Cathy closes the door behind her and gives me a hesitant smile. “I heard about the letter.”
“Father told you?”
She nods. “Congratulations. I always knew you’d do big things.”
“I’m pregnant.” I blurt out the words without thinking, then watch as my sister’s eyes grow wide with shock.
“You’re what?”
“It’s Prince Theo’s.”
“Holy fuck, Cara.”
I wince. Things must be bad when Cathy is swearing. I think I’ve heard her say bad words two or three times in my entire life.
She sits on the edge of the bed, placing the coffee and muffin on my bedside table. One of the Juilliard pamphlets crumples beneath her, but neither of us tries to move it. The silence in the room is oppressive. Cathy stares at a spot on the floor, her hands gripping her knees.
“Does Theo know?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“When did you find out?”
“Yesterday afternoon, right before I got home.”
My sister lets out a long sigh. She runs her fingers over her eyebrows to smooth them, a motion she does whenever she’s worried. Finally, Cathy looks at me.
“What are you going to do?”
My bottom lip trembles. I suck in a long breath, and finally force my voice to work. “I don’t know.”
Cathy’s always been the responsible one of all of us. She’s the eldest, and she has our mother’s strict propriety carved deep into her soul. Her posture is always perfect, and she values things like manners and traditions.
Right now, though, her shoulders soften. She opens her arms toward me and wraps me in a tight hug, rocking back and forth as I struggle to keep my composure.
As the first tears slip from my eyes, I know I’ve lost that battle. The dam is about to break. An ugly, snorting sob racks through my body, and Cathy just holds me. She rubs my back and shushes me softly until my sobs quiet down and I’m able to pull back.
“I’m scared.”
My sister nods.
I breathe in through my teeth, forcing my bottom lip to stop trembling. Finally, I meet my sister’s gaze. “I think I love him, Cathy.”
“Oh, Cara.” Her eyebrows draw together.
“That’s not everything.”
My sister tilts her head.
“We were only pretending to be together. Theo was getting Prince Dante to look into old laws to see if he could get away with becoming King without marrying anyone.” My voice is small when I say the last word. When we decided to pretend to be together, it felt like the right decision. It was just necessity, to keep his father happy for a couple of weeks.
Now, though?
The thought of Theo actively looking for reasons not to marry me breaks my heart. Cracks splinter across my chest as pain rattles through me.
I’m pregnant with his child, and he’s trying to find a way to break off our fake engagement.
My life is a mess.
Cathy gathers all the Juilliard paperwork in a big, messy pile and drops it on the floor. I try to hide my shock at my very proper, very tidy sister doing something like that. She climbs into my bed next to me and wraps her arms around my shoulders.
“Come here,” she says. “It’ll be okay.”
Why is it that people always say things will be okay? They say it like it makes a difference. Like I’d actually believe it. How can things possibly turn out okay?
If I go to Juilliard, I lose Theo. I have to raise this baby on my own. Best case, I struggle through voice school with a newborn baby. Worst case, I send my baby back to Argyle while I study—but that doesn’t seem like an option to me at all. I already love the little bundle of cells growing inside me. Giving it up to pursue something as frivolous as singing seems wrong.
On the other hand, if I stay, I’m giving up my dreams. No question about it. Once I tell Theo about the baby, I don’t even know how he’ll react. He’s actively looking for reasons not to marry me, and this will just add to the list.
Or maybe, his sense of propriety and duty will force him to marry me for real, whether or not he wants to. That would be the biggest tragedy of all. We’d be sentencing each other to a life of misery, all because of a baby neither of us planned to have.
I already know he doesn’t want a wife. I know he doesn’t want to lead the Kingdom into the same kind of scandal that happened with his father. I