Rory's POV
“If you’ll let me, I want to officially be your princess, your daughter. I’m willing to accept you officially.”
The words fell from my mouth before I even realized they were leaving me. They came like a slip, a quiet betrayal of the what I had been holding in and yet, once they were out, I didn’t reach for them, didn’t try to shove them back into the cage of my chest. I let them hang there, suspended between us.
He stared at me, his expression carved from stone, blank. For a fleeting second, I thought I saw the faintest glint of surprise in his eyes, so brief it could have been my imagination but it vanished as quickly as it had come. His lips tightened. Then slowly, deliberately, he shook his head.
He rose from the chair with a sound that scraped across my nerves. His move
