“Get out. Don’t come back.”
She scrambles for the door, heels clicking frantically. It slams behind her, and I stand alone in silence.
I want to chase Addison and explain everything, but I can’t. Tatiana’s lipstick is still on my neck, and staff is crawling through every corridor.
Addison looked at me like I was exactly what Patterson had warned her about, like the character the tabloids had created was real.
I sink into my chair and press my palms against my eyes, but her face won’t leave me. That awful blankness is burned into my brain.
I’ve seen Addison angry, passionate, jealous, and playful, but I’ve never seen her expressionless. No reaction terrifies me more than anything because it means she’s already decided I’m not worth it.
The note sits on my desk, folded once, on my mother’s stationery. I assume it’s about tomorrow’s schedule or some change to the dinner arrangements, something official and meaningless.
I pick it up and unfold it, but it’s not my mother’s handwriting. It’s Addison’s.
Six words are written in her messy scribble that I’ve come to adore.
I’ve fallen in love with you.
The paper shakes in my hands.
She must have done this after the portrait session, asked my mother for the stationery, made up some excuse, and slipped it into her pocket to deliver later. She put in writing and gave me the words I’d been desperate to hear. And after what took an immense amount of courage, she walked in and found another woman on my lap.
I read it again and again and again.
She’s in love with me, which is everything I’ve dreamed of.
But there is one problem. Addison thinks I’m actually capable of destroying everything we have, like she’s disposable.
19
ADDISON
Two days ago, I walked into Louis’s office and found Tatiana straddling him with her red dress hiked up around her thighs. Her lipstick was smeared on his neck and face. Even though I should’ve walked out, I was committed to delivering the love note I’d written him without a word. Since then, I’ve avoided him. I’ve avoided the east wing and have pretended not to hear the soft taps on my cottage at midnight.
Sleeping has been impossible. I’ve not had an appetite, and it’s been too hard to finish my paintings that are due soon. I need this horrible feeling that I’m not good enough to disappear, but it has nowhere to go. Everywhere I look, I think of him and the life he’s supposed to be living. Maybe I should go home, like he suggested in the beginning.
After a delicious seafood dinner with the other painters, I take the long way to my favorite bench at the far edge of the grounds, avoiding the main path, where I might run into him. The detour adds ten minutes, but ten minutes of peace is worth it.
I’m passing the conservatory when I hear a voice, muffled but unmistakably distressed, coming from behind the gazebo.
I should keep walking because whatever drama is unfolding in there has nothing to do with me. I’ve got enough of my own.
But then I hear Tatiana’s voice, and my feet stop moving.
“I tried, Papa.” Her voice is thick and unsteady, nothing like the polished princess I’ve seen gliding through the palace. “I did everythingyou asked. I wore the dress, I said the right things, I went to his office, and I—” She breaks off, and the sound that follows is unmistakably a sob. “He doesn’t want me. He’s never going to want me. Please, let me come home.”
I press myself against the wall, barely breathing.
“I know what’s at stake.” She’s crying now. “I know what happens to our family if this falls through. You’ve told me a thousand times. But I can’t force him to—” A pause. “Yes. I understand. I’ll try harder.”
The line goes dead, or maybe she hangs up, and I hear her take a shaky breath. Then another. Then the sound of her pulling herself together, piece by piece, like she’s reassembling armor.
I move before she can catch me eavesdropping, slipping down the path.
Yesterday, I wanted to claw her eyes out. I still do, honestly. She was straddling the man I love with her dress hiked up and her lipstick on his neck. But that phone call sounded like a woman who’d been shoved into a role she never wanted, performing for a father who treated her like she was disposable. Tatiana will do whatever it takes not to be sent home, even seduce Louis. But still, it doesn’t erase the sinking feeling I have that I’m making his life more difficult than it should be.
This situation we’re in doesn’t excuse what she did, but it makes her harder to hate. Part of me resents her for it.
