Authors Note:

I'm taking a hiatus on writing 'It can't stay hidden forever' so I'm working through this story updating the chapters already published and adding new ones. Enjoy.

Prologue

I flinched as the bottle flew past my head, clipping my ear, as it collided with the wall behind and exploded into a shower of glass. Fragments of the bottle and its contents coated the floor – they resembled my world right now; it had been shattered into a million pieces with no way to reassemble it.

"I'm sorry. It was a mistake but one I can't take back." The plan wasn't going as I had predicted. Eva's reaction was far more explosive than I could have ever imagined. I had betrayed her in such a way, that I knew I could never be forgiven. I had wanted Eva to break up with me, to want nothing to do with me. However, I should have foreseen what would happen next.

Since we started going out my private life had become a public spectacle; I wasn't comfortable with the constant stalking; however Eva handled it with grace. She was a consummate professional when it came to dealing with unwanted attention that was until today. Today I had deceived her publically. Humiliated her in front of the watching world.

In todays society, online news coverage has made the lives of others more accessible, an unhealthy obsession with others lives over our own.

Personally, I don't understand the obsession. I keep in contact with those I care about through traditional methods, and absorb the news via a traditional printed media. However, I wasn't playing in the minor leagues anymore. Eva's PR team absorbed all social activity and they had found my secret, one that I had planned to divulge to Eva myself. But it was too late now – my deceit had reached the furthest corners of the world far quicker than I could have ever imagined. It was front-page news on everything from People to The Times and I deserved the public humiliation, but Eva didn't.

Fairy-tales normally focus on the woman finding the man of her dreams, but in this instance I knew I had found my princess. I had been dreaming above my station. I had a damn near perfect life, one that I was destroying in less than 24 hours.

Even on my deathbed I will never forget the way Eva was looking at me. I was inflicting so much pain on the person who meant the most to me in the world. It was a purposeful deceit, but that didn't make it any less painful.

Her beautiful face was stained with the remnants of her mascara. Her pain so visible it turned her golden skin deathly pale. I was struggling to swallow back the bile. My body tingled as we stood in silence staring at one another; perhaps we had always been doomed to fail.

A god doesn't marry a mortal. I was trying to be her hero, I could never tell her I was trying to save her life - after everything that had happened I wouldn't expect her to believe me.

Finally, I heard her whisper the words I had been waiting for. First they were uttered quietly and then she screamed them at me, "Get out!" Her delicate fists clenched at her side, as she physically and emotionally tried to hold herself back.

I stood for a few more seconds unsure how to proceed, and then before I knew it I was outside her door. My jacket following me out as the door slammed behind me. The city outside felt silent. For August the weather in Los Angeles was unseasonably cool, but the sweat still trickled down my back, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

I rested my forehead on the door, gently stroking it with my fingertips as I scrabbled to hold onto at least some of the happy memories that lay within. I had never paid much attention to our front door before, but I was committing every detail of it to memory now; its touch; its smell - an imposing oak wooden door with a wrought iron handle and knocker that was now a prison keeping me out.

Tonight I had broken the heart of one of the most famous women in the world; she was untouchable, unattainable to everyone, now including me.

It suddenly felt like behind the door was an exclusive members club, one that I could never have dreamed I would have been invited to and yet for a short while I had been accepted. As I stood staring at the wood grain I questioned whether all this pain was worth it, but it had to be, I had to keep her safe even if it meant we couldn't be together.

Our dream of being together for the rest of our lives was a short lived fairy-tale. The princess & the pauper.