Fairytale Come Alive (Ghosts and Reincarnation #4)(2)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Prentice thought she was not wrong.

He’d spent every moment he could with her for two summers. When she was back at home at uni, they talked on the phone as often as they could, considering the time difference and the expense (which wasn’t often enough for either of them). She wrote him letters and he did the same. She sent him packages filled with cookies she’d baked (at first these had arrived in crumbles and she’d made it her mission to find a way to get them to him with the cookies intact, eventually wrapping each cookie, dozens of them, tightly in cling film) and mad, ridiculous gifts she’d pick up here and there that she told him he “had to have” because they reminded her of him. Prentice had seven Northwestern t-shirts and three sweatshirts and even a pair of sweatpants that had a small Northwestern insignia on the hip.

It was safe to say Elle thought of him often.

They had, essentially, been “together” for fifteen months, unfortunately only six of those being in the same location.

In all that time, she rarely talked about her family but, of course, after he proposed, she’d said it was time he meet her father.

She didn’t seem excited about this, she seemed worried and Prentice put it down to normal, everyday nerves. Her mother died when she was young and she had no siblings. He assumed she and her father had formed a necessary bond because of this but any father would be cautious about the man to whom he was giving his daughter.

However now he understood her nerves were caused by something entirely different.

“Yes, baby,” Prentice took a step toward her, “this was definitely a mistake.”

Something flashed in her eyes, something he couldn’t read, before they froze again.

Then she lifted her hand and put her fingers to his ring.

It wasn’t much, he couldn’t afford much. He’d taken three years after school working on his father’s fishing boats and saving so he could afford university. Finally, he went, reading to be an architect. His mother told him, since he was a kid, he never drew anything but houses and buildings and when he wasn’t drawing, he was building with anything he could get his hands on. He built massive structures in the garden, in trees, in the lounge. It drove his mother daft since half the time he was nicking whatever he could, even to the point of dismantling furniture (and their shed), so he’d have building materials.

He went back to the boats in the summers because he needed the money.

The ring he’d given Elle wasn’t what he wanted to give her, neither was it what she deserved, it was what he could afford. He’d vowed to himself (although he hadn’t told her) that he’d eventually replace it with something that suited her, something bigger, shinier and worth the moon.

He’d been shocked when she’d loved the ring, tears filling her eyes as she examined it after they’d finished their horizontal celebration on the floor.

Her hand close to her face, her eyes glittering with tears, she’d whispered, “It’s absolutely perfect, Pren. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Now she was sliding it off her finger.

Prentice felt his gut twist as the alarm returned, sharp and vicious.

“Elle.”

“This was a mistake. I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still strong, controlled. “I got caught up in the whole…” she hesitated and, with his ring between her thumb and forefinger, she twirled her hand between them in a dismissive way, “Scotland thing.”

The gut twist tore upwards, slicing through his innards.

Who was this girl?

“The whole ‘Scotland thing’?” Prentice repeated, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, American girls have a thing for boys with accents,” she replied calmly as if her words weren’t a verbal knife thrust to his heart.

“You have got to be f**king joking,” Prentice hissed.

And if she was, it wasn’t f**king funny.

“Mind your language around my daughter,” Austin warned but Prentice didn’t even look at him.

His eyes stayed locked on Elle.

“We need to talk,” he demanded. “Alone.”

“I see no reason to draw this out, Prentice. As I explained, I made a mistake.”

He took a step closer. She took a step back.

He stopped.

She’d never retreated from him.

Never.

Even when they were arguing, which happened often. Elle could be annoyingly if adorably stubborn.

“Don’t you see?” Elle asked. “This was a lark. Annie and me –”

Prentice’s body jerked. “Don’t you f**king tell me Annie and Dougal –”

Her best friend Annie had hooked up with his best friend Dougal the same night he and Elle met. They’d been just as inseparable and had fallen just as deeply in love.

Quickly, she shook her head in a frantic way that was far more Elle than anything he’d encountered that morning and he watched panic flash through her eyes before she hid it.

“No, no… Annie and Dougal are something else,” she said swiftly and firmly.

“But you and I are a lark?” Prentice asked, his voice ugly and dangerous in a way it had never sounded before and it surprised even him.

“Well… yes,” she replied then continued. “I took it too far. Got caught up in it. I’m so sorry, Prentice.”

She rarely called him Prentice and he didn’t like it, especially not now.

She called him Pren. She was the only one in his life that did so and he liked it when she did.

And furthermore, she didn’t look sorry.

She didn’t look anything.

She didn’t look even a little bit like the girl who tore into town with her crazy antics, her abandoned laughter, her outgoing, fun-loving American cheerfulness, stealing his, and everyone’s, hearts.

She looked like a girl he wouldn’t glance at twice.

And she acted like a girl he’d detest.

He couldn’t believe he’d been so deceived.

“We need to talk,” he repeated.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she replied.

He got close and she stood her ground. He tipped his chin down and stared in her eyes.

They were cold.

“Something’s happened.”

“Yes, my father arrived and gave me a wakeup call,” she threw her hands out to her sides. “This isn’t my life. I wouldn’t be happy here. Honestly, Prentice, the idea is ridiculous. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Prentice felt like shaking her.