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He laughs. “You don’t have to look so horrified—I didn’t mean that in a creepy way. I just meant that I’ve paid attention in the time we’ve spent together.”
I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that he’s been studying me—or that I’m so transparent to him—so I take my time putting the bite in my mouth and chewing. Slowly.
I go through life working hard not to let anyone get too close, not to let anyone know the real me. It’s easier that way—easier to hide and easier to walk away when the friendship/relationship/whatever has run its course.
“I’m sorry. Did I freak you out?” Garrett reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t freak me out.” It’s only a partial lie and those barely count in the grand scheme of things, right? I mean, this whole “relationship” we’re playing at is the real lie. That’s what I need to focus on. That’s what I need to remember. Well, that and the fact that in real life, away from this idyllic little town, this guy is totally out of my league. “It’s just, you’re a prince. I thought…”
“You thought what?”
“I thought you spent all your time being watched as opposed to the other way around.”
“I do spend an inordinate amount of my life on display,” he says, tilting his head a little ruefully. “But that just gives me more time to observe everyone else.”
“Yes, but why would you want to? Why does it matter?” He’s so different than I thought he was that first day at the lake, so different than I expected him to be.
Still, I expect a flip answer from him. Something quick and easy that doesn’t reveal too much and helps get this romantic interlude—which suddenly feels way heavier than that—back on track. Instead, it’s his turn to take his time chewing and thinking. Finally, he takes a sip of wine and says, “There’s a difference between just being a prince and being the man who will one day be king.”
The light goes on. “Which is why His Royal Hotness the Second was always the playboy and why you were always—”
“The stick-in-the-mud. Yep. Definitely the reason.”
“I was going to say the sexy, responsible one…”
He laughs, but it lacks his usual humor. “Yeah, I bet that was what you were going to say.” He takes another, longer, sip of his wine.
“You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met,” I tell him. “And since my omelet told you everything there is to know about me, you know I don’t give compliments where they aren’t deserved.”
He glances down and I know he’s thinking about his scars, about all the terrible things that were done to his beautiful body. To him. And I want to say something; I really, really do. But I don’t know what to say or how to say it. Don’t know how to tell him that the strength it took to endure that and come out still sane and good on the other side is one of the sexiest, most awe-inspiring things about him.
I settle for bringing his hand to my lips and pressing a kiss in the center of his palm.
“What’s it like?” I finally ask. Then, because I don’t want him to think I’m asking about the torture, I hasten to add, “Living in a fishbowl your whole life, I mean. Growing up knowing that one day you’ll have the responsibility of ruling a country.”
“It is what it is, you know?”
“Actually, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.” I snag his gaze with mine and hold it. “And that’s a cop-out answer.”
“No, it’s not.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course it is. It doesn’t say any—”
“It says everything,” he interrupts. “Unlike a kid who grows up thinking maybe he’d like to be a doctor or an astronaut or run for president someday, I knew who and what I was going to become from the time I learned to speak. Being king isn’t a job. It isn’t something you put on in the morning and take off at the end of the day. It’s who you are every second of every minute of every day. So, yeah, it is what it is.”
“And now your father—and members of Parliament—are trying to take all that away from you.” The ugly truth seems to echo off the walls around us. Or maybe it’s just that it’s echoing in my brain, repeating again and again and again as the reality of his situation finally sinks in. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” I squeeze his hand in a pathetically ineffective attempt at comfort.
His chair squeaks across the floor as he shoves back from the table—from me—in a hurry. “It is what it is.”
Maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the most unfair thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Garrett has given everything to this country his entire life—he was tortured for this country—and now his father is going to snatch it all away from him? Not just the position of being king, but his whole identity? Everything he’s ever been? Everything he’s ever been allowed to be?
It’s one of the most awful things I can imagine. It makes me want to storm the castle and give the King a piece of my mind—and a couple of good, hard punches to the nose. More, it makes me want to pull Garrett close, to hold him tight and promise him that it’s going to be okay. That we’ll find a way to make this ridiculous scheme work.
No wonder Kian and the palace press secretary were willing to jump on the first thing that came along that might pressure the King to do right by his son. Garrett has given his life to Wildemar—would have given his life for Wildemar if that’s what the domestic terrorists who took him had demanded. That kind of sacrifice and loyalty should be rewarded, not shunted aside because he’s damaged freaking goods.
I want to tell him so, but I’m afraid of overstepping my bounds here. I’m just the pretend girlfriend who is barely an hour out of his bed for the first time. It doesn’t exactly give me the right to cast aspersions on his father, no matter how big of a jerk he is.
But I can’t leave him like this, either, jaw clenched and shoulders rigid as he scrapes half his omelet into the trash. As he pours himself another glass of wine and downs it in one long swallow.
