The Marriage Pact

by Winter Renshaw

  “I think we should call it off,” he says.

  Wait, what?

  In yet another one of my life’s infamous plot twists … he’s breaking up with me.

  I can’t say I saw that coming.

  Staring at the man who still holds my heart in his teeth, I could describe the way I feel about him, but it would be like trying to describe a color that doesn’t exist—I wouldn’t know where to begin, and the thought of even trying leaves me speechless and frustrated beyond belief.

  I try to say something, but there isn’t enough air in my lungs and my throat is on fire, tight with a cry I refuse to let out.

  “Emelie,” he says, but I’m already halfway to the door, and when I get to the hall, I’m sprinting.

  I need to get out of here.

  Chapter 50

  Julian

  I’m frozen, paralyzed, numb.

  “Julian?”

  I glance up and find my mother standing in the doorway.

  “What are you doing in the drawing room? And why are you wearing that? Aren’t you supposed to be getting dressed?” She checks the diamond watch on her wrist. “The photographer should be here any moment.” She strides toward me in her royal blue gown, and I’m engulfed in her lilac blossom perfume as she fusses with my hair.

  I imagine it looks terrible now, half-damp and uncombed, but it’s the least of my concerns.

  “I swear I just saw Emelie running down the hall,” Mum says, finger-combing my hair into place. “Though perhaps it was someone else …”

  “It was her.”

  My mother laughs under her breath. She thinks I’m joking.

  “I called off the wedding,” I say, my chest so tight it feels like it could burst from all the pressure at any moment.

  She’s silent as she watches me with narrowed brows. “What? Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

  “I don’t want to get into it right now, Mum.”

  “If the two of you had a disagreement, surely it can be worked out. Go to her. Find her.” Her hand cups the side of my face. “If you love her, you would fight for her.”

  Mum is right.

  Forget about letting her have a moment and giving her space. I’ve given her space for eight years. I place my hand over hers. “You’re right. And I will.”

  With that, I make my way to the Lundberg Wing until I find the west corridor where Emelie and her guests are staying. I try three doors before someone answers, and it’s Lucienne.

  “Luci, I need to speak to Emelie straight away,” I say, breathless.

  Her head is angled and if looks could kill …

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “Packing.” She keeps the door firm in her grip, sending the silent message that I’m not getting in. I glance over her shoulder and spot Delphine in the background.

  “Delphine,” I say.

  She won’t look at me.

  “We’re taking her home,” Luci says. “You should go.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “Not without talking to her first.”

  “You really should go,” Isabeau appears from behind Luci, sharing the same annoyed expression as her sister.

  “I love her,” I say. “I’m not letting her go without a fight.”

  “If you love her, you’ll let her go,” Luci says. “Haven’t you hurt her enough?”

  Before I have a chance to reply, she shuts the door in my face. She doesn’t even slam it. It’s just a slow, gentle close with a click that echoes through the empty hall that surrounds me; the haunting sound of finality.

  Chapter 51

  Emelie

  Twenty-four hours ago, I was standing in a room with twenty-foot ceilings, gilded palace mirrors, and a team of royal stylists and a world renown hair and makeup team all ready to make me the most beautiful bride who ever walked this earth.

  Now I’m back home in North Carolina.

  Correction—I’m in Mama’s new apartment in North Carolina.

  My townhome is emptied out, all of my things in a storage unit.

  I have nothing but three suitcases and a broken heart.

  I don’t even have a job anymore—I gave that up when I moved to Chamont last month. And I loved my job.

  I’m lying on the guest bed in Mama’s spare bedroom-slash-office-slash junk room. She isn’t all the way settled in yet and there’s a stack of moving boxes five boxes high in the corner. One good push and the whole thing would topple over. It’s almost a metaphor for what happened yesterday. One person’s actions made it all fall apart.

  Julian has called countless times. Literally. I stopped counting after a while and I turned my phone off. He can be as persistent as he wants. He can be as sorry as he wants. He can tell me he loves me a million times. It’s not going to change what he did.

  Honestly, I wish I could forget the past month. If I could erase it clean from my memory, I’d do it without hesitation. If I could disremember all the sweet things he did and said and the way he made the most ordinary moments feel magical, I would.

  But he left an imprint on my heart, even bigger than the first time.

  Julian is like a storm: beautiful and ruinous, always leaving damage and destruction in his wake. That’s just who he is, and I’m trying to accept that. Hopefully someday I will.

  I reach for my phone on the nightstand and power it up.

  Fifty-nine text messages from friends and family—the majority being from my sisters who have offered me their unflinching support as well as their shoulders to cry on in the past day, both literally and figuratively.

  And then there’s one from him …

  “Call me, Emelie. I love you,” he writes.

  I don’t know why he bothers. If he loved me, he wouldn’t have waited until zero hour to tell me the truth.

  I think about that moment in bed last week when he promised there would never be any secrets between us.

  He lied.

