Page 38 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)

ChapterThirty-Two

Hollyn

Fourteen years ago

“ I ’m really not sure about this,” I say to Nate when he picks me up to take me to the mall in Tucker’s Town where all the rich people shop. I’ve never been inside the doors of the place, much less actually purchased anything there.

“About going to my prom with me or going shopping?” He steers the car onto the highway.

“Both,” I admit.

“We’re all just people,” he says.

It’s such a rich-person thing to say that I’m not even sure how to respond, and that’s the problem sometimes between us. He has all this privilege, and he doesn’t see or understand how that’s shaped him.

His parents aren’t great people, but they haven’t truly denied him anything. He has multiple roofs he can put over his head, multiple cars he can drive, siblings he can rely on, strained family dinners, and some form of love, even if it’s not the ideal kind.

He’s never gone hungry or worried about whether his mother would break into the apartment he shares with his aunt and steal any cash they haven’t hidden well enough. He doesn’t have to listen to his aunt explain away the terrible things his mother has done—physical, mental, or emotional.

I’d never tell him that the neglect he’s experienced doesn’t count. Being raised by nannies isn’t the same as having your mother and father involved—and I know that. But just like he can’t really relate to what I’ve experienced, I can’t really relate to his either.

On paper, Nate and I shouldn’t work. The rational, reasonable part of me knows that. We don’t make sense.

But when I’m with him, it feels like we’re the only thing that does.

Being with him is like getting my first big breath of clean air and realizing I’ve been inhaling toxic chemicals my whole life.

Stunning and surreal. He loves with his whole heart, and my heart feels so beaten up that I’ve been afraid to tell him he has it, that it’s his.

I think he knows, but I haven’t been able to say the words, as though they’re stuck in my throat, my last line of defense against free-falling into this with him.

At some point, we’ll stop floating in this alternate version of Bellerive where our vast difference in social status doesn’t matter, and he’ll wake up and realize that being in love with me is foolish. I believe that in my bones.

He grabs my hand and kisses the back of it. “I’m glad you said yes.”

As anxious as I am about walking into that mall, picking out a dress that Nate will buy, I can’t deny that I’m also glad I said yes. Despite everything, the idea of Nate going to prom with anyone else—even as friends—would rip what’s left of my heart right out of my chest.

When we get to the mall, Nate takes my hand and leads me around from one designer store to another. He tells me not to look at price tags but to just look at colors and designs. What do I want to wear?

The thing is, I’m not even going to the prom at my own school.

I’ve avoided everything about it throughout May and June, and when Nate asked if I wanted him to go with me, I pretended like we didn’t even have prom.

He either didn’t realize it was a lie, or he decided not to call me on it.

This dress—the one he’s buying me—will be worn exactly once.

I’ll never go to another event fancy enough again.

When I try on the first dress, a slinky low-back number that makes me feel too old and too young all at once, Nate gives me a broad smile.

“You look amazing but deeply uncomfortable. I don’t think that’s a winner. Do you?”

Instead of going back into the dressing room, I cross the space and wrap my arms around him, kissing him. His ability to read me so quickly and accurately constantly surprises me.

When I step back, he goes to another rack and pulls out a dress I touched on my rounds, but when I caught a glimpse of the price tag, I didn’t pick it up.

It’s seafoam green with a fitted bodice and a slightly billowy bottom from the waist down.

It’s the kind of dress I could see a princess wearing or a famous person.

“What about this one? It seems like you?” He looks back and forth between me and the dress.

“I’d never have anywhere to wear it again.” Even the dress I have on right now is so expensive that it made my stomach hurt to try on.

“You will.” His eyes light with amusement. “You can wear it to our rehearsal dinner when we get married.”

When I seem to hesitate, he continues, “Or any of the charity things we’ll have to attend when you’re my wife.”

He says it like it’s a fact, and I’ve stopped trying to correct or question him. He told me once that every single part of him believed we’d get married, that even if I didn’t love him with the same intensity that he loved me, that I’d learn to trust him and us.

But I do love him like that. I just can’t seem to say the words, so I’ve stopped telling him no because every part of me wants to say yes to it all.

