Of Princes and Promises by Sandhya Menon

Author:Sandhya Menon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

RAHUL

He glanced at her sidelong, her strong profile looking more delicate than it ever had. Her eyes were soft, almost unguarded. Rahul plunged forward with his thought, even though alarm bells in his head told him not to. “Do you… do you remember the winter formal?”

She looked at him, tilted her head a little, her long wavy hair brushing the tops of her thighs. “Of course I do. It wasn’t that long ago.”

Rahul swallowed. “Right, yeah. But I mean… do you ever think about it? About you and me dancing together?” He ran his fingers over a soft, worn patch of denim at his knees.

Caterina studied him, the firelight playing in her brown hair. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, and Rahul’s heart battered against his chest. “Do you?”

“Yes. Yeah. I do. That was when I—” He stopped short. He’d been about to say, That’s when I fell in love with you. Disastrous. “When I saw you in a completely different light.”

A half smile tugged at her lips, but her eyes were cool. “And what light was that? The ‘Caterina’s not perfect like she makes herself out to be’ light?”

Rahul rushed to speak, his fingers clenched together on his lap. “No, not at all. Before that night, I’d always noticed you from afar. How pretty you were”—here, his cheeks heated; he probably shouldn’t have said that, but it was too late now, so he continued—“how many friends you had, that kind of thing. But you were also just one of the ultrarich kids, always surrounded by other ultrarich kids. But that night…” Rahul shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. “You looked so young, somehow. So exposed.

“When you were watching Alaric, I could see the heartbreak on your face so plainly. I knew I couldn’t undo the things that had happened, but I wanted to stay anyway and take your mind off them, even if for just a few minutes. When you danced with me, it felt like you might break in my arms. I still remember how you looked up at me at one point and said, ‘Isn’t it funny how all the pieces of your heart can still love the person who broke it in the first place?’ We talked so much that night; hours passed like seconds. And when we were done, I felt the tears on the lapel of my tux. You’d been crying while we were dancing. I don’t think I’d ever even thought about you crying before that.”

He cleared his throat, wondering if she thought he was weird for saying all that out loud. And then it occurred to him that he’d felt comfortable enough to say all that out loud to Caterina. Whoa.

Caterina was staring at him, unreadable. Even if she did think he was weird, he needed to say this next bit.

“And after that, every time I looked at you in the hallways or on social media, surrounded by your friends, looking hard and sphinxlike, like nothing could touch you, I knew the truth.

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