Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
The drive back home was quiet and slow. It took me thirty minutes to get back and even then, I hadn’t succeeded in completely blocking everything from my mind.
I wanted a hug.
I wanted my mom’s hug.
She would make everything all right.
She would make me believe that I was right to keep on falling in love.
But when I unlocked our front door, the first thing I saw was Magnolia sprawled on the living room floor, half-naked and seemingly unconscious.
“Mom!” I rushed to her side, falling on my knees as I checked her pulse. It was strong and steady. She was alive. Also, she was drunk. The smell coming off her made it obvious.
Her eyes blinked open. “Baby?”
“What happened, Mom?” Not taking my gaze off her face, I carefully pulled the ends of her robe back into place. I didn’t want to see how her breasts had started to sag, didn’t want to see how much she had let herself go ever since my father had dumped her when I was six.
“How was your date with Vic-Vic?” Her voice was slurred, but her eyes were intensely bright, and I knew she had started using again.
My heart broke the second time, but this one was worse because the wound was older and deeper.
Before I could answer her, Magnolia continued sadly, “Roland left me. He told me I’m an old hag.”
Goddamn you, Roland. Granted, he was twenty years my mom’s junior, but he didn’t have to say that to her face.
Magnolia looked up at me. “Do you think so, too?”
I gazed at her, and I saw who she had been. The world’s most successful model turned entrepreneur, someone who had used her inheritance to build a fashion empire.
I gazed at her, and I saw who she was now. A woman the whole world laughed at for the way she kept kissing younger frogs in search of true love. None of them seemed to remember how beautiful my mom was, inside and out, when she thought my father had still been a prince and he hadn’t turned into the biggest frog on earth by leaving her for my own babysitter.
The world might never remember who my mother was, but I did. She was the greatest mom, then and now, and I would never hold her need for true love against her. Pushing her hair away from her face, I shook my head. “I’ll never think that, Mom.” All the hurt that I felt from Victor’s betrayal faded in the face of my mother’s pain. My heartbreak could wait. It was Magnolia who mattered.
My mother stirred in my arms with a sigh. “You have it so lucky, baby.”
The slur in her voice was more pronounced now, and it was accompanied by a deliriously singsong note. She was no longer herself, and knowing it hurt. I looked around and saw the empty bottle of whisky on the center table as well as the stuff she used for taking drugs. The sight of it hurt even more, and it made me want to cry. The pain of having Victor – the boy I loved – slap me was nothing compared to this.
Magnolia’s eyes drifted shut. “You have it so lucky, baby. You’re still so young. No one’s going to think you’re an old hag.”
No, Mom, I thought fiercely. I’m lucky because I have you.
Her voice turned into a sob. “I just want someone to love.”
And you do.
I’m here for you, Mom.
I love you.
But I didn’t say the words because I knew that Magnolia wanted a different kind of love, and it wasn’t wrong for her to want it. It wasn’t.
Fighting to hold back my tears, wanting to be strong for her the way she was once strong for me, I started stroking her hair again. “You’ll find him sooner or later, Mom,” I whispered.
And as long as Magnolia kept kissing frogs, I’d do the same thing, too. I’d prove to the world that kissing frogs didn’t make me – or my mom – a slut.
It was just one way of finding a prince.
Eight Years Ago
Nik Alexandropoulos’ handsome face remained impassive throughout the twenty-minute footage that revealed Beth Lewis’ duplicity. His posture was just as unrevealing, Nik’s straight back and elegantly crossed legs merely painting the same picture of formality that he had always displayed.
No one inside the private conference room would ever guess that deep inside, the twenty-year-old heir to one of Greece’s most powerful billion-dollar empires was reeling. Why was he even surprised, Nik found himself wondering tautly. Why did he even foolishly think she would be different?
Beth was not the first one to betray his trust, wasn’t even the second. She was just one in a long line of foster parents assigned by the law to take him in until he reached his age of majority and was able to take full control of his fortune. Like all her predecessors, she had found herself unable to resist the temptation of cashing in on his name.