Memories of walking around campus unaccompanied and sleeping a few feet away from Katie in our tiny dorm room still cause a twinge of nostalgia, but I’ve become re-accustomed to having heavily guarded men constantly surround me and sleeping alone in my enormous room.

It’s him I can’t seem to shake.

The difference is that I now know Jace Dawson exists, and that knowledge has infiltrated every cell of my body and permanently altered me in a way neither time nor distance has managed to revert.

I arrive back at the palace in a sour mood despite the beautiful weather outside. I hustle up the left staircase as soon as I enter the residence, where I immediately encounter my mother.

“Vivienne! How was your afternoon?” she asks, smiling in a way that suggests she’s spoken to Charles’s mother recently.

“Fine,” I clip, continuing up the stairs.

“Did you have a nice time with Charles?” she persists, confirming my suspicions as she follows me upstairs.

“Yes, we had a lovely time posing for the dozens of photographers camped out across the street,” I reply dryly. “I’m sure you’ll be able to read all about it in the papers tomorrow.”

My mother lets out a deep sigh. “Honestly, Vivienne, I don’t understand what’s gotten into you since you returned. Your father moved heaven and earth to give you what was your heart’s desire, and then we had to deal with the massive media fallout from it. Now, you act like you’re being tortured because you’re spending time with a well-mannered, kind young man who happens to be a Vanderbilt and likely will become your husband?”

All the fight drains from my body. “I had a nice time with Charles. Everything is fine,” I state passively, too exhausted to keep up the combative tone.

My mother sighs again. “Fine.” She turns and heads back down the stairs, leaving me to make the rest of the trip back to my room solo.

I drop my bag on the gleaming wooden floor and wander across my room over to the window seat that stretches below the bay windows. I flop down on the cushions, only to stand again minutes later, restless.

Although I already went for a run this morning, I change back into a pair of athletic shorts, then rifle through the shelf of neatly folded t-shirts. When I see the worn gray material at the bottom of the stack, I freeze. I pull it out slowly, running my fingers across the cracks that have appeared in the white letters. I forcibly swallow the lump in my throat and leave the shirt in a rumpled heap next to the rest of the stack, opting to grab a plain white cotton tee out instead.

The moment my feet touch the gravel outside, I start running. I don’t bother to stretch or jog, accelerating my pace to a flat-out sprint immediately. Footsteps patter forcefully behind me, and I hear a few grunts as the agents try to keep up with my desperate pace.