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I wasn’t going to present my other evidence—the hair clip, the bubble bath in his bathroom, items fairly feminine. And, even if not, Sinclair’s short hair would never require a clip. Because I knew some deep-seated part of himself desired his father’s approval, I suspected he’d never even considered letting his hair grow longer.

“That would be Natasha Sullivan. And, if you need my reassurance, we were never married.”

“Clearly she wanted to be.”

“Are you jealous?” he asked, a twinkle in my eye.

“Maybe a little.”

Leaning over, he kissed my nose. “There’s no need. Did we have a relationship? Yes. But I learned pretty early on that she was psychotic. She’d said something about marriage the first night we slept together. We were never even engaged.”

As much as I hated thinking about him with another woman, I was comforted by the fact that she hadn’t meant anything to him.

But was I the same? Was I nothing more than a woman he had sex with because he could?

As we rested our heads on my pillows again, I closed my eyes, praying for the sweet release of sleep—and still it wouldn’t come. My thoughts drifted back to the ballet, an experience I would forever be grateful to him for—but, unlike Odette and Siegfried, I knew in my heart that Sinclair and I could never be together, regardless of how much I loved him.

Regardless of if he felt the same way for me…even though I suspected he didn’t.

And that meant that my story would be more like Swan Lake’s tragic endings.

Still, the words tumbled out of my mouth for the first time as I felt his arms tighten around me, my head nestled against his chest. “I love you.”

Silence fell over the room like a blanket but, as it continued, it grew loud, ringing in my ears. And his body felt stiff against mine.

Was he really asleep? Even if so, was his subconscious rebelling against my words? Or was he merely pretending so that he wouldn’t have to reciprocate?

His silence was a confirmation. He too must have understood that we would never work, no matter how much I loved him. Even if he felt the same way—our fathers would never accept us together.

In that way, we were like Romeo and Juliet. And why would my life, destined to be a tragedy, end any differently?

Except that I didn’t simply want to accept fate.

But as I lay there long enough for Sinclair to truly fall asleep, his arm becoming a heavy weight against me, something that happened earlier popped up in my head again. When Sinclair had introduced me, it had simply been with my nickname Lise. Not Annalise and no mention that my last name was Miller.

Sinclair hadn’t had the courage to tell his father who I was, any more than he’d let the staff know we were in a relationship. He too understood that we couldn’t be together forever.

We would never work.

The only difference between me and Juliet was that I would survive. That was the one damn thing on this earth I was good at. And even though I’d grown to love Sinclair to the depths of my soul, he was most certainly the one thing I had to survive above all else.

With that realization, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Still, I spent that weekend trying to figure out how I could continue with this charade even as I built walls inside my heart to stop the progress of this disease called love.