Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Darling.
Why did that send a shiver down my spine? A good one, too.
It was the first time he’d called me anything other than Grace or Cinderella, and I could just hear his voice inside my head saying it.
Darling.
I leant my head against the sofa cushions and closed my eyes. A part of me wanted to lie here and replay that little thing in my mind over and over, but a knock at my door jolted me out of my reverie.
My dinner was here.
I quickly got up and retrieved it from the delivery driver and carried it through into the living room.
ME: My dinner is here.
WILLIAM: Anything to avoid talking about your snoring.
I snapped a picture of the delivery bag and wine bottle and sent it to him while I fetched a glass for my wine.
Not that I needed the glass.
Honestly, I was in a straight-from-the-bottle mood.
WILLIAM: I’m jealous.
ME: Of my dinner? Don’t be. It’s just pure carbs.
WILLIAM: Do you not have food at your house?
ME: No. Amber doesn’t grocery shop.
WILLIAM: How can an adult not grocery shop?
ME: She went to Tesco eight months ago when they were in the middle of their store rejig. She was on her period and burst into tears when she couldn’t find the sausages and hasn’t been back since.
WILLIAM: That seems slightly dramatic.
ME: How do you think I was able to cope with your sister all week?
WILLIAM: Touché.
WILLIAM: Grandpa is demanding I sit in on his and Dad’s meeting. I’ll text you later?
ME: You can. I just might not reply.
WILLIAM: I like my chances.
I laughed and put my phone down so I could tear into my dinner. In his defence, I think I fancied his chances, too.
It wasn’t like I was going to ignore him.
I laid out my dinner and scrolled the TV until giving in and finding something on Netflix to watch. I wasn’t even sure what I was watching, but it didn’t bore me to death, and I was able to stuff my face with my dinner and drink my wine in relative peace.
It wasn’t that long ago I’d complained about the silence.
Now, right this moment, I enjoyed it.
I hadn’t really had any time to myself since I’d arrived in Scotland, thanks to William’s appalling lack of communication. It wasn’t funny then, but now? It was funny. Looking back at how badly I’d panicked and why I hadn’t just told him who I really was, why I’d assumed nobody would know me…
Gosh, it was all so ridiculous.
I couldn’t believe it’d only been a week. It felt like my entire world had shifted on its axis since I’d stepped foot in Glenroch Castle, and now I didn’t know which way was up.
I needed to decode my feelings for him.
Decode was the exact word, too. It was almost as if my heart was speaking a long-lost language nobody had figured out yet, because I couldn’t quite make sense of it all.
How could I feel this way after only a week?
The familiarity I’d felt when I’d walked into him at the coffee shop just one month ago—did that play into it? Our family history together, was that influencing how I was feeling?
I wiped my fingers and mouth and reached for my phone, this time heading for the gallery to see my pictures. I swiped through the first few and rested back on the sofa, taking my wine with me, until I got to the ones of us at the wedding.
There were nice ones of us standing together and smiling, my red hair and pink dress a vibrant contrast to the darker castle walls. We were laughing in some, looking both away from each other and at each other, and it was one of us looking at each other that made me stop.
I rested my phone on my thigh and used my fingers to zoom in. There was just enough photo quality that it was clear, even at this magnification, and my lips pulled up into a smile as I looked at it.
I was happy.
And not in a normal way, either. His family had welcomed me with open arms, not judged me or us for the lies we’d told, and William hadn’t been angry with me even though he’d had every right to be.
At the end of it all, he’d looked at me like… I didn’t even know. But in that photo and in the few that preceded it, he was looking at me.
Just looking.
And smiling.
He might have looked at me in a way nobody ever had in my life. A way nobody else ever would.
Was that how I looked at him?
Yes.
It was, because I could see it. In the few photos where I was looking at him and he was looking away, even the blurry ones one of his great-aunts had tried to take, I looked at him like he was the most magical being in the universe.