Amara Meadows has always placed her job first, but with her journalism career slowly failing, she seems lost.
Although when she ends up spending a month in the palace covering the coronation of White Bridge's prince, she finds more than herself.
F...
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Turning carefully, I steal another glance of myself in the mirror and for a moment it feels unreal. Me looking like this, wearing this. I move my fingers over the silky twirls tapering down my body. One of the thin straps slips off of my shoulder as I do so, the sudden movement putting stress on the decollete structure of the dress. In a moment of weakness, I think of Xavier. About what he'd think if he saw the way the material played with every curve I had and exaggerated every feature. What he'd think of me looking so ingratiatingly elegant that I can't even recognize myself. Keeping my fingers entwined in the fabric I ignore the sound of the door opening, assuming that one of the fitting girls came to check-in.
"Beautiful." His voice takes me by surprise as he stills behind me, his eyes trailing over me. A breathless sensation fills my chest as I quickly pull the fallen strap back into place. An action not going unnoticed for even a second. I look away from his reflection and turn to face him instead, a gesture that really shows just how close he actually is.
"Thank you." My voice shakes as I force the courage to speak. I've never been this nervous around him before and I'm not sure if it's the fit of the dress or the way he looks at me, but I am ready to jump out of that window to steady my heartbeat at least for a minute. There's this feeling tugging at my mind as I remember a little more of last night, as I realize that he had that same expression on his face and I was just as confused then as I am now.
"Yes, you're very welcome." He clears his throat before stepping back and taking a seat on the couch, shrugging off his blazer as well. His awkward actions continue as he shakes his head as if he's disagreeing with himself. Paying no mind to the uncertainty I turn back towards the mirror, surprising myself when I do it so smoothly without tripping over the train of the dress.
"Maybe it's too simple..." Thinking out loud I don't expect him to say anything and he doesn't. He just scoffs with a tilted frown dancing over his lips causing my mouth to mimic his expression, not sure what it's supposed to mean.
"You're art, Amara. Not even a dress could distort the vivid creation of your being. In fact, you could be just about anything and you'd end up outshining the queen." He looks at me like that again, in a way that makes me feel all giddy inside.
"That wouldn't be very good." His frown slowly settles into the beginning of a laugh, a sound which after all this time still sounds like something too special to bless my unworthy ears. Although the room is overtaken by silence again and the noise from outside seems louder as a result. Voices and whispers all murmuring something about the prince. Unsure footsteps hovering at the door, contemplating entering the room before scurrying off. Something is bothering him and whatever it is, I know it's partly his parents' doing. Carefully I walk over to him, grabbing the skirt of the dress in my hand in a way that would make Tamara cringe. I pull myself onto the arm of the couch, allowing the dress to fall around me and to the ground. "What's going on, Xavier?" He takes a deep breath as I speak and I feel the need to prepare for what he's going to say.
"Can we just leave?" His voice was muffled, forced, and distorted. It made his face pull together as he said it. "The two of us. Just you and I. Can we just climb out of that window and run away from the suffocating expectations that wait behind that damn door?" He takes another breath and looks up at me to finish. "Just for tonight." Unsure what to say, I lean forward a little, a gesture to keep his eyes on me so that maybe I could decipher what's going through his head right now.
"Where is this coming from?" While he's pulling a hand through his hair, I hear Tamara's voice as she must be approaching the room.
"In five days I'm going to be the king of Whitebridge and it scares the shit out of me. I didn't think it did, it has always been the plan, I've been prepared for it. Then again no one ever asked if it bothered me to begin with, except you. I just need to get away for a while and we can't leave through the door and we don't have time for you to change. So I need you to grab your shoes and we need to climb out of that window and we need to get into the first unlocked car we find, which I really is hope is the jeep and we can just drive. Can you do that with me? " He takes a breath after a long rambled outcome of scrambled words and then looks at me with perfectly pleading eyes. "Please do this for me, Amara? "
"You guys still okay in there?" The door handle slightly screeches as Tamara gets ready to open it and I sort of want her to come in and force Xavier to stay. But I also want to get him away from everything that drove him to this point in the first place. So I jump up from the couch and run over to the little platform to grab my pumps.
"Break out of a huge mansion by jumping out of a window wearing a super expensive dress, steal a car, all while helping the crown prince escape." Looking out of the window, I try to spot the jeep and with a shrug, I slip the shoes onto my feet. "Why are we still here ?"
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So Xavier and Amara ran away, where will they go? How will the royals react? What sort of ripple effect will this cause?
