Page 43 of The Cinderella Prince

“I told him,” a deep, stress-roughened voice came.

Roman held me tighter. I didn’t even know how I got bent over and why there were wet drops on the floor three feet under my face. I saw them through ablur before I lifted my head and looked at the drag queen in a purple dress, a matching wig, and distress on her face. The thick, black mascara ran down Mama Viv’s cheeks.

She put her hand on her chest, her nails long and fingers spread. “I told him, Tristan.”

I exhaled the tiniest breath of air. Cedric had told me that my friend had warned him about hurting me. It had been a sweet moment, followed by a promise that he never would. And I had believed him.

“It wasn’t Roman, darling. It was me. Me. You blame me, Tristan. Do you hear me?” Mama Viv’s voice quivered.

“Why?” I whispered, Roman’s arms tight around me as he lifted me upright. He released me, but he still bristled and stood ready to tackle me to the ground if he had to.

“To protect you, Tristan,” Mama Viv said, fear plain on her face and in her eyes. “I didn’t want to see you heartbroken.”

“Well, you protected me just fine,” I said sourly.

“That’s not fair,” Roman warned me. “Mama Viv didn’t make that asshole run away.”

“What do you know?” I sneered. I stepped away from Roman and Mama Viv, slowly inching toward the exit. “None of you have any clue…” But I shut my mouth. I would be a traitor like them. Even if he had broken my heart for no goddamn reason, I wouldn’t rat him out. “None of you should have meddled.”

“Darling, I’m sorry,” Mama Viv sobbed. “I’m sorry, Tristan, but I thought it was for the best.”

“It’s not her fault,” Roman said, anger dominating his tone over distress. “Don’t be an ass, Tris. You’re pretendinglike it’s her fault when it’s Cedric’s. What the hell happened?”

“This is bullshit,” I huffed, shook my head in disappointment, and turned away from them both.

I heard Mama Viv’s sob and the beginning of Roman’s rant about my manners, but I didn’t listen to the rest. I crossed the street without looking left or right, held my breath and the infinite pool of sadness and tears that would be released with it, and hurried into the apartment.

I couldn’t stay here.

I couldn’t stay around them and around everything that reminded me of Cedric.

He left me.

He left me for a marchioness he didn’t even find attractive. He left me after all the promises and all the hopes we had given one another.

But I always returned to the same old truth. I always knew it. If I had thought otherwise even for one moment, I had been wrong. The simple truth was that I just didn’t deserve to be happy.

And I wasn’t going to find happiness here, in Hudson Burrow.

That was the life of the wretched and the hurt. That was the fate that was given to me when I had wrongly survived.

So I found a duffel and began to fill it with the few things I owned.

CHAPTER 14

Homecomings

Tristan

I wanderedfrom one town to the next on my slow journey north. Every stop I could take, I did. The house where I had grown up was my destination simply for the fact that I had nowhere else to go. The cash in my wallet was thinning fast.

From time to time, I wondered if I should just stop in one of the towns on my way home, get a job, and focus on what was ahead.

You don’t dare to look back, a voice whispered. I couldn’t assign that voice to anyone in particular. There was a bit of Cedric in there, and a bit of Roman, and Mama Viv holding back a sob, and me speaking to myself with all the hatred I deserved.

I didn’t want to go home. Nothing but pain existed there. I was going back to the place where it was the clearest to me that things had played out the wrong way on thatfateful night. I was going to visit the people I had abandoned without any way to explain to them that I had spared them by letting them go.

If only they could do the same.

---