photograph / ln4

fifteen

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miss americana and the heartbreak prince
by taylor swift
1:25 ━━━━⬤─────── 03:54

THIS WEEK had taken quite a toll on miss Everdeen's mind, as well as on her professional obligations. Her online interactions with Dawson had practically vanished to the point that the latter had begun to worry about her. The only thing he had heard from her was a quick email expressing a week of leave due to personal circumstances. An email that had not been crafted by Eleanor herself, but by her best friend Inez.

Inez Winters, a tall woman with caramel skin and dark brown hair that fell in a luscious bob, had been by her best friend's side since the moment she touched down in London. The only time that she left was to refill their stack of ice cream and wine.

The way that Eleanor was feeling couldn't quite be put into words. Whenever she tried to communicate the emotions to Inez, the American girl ended up in tears all over again. It was a never ending cycle—until one morning, Ella woke up and decided she was fine.

If it had all been a lie, then she would continue her life as if Lando whatever-his-stupid-last-name-was didn't even exist. She could do that, she had thought to herself as she blended out a thick layer of concealer under her eyes. It was desperately needed to disguise the dark circles, a consequence of one too many nights spent awake, replaying all of the memories of the past month.

This tactic of pretending she was fine worked for a day. Everything was fine until the moment a letter showed up on the doormat of her townhouse, one with a beautiful stamp on the upper right corner that immediately revealed its source.

"Is everything okay?" Inez shouted from the kitchen, arms partly hidden by soap bubbles in the sink.

Eleanor gulped as tears blurred her vision. She knew if Inez were to come over and see the letter, that the woman would rip it out of her hands and burn it out on the balcony. And for some reason, Eleanor didn't want that.

As much as it pained her to admit it, she fully understood why Lando hadn't told her about his real identity. As soon as she decided to Google him (after realising, defeatedly, that she should've done that much earlier), she understood completely. Sure, the moment Inez had told her not to look at the comments on her recent post from St Tropez, she had already linked it to Arden's issues with Charles' fanbase.

But it wasn't until she read about the way Lando had stood up and asked people for something as fundamental as respect, had requested them not to send his girlfriend at the time and himself death threats, that Eleanor understood exactly what he had been keeping from her. When she read the countless hate tweets directed at him and his team whenever there was a bad race, or a wrong strategic decision, or an ill-timed move directed at their favourite driver, she realised what he had meant by not wanting her to see this other side of him—it was a media-trained, completely different side of the man she'd fallen in love with.