Rule Breaker (Mixed Messages, #1)

by Lily Morton

Yes, Cinderella won a real prize - a man who couldn’t see her true worth until she fitted in the shoe properly.

“Tradition comes from something being so brilliant and such a good memory, that you try to recreate it every time that you can.”

He makes me feel alive, the way that my mum had always promised me would happen when I met someone serious. But I know looking at him that I still mean absolutely nothing to him.

The knowledge comes to me slowly at first and with no initial fear, seemingly a part of this dreamlike shower. I’m in love with him. For a long second, I try out the knowledge for fit, and it does. It fits and fills all the parts of me, stretching out perfectly until I can feel it in my bones. I love this grumpy, irascible, yet sometimes tender man. How could I not? I see now that all the rage he sometimes fills me with is the flipside to this feeling, the other side of the coin.

He’s a conundrum, this man. Doesn’t want to hurt me, is worried about it so much, and then does it every time.

“Sometimes we think that a certain path in life is the way we have to go. We see other routes, but we avoid them because we’re so insistent they’re not for us, that we might get lost or hurt. Then sometimes fate sets in, and someone takes your hand or waves you over. You step off your chosen path, and find that although this one is new and scary, somehow your feet know the way to navigate it. You might even find that it leads you the way that you were always meant to go.”

It hurts to know that fate has given me the perfect person for me to love, but has failed to make it reciprocal.

You could go out tomorrow and find someone better for you, but the truth is that no one will ever need you like I do.” He pauses and then says firmly. “No one will ever love you like I do.”

I suppose what he does best is to encourage me to be the best, because he loves me. Maybe at its finest, that’s what love should be.