Page 107 of Fake Dating Mr. Prince

“What will your mom say?”

“I don’t think she'll stop me. There’s no way she’d let me stay anyway. Not after I chose an—” She let go of the steering wheel to air quote “‘outsider’ over family.”

I cringed at the reminder that I’d never been seen as family in Elaine’s eyes.

“True.” Stella wasn’t wrong. Elaine held a grudge. “Okay, then yes. Let’s do it.”

Suddenly my follow-the-rules, go-the-speed limit at all times, sister Stella Tremaine jerked the wheel to the left. My hand reached out and gripped the door as my body jerked to the side.

“What are you doing?” I screeched when she did a sharp U-turn.

“I don’t want to wait.” Her lips flattened in determination as she concentrated on the road.

“Are you sure you don’t need more time?” I needed to be sure my sister was thinking this through. “There’s no going back. Once we quit she’ll never let us return.”

“I know. But if we wait it’ll be all I think about until it’s done. I need to get it over with or it’ll tear me up inside.” She shot me an apologetic look.

I understood what she meant. “Then let’s go now.”

A wide grin spread across her face. “Thanks, Ash.”

“It’s time to end your mother’s reign of terror,” I joked.

She gave me a half-hearted smile. Maybe it was too soon for that.

Stella was taking a massive step in changing the direction of her life. I knew a long time ago that I was ready to break free from Elaine’s grasp, but Stella had always held on. It was now time to change her destiny and for her to find the happiness she deserved.

We squealed around the next corner, heading toward the boutique at a fast pace. Stella’s nerves seemed to dictate our current speed. The speed was a nice change from her typical tentative driving. And I for one agreed with Stella—the quicker we got there the sooner we could start a new chapter of our lives.

I leaned my palm out the open window to catch the breeze. As the force of the wind pushed at me, I knew that like the wind, Elaine eventually had to back down. By confronting her with the truth she had nowhere to go and no one else to blackmail into doing her bidding.

“We’ve got this,” I said to Stella. Trying to reassure both of us that the outcome would be as we envisioned.

***

WE’D BEEN SITTING INthe parking lot of the boutique for the last few minutes. Instead of barging in, we were working up the courage to step inside. “Yup. She can’t hurt us anymore,” I said to Stella.

My trembling hand reached for the door handle. I shoved the door open before I changed my mind and swung my body out of the car. Leaning on the open doorframe, I peeked back in. “Coming?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Yes, you know I can’t let you do this alone, and it was my idea to do it today.”

I waited for Stella to join me.

Each step I took toward the shop had my stomach pitch and roll. I hadn’t expected the conflicting emotions racing through me. Happiness, knowing I didn’t have to face my stepmother again was prominent, but so was the sadness that I was now walking into my mother’s shop for the last time.

No longer would I be there to oversee the care of this place. A small piece of my heart broke with this realization.

Walking through the door, I took in all the design changes Elaine had made over the years. They were more modern and fit current standards. A visual reminder that this place didn’t even look the same helped to ease my anxiety. Knowing the type of woman my mother was, or at least the person my dad shared with me, she’d never want me tied to something I didn’t want to do.

I threw back my shoulders and grabbed Stella’s hand. “Let’s go!”

She swallowed hard and forced her lips into a nervous smile.

I tugged her toward the back room first. When Stella gave me a questioning look, I explained I wanted to let Burda know what we were about to do if Elaine immediately kicked us out. Which was incredibly likely.

I let go of Stella’s hand and gave a soft rap to the doorframe. Burda immediately turned and jumped up from her workstation. “Oh, sweet girl. How are you?”

“I’m going to be okay.”