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“Olivia!” Marco’s frantic face comes into focus. He is leaning over me, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Hey, where are you hurt? Olivia, look at me, come on.”
Where am I hurt? I mentally check my body all over.
Wait, I’m not lying on the street. I’m lying on top of him, his hard chest underneath me, his legs tangled in mine, his arms firmly around my back. He turned me as we fell. He cushioned my fall.
“Nowhere,” I push him aside to climb to my feet, but he doesn’t let go. He stands with me, and his hands drop to my waist, and stay around me until I can stand on my own. “You-you… Why did you…? Are you hurt?”
I turn to get a good look at his face, and I stumble. He catches me quickly, his jaw tight. But I didn’t stumble because I’m hurt or anything like that. He brought the Ducati down so carefully, even in the middle of the pandemonium, that I didn’t even scratch my knee. A car speeds past us, and I realize that we are off the road, safely out of the way, on a patch of grass.
He even thought of that.
But then why does he look like he’s about to die? His pupils are dilated, his jaw tight, and he is shaking from head to foot. His face is a mask of terror. I can feel him trembling as he holds me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him. “Are you hurt?” He took the brunt of our fall, after all.
Marco shakes his head, takes a shuddering breath.
“Did I kill the dog?” he whispers.
I peer at the road. Now that the bike is down, the dog has lost all interest in it. It is disappearing into the trees, not even limping. It nearly caused three deaths here (including its own), and who knows what else, and now it’s walking majestically off into the sunrise. That’s dogs for you.
“Not a scratch,” I tell Marco.
He immediately lets me go and takes two steps away from me. He only makes it so far before bending at the waist and becoming violently sick all over the grass.
I gasp. What on earth?
I reach him quickly and put a hand on his back to steady him. He sways, about to fall. Then his stomach lurches again, but he only retches—there’s nothing to come up.
“Are you going to faint as well?” I ask him, the same thing he told me two nights ago at the party. Well, that might be rather mean, but I owed it to him, didn’t I?
Also, if I annoy him enough, he might not faint.
“Shut up,” he bites out. “And go away.”
He shakes my hand off his back.
“Marco, you didn’t hurt the dog,” I say, more kindly than I’ve spoken to him yet.
“‘Marco, you didn’t hurt the dog’,” he mimics as if he is five years old. All my goodwill disappears. Marco doubles at the waist again, retches some more. Swears. “Just go away, dammit.”
He closes his eyes.
I stay.
***
We climb on the bike after a few minutes, and I get back into the rhythm of feeling Marco’s body rumble beneath my stomach with the motion of the movement. My mind drifts to the real reason I am making this whole entire trip, not to mention a fool of myself to some random guy and risking my life, let alone my whole kingdom and maybe world peace. This is the reason:
I don’t know anything.
And I’m getting sick of it.
I don’t know who the Rotten Royals are. I don’t know who my father had his ‘indiscretions’ with. I don’t know who my half-siblings are or how many they are. I know that my dad could probably answer all of these questions, but here’s the thing: He had nineteen years to answer them, and he didn’t.
Also, I don’t want to talk to him right now. I just… I can’t face it.
He is not who I thought he was. I think, in my heart, my dad died the day the news broke out. At least, the version of my dad that I had lived with and known my entire life. I need time to grieve that loss and to come to terms with this new dad, who lies to entire nations and jeopardizes not only his crown and country, but the entire balance of this precarious planet.
