Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
When I looked at Henry’s old house, my heart soared. I hadn’t made it down here in months at this point.
The fact that it always looked the same was comforting in a deep, abiding way. Everything had changed over the last eleven years. Every aspect of my life felt like it had done a 180. But when I looked at that house, I remembered a simpler time.
My eyes wandered the roof, the windows, the beat-up Buick. But there was also an old pickup truck outside. That seemed weird.
And then something impossible happened.
Henry appeared.
Out of nowhere.
A hallucination, to be sure.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I watched the hallucination of adult Henry make his way around the property, coming out from the side gate of the house with a toolbox in one hand. He walked to the crooked shutter at the other end of the house, crouching down and grabbing whatever he needed to fix it.
It was as if my heart had gently floated out into the air in front of me, and was already making its way across that narrow street, pulled like a gentle magnet all the way toward Henry. Toward the idea of Henry, at least. I had never wanted something so much. And even though I’d never for a second forgotten Henry, seeing him like this—hallucination or not—was almost too much to bear.
It all felt so fresh again. Instantly. Like every layer of longing that I thought had covered up my memory of Henry had turned on me, all at once. All of the years apparently only made me crave him more, now.
I’d always thought I might go crazy one day. If it came in the form of hallucinating a very realistic, extremely sexy, lumberjack adult version of Henry, I guessed that was a good way to go.
I was transfixed watching the man repair the faulty shutter. He was just like I remembered Henry, but so much… different. Thicker. Sandy hair that was still a total mess. Clad in flannel, which was of course what my mind decided adult Henry would wear, and was of course hot as all fucking hell.
“Sir?” Genoveve’s voice chirped from beside me, snapping me out of my trance.
I pulled in a long breath, letting it out slowly as I let my eyelids flutter shut.
“Genoveve,” I said softly, turning to her. Her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them. As she quirked her head to one side, her long strawberry-blonde braid fell off her shoulder and behind her head.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Where is the princess?”
“Remember how I always said that one day I’d likely go crazy, living the life I live?”
Genoveve nodded quickly.
“I’m afraid it’s happened. I hallucinated a man across the street at that house, fixing the shutter, and I know he isn’t there, but I’ve seen him as clearly as I see you. I’m ready to be put in a hospital. It’ll be okay living out the rest of my days there. Go ahead and make arrangements with my mother to get—”
“Sir?” Genoveve interjected, nodding over to the house. “That man?”
I glanced back over, falling silent.
“He’s right there,” Genoveve continued, reaching her arm out and pointing at him. “Would you like me to go fetch him for you, sir? You’d like to talk to this man, wouldn’t you?”
Every bone in my body had frozen cold all at once. “He’s… you see him?” I whispered, my voice hoarse.
“I’ll go tell this man that the prince would like to see him,” Genoveve said, giving me a respectful nod.
“No,” I said firmly, reaching to grab her hand. As we turned and walked away I saw Henry look over, squinting across the road.
I had no idea if he had seen me. My heart was slamming in my chest. I made my way back through the maze of Christmas trees in a beeline back to the princess.
“Have you found a painting you like?” I said, my voice coming out rushed and breathless.
“Oh, I adore so many of them—this one with the, how do you call it, dragonfly? And the mountain range—”
“I’ll take all four of these,” I said, quickly pulling out several crisp hundred dollar bills from my wallet and dropping them on the table.
“Goodness! All four—”
“Only the best for you, Princess Emma. But something’s come up, and I’d like to leave, now.”
“Oh,” Emma said, surprised. She smiled as she picked up her four small canvases, though. “Thank you so, so very much. And your work is beautiful,” she told the artist before we walked away.
I needed to get home. I needed to be alone in my wing of the castle, with a hefty glass of scotch, to calm the storm that had been kicked up inside me. I strode toward the far edge of the lot where Xavier had been holding my car, tucked away safely at the side of the parking lot. I ripped my leather gloves from my hands, suddenly feeling like I was boiling in my winter clothes.