  And then I think about how he called off the wedding without so much as an explanation.

  He broke my heart.

  Don’t get me wrong. I was furious with the man. Livid. But deep down, there was a part of me that thought … or hoped … maybe we could work it out after the wedding. That maybe it was an honest mistake or Julian getting caught up in his old ways. Maybe he loved me so much he was afraid to tell me, afraid he was going to lose me, so he was willing to resort to his old behavior to keep me.

  It doesn’t make it right.

  It does make me wrong.

  I was wrong about him.

  He never loved me. I was a pawn from the start and when he no longer needed me, he discarded me because that’s what you do with pawns: you dispose of them when they no longer serve your needs.

  If he loved me, truly loved me, he wouldn’t have called off the wedding after I told him I would still proceed with it.

  My mind wanders to better times with Julian. Our trip to Paris. The way he kissed me with equal parts greed and tenderness. Moments when I’d lose my train of thought or get flustered when I caught him looking at me a certain kind of way. I also think of the little things, the unexpected gestures like sharing his music with me or leaving flowers at my bedside.

  I’ll forever miss that Julian, and I’ll forever cherish our romance, however unfairly fleeting it may have been.

  Drawing in a hard breath, I type a response to his text: Please delete my number.

  And then I block his.

  Chapter 52

  Julian

  It’s been fifteen days since I saw Emelie last, and each day seems to be harder than the one that came before it.

  I called her incessantly that first weekend.

  I called her mother, her sisters, even Gillian.

  Every voice message went ignored.

  I texted her with a simple, “Call me, Emelie. I love you.” But she replied asking me to delete her number. The very next time I tried to call, I couldn’t get through. Either she has me blocked or she changed her number.
r />   I get it.

  She’s hurting. She’s angry. She wants nothing to do with me.

  And I don’t blame her.

  I just wish she would have let me explain why I called off the wedding.

  “Sir, may I open some windows for you?” Harrison says, making his way around my room Sunday morning. “Perhaps some sunshine and fresh air are in order?”

  I can only imagine what the palace staff is thinking and saying—the poor, petulant prince sulking in his room over his broken heart. And I’m not sulking. I’m kicking myself. I’m missing her. I’m reliving some of the best and most fleeting moments I’ve ever known.

  And I don’t need their sympathies.

  I need Emelie.

  The media’s been having a field day with the calling off of the wedding, though they’ve spun it in such a way that it appears Emelie “realized I was crazy, called off the wedding, and fled back to the states.” From what I hear, they’re selling more magazines post-breakup than pre-wedding.

  Trevor, our public relations representative, offered to put out an opposing story clarifying that it was I who called off the wedding, but I told him not to bother. I would rather be vilified by the media than let them eat Emelie alive.

  “By the way, your mother called,” Harrison says. “Again.”

  “Has she now?” I pretend to be surprised, though my tone is flat. If it weren’t for my father and his recovery, I imagine she’d be stopping over on a daily basis to check on me.

  She wasn’t thrilled when I called off the wedding and she still doesn’t know anything about the details of the arrangement I made with Emelie, but her sympathies have been unflinching during this time.

  My father, on the other hand, seems to be rather indifferent as my marriage or lack thereof has no effect on his current affairs. Only time will tell how he truly feels.

  Harrison makes his way around my room, and sunshine enters through parted curtains.

  “All due respect, Your Highness,” he says when he’s done, “but perhaps a change of scenery would be in order?”

  The thought of traveling holds no appeal to me in this moment.

  His hands form a peak. “I was thinking something along the lines of … the United States? North Carolina? To be specific.”

  “Harrison …”

  “Please, sir. Hear me out.”

  I tug the lapels of my velvet robe into place before crossing my arms over my chest. “All right.”

  “The way I see it, you have nothing to lose. You’ve already lost her, technically speaking, so it’s not like you can lose her again,” he says. “You didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before she left, and I can only imagine all the things that were left unsaid … maybe if you gave it one last try. Go to her. Find her. Pour your heart out. And if she still wants nothing to do with you, then you’ll know. And you’ll be able to move on.”

  I sink back into my chair by the unlit fireplace and stare ahead at the marble hearth, my hand raking my jaw, and I think about all the reasons I’ll never be able to move on.

  Never in my life have I known a woman so genuine, so unafraid to call me out when necessary. She was never trying to be the person she thought I wanted her to be—she was never fake and phony for the sake of trying to impress me. Emelie had the sweetest sense of humor, quiet smiles, and a sexy, contagious laugh that always came out of nowhere.

  When I was younger, I tormented her. I was the pesky big brother she never had and never wanted. And she was the gullible kid sister I never had. She hated me, and I loved every minute of it.

  But as we got older, I began to see her in a new light, and when I was eighteen and she was sixteen, I decided to take a different approach. I stopped pestering her and started complimenting her. I stopped putting toads in her bed and started asking if she wanted to look at the stars instead.

