Stella heldherself together just long enough to hear Aleki shut the door behind him and his soft footfalls drift down the stairs. Then she broke. Hot tears sluiced down her cheeks in a waterfall, unchecked as she gasped air in hulking sobs. The burn of rejection spread through her, lighting up every nerve ending with her inadequacy. And through all the pain, a tiny voice whispered into the back of her brain.
You knew you could never be enough.
And wasn’t that the pure, sickening truth of it. She was never enough. Not for Aleki, who needed a royal bride, one who would be an asset not a liability. Not for her father, whose desire for a son overshadowed every achievement she’d strived for in a never ending quest for his approval. Not even for her mother, who had died alone at home, Stella’s need for her no match for the cancer that had stolen through her undetected until it was too late because Mary Warren didn’t want to bother the doctor with her unexplained bruises and vomiting.
The abandonment she’d felt earlier at the ball pulsed inside her again, louder than before, edged with the sharp pain of self-disgust. She knew love. She’d built her career, her life, around love, yet here she was again, swimming in the dredges of almost-enough while her heart called out to someone who didn’t want the real her.
Pathetic.
Enough was enough. She breathed deeply, held it for five seconds then exhaled.
In and out. In and out. In and out.
Once she’d wrangled her respiratory system back under control, she tossed back the covers and padded across the cool tile to the en suite to wash away the sticky heat of humiliation. She might not be loveable, but she could damn well do her job. And for the next three days, her job was to be the best fiancée the Avalian royal family had ever seen. Just three days left of her trial visit and she could go home, back to the safety of her black-and-white apartment, her spreadsheets and lists, her orderly life. There would be time to discuss their situation after she returned to Wellington. To establish expectations and boundaries, and get a contract signed. No matter what Aleki had said her first day here, this visit had shown that she could not keep her feelings contained while they played house like messy toddlers, roaming the gauntlet of a real relationship without considering the consequences. It would be much better to craft an official business relationship. No sex. No easy dinners in the courtyard. A marriage in name only. The way it should have been all along.
Stella twisted the shower on, continuing her breathing exercises while she ran through the to-do list in her head as she waited for the water to warm up.
Contact lawyer for contract - not Luke’s brother! Maybe set fire to Luke’s brother’s car. Check Aleki’s schedule for a visit to New Zealand around the due date. Start looking for a two-bedroom apartment.
She stripped off her clothes thoughtlessly, her mind humming with minutiae to distract her from the yawning hole in her chest. After sticking one hand in the water to test the temperature, she bundled her hair into a makeshift bun and hooked her fingers into the sides of the underwear she’d pulled on the instant she got back to the house. Peeling them down her legs, she focused on her breath, in and out, in and out, in and out.
And then she saw the blood.