milk. But Sebastian was an integral part of that now, proud and assimilated.