  We were just getting started when our budding love was obliterated.

  Eight years later, history seems to have repeated itself—only this time I’m to blame.

  She might not want to see me, but I need to tell her I’m sorry. That I never meant to hurt her. That I’ll always love her.

  And then I’ll tell her why I called off the wedding.

  I think about her text where she asked me to delete her number. I didn’t, of course. But I’ve left her alone since then, respecting her request. I have, however, contacted Delphine once to check on her, but Delphine was ice cold and the conversation lasted all of forty-six seconds. She said Emelie was doing “as well as can be expected” and then she informed me she had to go.

  My mother has visited a handful of times over the past couple of weeks, but she’s had her hands full dealing with my father and his recovery. So far, so good. The doctors expect he’ll be back on his feet in no time. When the time is right, my father will issue a public statement and apology. I haven’t spoken to the prime minister, but I imagine it should suffice.

  I will say over the past two weeks, the strangest feeling has sunken into my bones, and the only thing I can compare it to is homesickness. Despite the fact that Chamont has always been my home, there’s something about Emelie that felt like home too, like a soft spot to land and a shelter from the storms I always seemed to find myself in.

  She saved me from myself when I didn’t know I needed saving. And she sheltered my heart in a way that no one ever has and no one ever will, I’m sure of it.

  My chest fills with warmth and fullness when I think about the better times, the sweeter moments that were mere weeks ago. In some ways they feel like yesterday, and then there are moments they feel as though they were a lifetime ago.

  “Was I wrong to call off the wedding?” I ask.

  “That depends. Were you doing it for her or were you doing it for yourself?”

  I pause, contemplating the answer. “Neither. I did it for us.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “I wanted to marry her. Just not like that. Not on the heels of a bitter argument. Not with her saying her vows with a smile on her face and resentment in her eyes as she looks at me. We deserve better than that. I wanted to make her mine, just not like that.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “I didn’t get the chance. She ran off and when I tried to see her later, she wouldn’t have it and within hours, she and her family had packed up and left.” I exhale. “For days, I called her. She eventually asked me to stop.”

  “People say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re hurting,” Harrison says as he makes his way to the door. “They do a lot of things when they’re hurting too. You should go to her. Tell her everything you told me. Like I said, sir, you can’t lose something you’ve already lost, but if you’re lucky, sometimes you can win it back.”

  Chapter 53

  Emelie

  A bouquet of pink carnations rests on my nightstand. Mama must have put them there when I was sleeping. For the past two weeks, I’ve been staying in her guestroom. My things are in storage until the end of the month, and I’ve been trying to line up a teaching position, but so far no luck. Sometimes districts have last-minute openings, sometimes they don’t.

  As of now, everything is up in the air and not one thing has landed … yet.

  I’m in limbo. That’s the only way to describe it. And it’s pure torture because I’ve always been a planner, I’ve always known what to expect, what’s coming next. Taking things one day at a time is a foreign and unsettling concept to me, but in this case, it is what it is.

  I sit up in bed, leaning over to inhale the soft scent of the carnations. My mother, who has hardly anything to her name, scrounged up enough to buy me these flowers, and it makes my aching heart full.

  “Em? You awake?” Mama raps on my door before coming in, and then she takes a seat on the edge of my bed. “You want to go on a walk this morning? Maybe go down to that cute little coffee shop? Get some fresh air?”

  I drag in a lungful of stale apartment air and nod. “Yeah. Sure.”


  “You doing okay?” she asks the same question she asks every day.

  “Of course.” And I give her the same answer I give her every day, though she’s my mama and I’m sure she knows better.

  “I just keep thinking …” she begins to say, “about everything.”

  “Mama …”

  “I can’t help but feel like I pressured you into accepting his offer, and if I hadn’t done that, none of this would’ve happened.” She glances down and away, and while I can’t see her face all that well from this angle, I imagine she’s holding back tears.

  I lean forward, placing my hand over hers. “He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. All of this is his doing. Not yours. Please don’t ever think that you’re responsible for any of this.”

  “All I wanted was for you to be taken care of, for you to never have to worry or struggle. All the extra things he threw in were just gravy,” she says.

  “And all I wanted was for you to be taken care of,” I say. “And Isabeau and Luci.”

  “We’re cut from the same cloth, you and me,” Mama says with a wistful smile.

  “That we are.”

  “You know …” her head tilts, and she hesitates before continuing. “Make of this what you will, but I thought you should know he called the other day to check on you.”

  Rolling my eyes, I say, “I’m sure he did.”

  “I kept it brief, of course, but I will say he sounded so … glum. Very melancholy and despondent,” she says. “Not his usual charming self.”

  “Poor guy.” I feign pity.

  “I truly think he cared about you, Emelie.”

  “He cared about me when it was convenient for him to care about me,” I say before flinging the covers off my legs. “And you should know, he’s an amazing actor. Truly. He should win an Oscar.”