Chapter 17. The Past Connection (2)

Bart laughed. A terrible, horrible thought went through his head. Bart wished that he’d never sat down next to the crying girl in that playground. He wasn’t even allowed to be there. His mother took pity on him and snuck him out of the house every now and then so that he wouldn’t grow up “too much of a prince” as she put it. Strictly speaking, as far as his father was concerned, Bart Arden never left the residence for anything until he went off to boarding school. For the first time in his life, he wished it was the truth. That the first woman he met was the one in front of him, the one that was so taken with him, that he was so taken with despite telling himself that she deserved better, the one his father didn’t object to. The one he could marry tomorrow. If she had been, she would have suited him exactly and his heart would still be in one piece.

Maybe it was the soul crushing pain that these useless wishes brought, the feeling that meant he was still irrevocably hers, but