Page 43 of The Princess and the Fraud

Aaron let out a little breath through his nose, something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. His presence tickled the back of my neck; close, but not too close.

Until, without warning or hesitation, Aaron slipped his arms around me.

Using his left hand, he picked up my right wrist and laid it across the back of his own, so that my hand perfectly covered his right. I almost jerked away, and would’ve if he hadn’t tightened his grip on my arm.

“Trust me,” he murmured, and his voice was directly in my right ear, a murmur of breath that caused me to hold mine. He released my hand to lay both of his on the keys, fanning out each individual finger as wide as he could. My left hand rested in my lap, but my other almost trembled where it sat atop his. “You liked the crescendo, right?”

I cleared my throat, beginning to growwaytoo warm. “Yeah.”

Aaron shifted forward even further, his chest brushing against my spine. Before I had the chance to pull away, to tell himnever mind, to shake off the weirdness of the entire situation, he began to play.

As before, Aaron didn’t have to move his right hand dramatically to elicit the strong notes. Watching him play from afar earlier had been a terrible injustice to watching the movements now, up close. His left hand did the work, tracing its way up and down the keys as if riding a wave of music. The tendons underneath his skin flexed with each measure, my own fingers journeying with his right. Feeling him physically making the music caused something to stir and swell in my chest, and it was only then that I became aware of my frantic pulse in my throat.

Who said anything about hearts fluttering?My words to Caroline had been a cruel foreshadowing.

The strength and quickness of the crescendo began to slow into a calmer finishing of the second movement. For a few measures, only his left hand touched the notes, until he spread his right fingers as wide as they could, to hold the final keys.

When the piano fell silent, he let out a small breath that slipped along the skin of my throat. “It sounded a bit off without the pedal,” Aaron said, still poised over the keys. “Less impactful. It would’ve been stronger with it.”

“I thought it sounded good,” I murmured, but my voice wasn’t as steady as I meant for it to be. I fought the urge to lean into him. “That’s the perfectionist in you speaking.”

“Indeed. It comes out frequently in your presence.” Aaron chuckled, the velvet sound almost as soft as his skin. “Shall we go again?”

Hesitantly, I nodded.

Aaron started the crescendo of the second movement over from the beginning, and this time I allowed my own fingertips to press firmer against his. My palm became more of a weight on his hand, and he held it steady, not dipping under the pressure. His chin brushed the top of my shoulder, a tickling touch.

And, admittedly, goosebumps began prickling up my arms.

I could’ve shut my eyes again as we played. I was an imposter, riding the coattails as Aaron led the way, but it was still the first time in five years I made music. It wasn’t the cello, and it wasn’t nearly enough, but my soul drank it up, desperate and dehydrated.

And it felt so… intimate.

The movement ended with the same finality as it held before, leaving the two of us in the quiet ballroom, our hands still connected. “You have good hands for piano,” Aaron said after a moment. “I don’t. I, ah—I have small hands.”

I hadn’t noticed until that moment that his hand underneath mine was ever so slightly smaller—fingers slender, but if we were to align the base of our palms, mine would be longer. “If it’s any consolation, I do have big hands for someone so short. And chubby fingers.”

“They’re perfect.”

I swallowed, locking down on the swell in my chest.

Aaron slid his hand out from underneath mine and came around the piano bench, settling in beside me. He was careful to keep an inch between us, to not allow our shoulders to brush. “Want to try on your own?”

I teetered on the edge of saying yes, but it was too much—that was a line I could not cross. Feeling him play had been an indulgence, and that was enough. It needed to be, or else there’d be no locking away the desire. So, instead of nodding, I said, “It seemed like it went well with Fiona today.”

Aaron blinked at the sudden subject change. “Did it?”

“Did it not?”

“Sometimes I can’t tell,” he admitted. He began playing a low, quiet melody with his left hand, allowing his right to rest on his knee. “Annalise says it’s because I’m bad at reading social cues. I knew Fiona seemed happy, but I can’t tell if it’s genuine. Around people like this, around here… it’s harder for me to tell when someone means something and when they don’t.”

I looked at his profile. Despite not touching, we were close enough on the bench that he filled my view, his smooth skin showing no signs of a lie. “You do a good job hiding it.”

“I’ve had twenty-five years to learn.” Aaron turned his head toward me, the dark brown depth of his eyes bright. “I… say things a lot that come out wrong. Too harsh, or too rude. I’ll try to make a joke, but it sounds like I’m being serious. It happened a lot with Margot. And I think it’s happened a lot with you.”

My voice was dubious. “You’re saying it was a misunderstanding, asking Margot to marry you to inherit her company?”

“I thought she and I had been on the same page with that.” Aaron sighed a little. “It was a misunderstanding, though, when I told her that people like us aren’t made for love.”

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