The Rejected Principessa Returns novel Chapter 54

Chapter 6

I pushed the cash back across the counter and said quietly, “Keep your money. Just eat.”

“Before my father passed, he made me promise-if you ever came back, I should give you something warm.

to eat.”

“I don’t want to break his last wish, but I also don’t want anything more to do with you. So take this as me

keeping my word, and please-don’t come back.”

Adrian didn’t respond. He stood there for a long while in silence, then slowly rolled up his sleeves and started wiping the tables, sweeping the floor-just like he used to when we were kids.

There was no trace of the proud professor in him, only the clumsy determination of the boy I once knew.

But Stella wasn’t having it. She grabbed the broom from his hand and snapped, “What’s this supposed to be?

Didn’t you hear her? She doesn’t want to see you.”

“If you still have a shred of decency, you’ll get out now before you drag her back into that pain again.”

I was touched by her protectiveness, but I didn’t need it. Not anymore.

I wasn’t sad. I hadn’t been for a long time.

When Adrian and I first separated, it felt like the world had ended. I thought I couldn’t breathe without him.

Every night, I dreamed of us-playing together as children, sitting side by side doing homework after school, stealing shy kisses in the summer heat, holding hands under the first snow and whispering forever.

But when summer’s warmth faded and the snow melted, everything turned gray.

Autumn came with the sound of whispers-cruel, mocking whispers.

People said I was a nobody chasing a man out of my league. That my family had clung to him for what he

could give.

“If not for you, Dr. Vale would’ve achieved even more.”

“She’s not fit to stand beside him.”

“She doesn’t even understand quantum theory-how could she possibly belong at Summit University?”

“To think a man like him was ever with someone like that-it’s humiliating.”

The ridicule mocks, Nora’s smugness, Adrian’s coldness-it all carved me open, piece by piece.

I hurt myself just to feel alive, chasing pain because it was the only thing that reminded me I was still here.

My mother waited outside my room every night, too afraid to interrupt, too afraid I might not wake up the next morning.

Chapter 6

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That, perhaps, was the best ending we could ever hope for.

Chapter 9

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