“I guess I could try it on,” I say, taking the hanger off his outstretched fingers.

In the dressing room, it slips over my body as though it was made for me. There’d only been one size of this dress left, and it just so happened to be mine. When I stare at myself in the multiple mirrors of the oversized changing room, I can’t help being amazed.

For the first time, maybe I can see a glimmer of what Nate says he sees when he looks at me. Except it’s not all there yet for me—just potential. The notion that maybe, with enough money and time, I could fit in.

When I step out, Nate looks as though he’s forgotten how to breathe. His palm flattens against his chest, and after he’s looked me over from head to toe, he meets my gaze.

“I mean…” he says.

“Yeah,” I agree with a self-conscious laugh. “It doesn’t even look like me.”

“It does,” he says, and he steps toward me and tucks my hair behind my ears. “It’s exactly you.” He frames my face and gives me a soft kiss. “But how do you feel?”

“Beautiful,” I admit, my throat tight. The prettiest I’ve ever felt in my life.

“Then it’s yours,” he says.

“It’s really expensive.”

“I can charge it to my card. No one will even blink.”

My stomach rolls again at the cost, at the groceries I could buy, at the rent payments I could make. But it’s not my money, and if this is how Nate wants to spend his, then I can give him this. There’s so little I can give him.

I make Nate take my dress to his house to keep in the closet in his room until prom night. Something that expensive in the apartment is asking for trouble. Even if my mom hasn’t been around for weeks, she has a habit of turning up when you least want to see her.

When I let myself into the apartment, Aunt Verna and my mom are sitting on the couches. My mom has money in her hand, and I’m sure it’s come from my aunt. Seeing the two of them together is like having a rock settle in the pit of my stomach, heavy and uncomfortable.

“Hollyn,” my mother says, a slight smile gracing her face. “Where have you been?”

I’m so glad I made Nate take the dress. If she’d spotted it, she’d have wanted to sell it, or she’d have come back to steal it. Aunt Verna has never denied me anything I earned or bought with my own money, but she is also terrible at saying no to my mother.

“Working,” I say since Nate picked me up from the lunchtime shift at the bar.

“Verna tells me you’ve got a scholarship to go to school.”

I eye my aunt warily. Giving my mother details is something she’s not supposed to do. Somehow, my mother always finds a way to twist even the best things into something terrible.

“Yes,” I say.

“Does that come with any cash?”

“No,” I say. The scholarship covers my tuition and housing for the first year, but I’m responsible for food and book costs. It’s part of the reason I’ve been working so many hours. Although, sometimes I tell my aunt I’m working longer than I am, and then I spend the night or day with Nate.

My mother stands up and saunters toward me, and I hold myself very still, try not to appear afraid.

For whatever reason, my mother never touches me when my aunt is home.

I don’t know if my aunt has made that a hard line between them or if my mother just senses that my aunt wouldn’t put up with it, but when we’re all together, she doesn’t grab a fistful of my hair, or slap me, or run her razor-sharp nails along my arms, thin streams of blood trickling down to the floor.

“Thanks for the loan, Verna,” my mother says over her shoulder. “I’ll see you both again soon.”

Once the apartment door clicks shut, I glare at my aunt. “You gave her money?”

“She was about to be kicked out of her apartment.”

“I bet that’s a lie. I bet she’s using that money for all kinds of bad things.” I storm past her toward my bedroom. “I’ll never understand why you let her in the door.”

“Of course you don’t,” Aunt Verna says, her anger spiking.

The one thing we fight about is my mother.

“You’ll never understand what it means to be an older sister.

To work your ass off to protect them. To feel the full weight of responsibility for them because your parents never felt any of that weight. ”

And as I slam my door, I know she’s right. I thank god all the time that I’m an only child, that my mother couldn’t seem to get pregnant again. I wouldn’t wish Niall and Mickie on anyone, and like my aunt, I can’t imagine what I’d do to keep another person from having to experience them.

Unlike my school, where prom is in the gymnasium in June, Nate’s prom is at the palace in July. Different months. Different worlds. Nate goes to high school with the princes, and he tells me that the royal family agreed to host prom every year they have a child in the school.