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“Excuse me?”
“You need to do something about it, Adonis. Either have a confrontation with her or let it go. What are you going to do? Create scandal after scandal for the rest of your life? After the sensation of our wedding fades, then what? Am I going to have to look forward to you doing something abominable in order to get back in the headlines when you’re feeling unwell about it?”
“Have I done anything of the kind since we met?”
“No. But you… Yes, when I met you my first impression of you was that you were a very powerful man. And you are. But you’re also a walking raw wound. And I think that I might be the same. I understand that. I hid mine underneath layers of practicality. Under an inability to let people get close to me, to show any vulnerability. But I’m letting myself feel it now. Some of the anger. My father didn’t do the right thing by me. And I love him. I can acknowledge the complication of that. It’s difficult. It’s okay to be hurt, and still love somebody.”
“Yes. I have already acknowledged that tension with my mother, thank you.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“Of course not. Why would I speak to the person who abandoned me?”
“Because. Because you either have to let her go completely, or you have to deal with it, because if you don’t it’s going to eat you alive.”
“Maybe I want to be eaten alive. Maybe I want the reminder.”
“But it’s why you can’t love me. And I had to start dealing with the reason that I couldn’t love you.”
“Maybe I just don’t love you.”
His gaze was cruel then, and it hurt, but she knew that it wasn’t because what he had said was true. That was how he was handling his own pain. She let out a long, slow breath.
“I don’t think that’s true. Because you were very worried about catching feelings for me, so I don’t actually think that you actually don’t have feelings at all.”
“You know, we have a country to run, and these are small, petty things.”
“It isn’t petty. I don’t want to just be the Princess, I want to be your wife. And I was trying to accept the fact that it couldn’t be that way, but now I question why. Because I was a regular girl who met a prince. And that’s miraculous in and of itself. But you know what else is miraculous? The two of us meeting. The two of us finding each other. It’s an extremely unlikely twist of events. And maybe you don’t want to call it fate, but dammit all, make a choice with this gift that’s been given to us.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but then he didn’t. Instead, he turned and walked from the room, and left her there with her sandwich.
* * *
He was his father. The hard, harsh realization of that was like a gut punch.
He was his father. He was consigning her to a miserable life where she couldn’t get what she needed. And she would stay. That had been bearable before he had known that she loved him. But realizing that he was imprisoning her, separating her from the feelings that she wanted, that was what made it untenable.
Sending her away would hurt her. And he hated that. Keeping her here would destroy her, it would quite literally clip her wings. And that was the thing he could not endure. Yes, he had promised her to his people. But she had saved his life. And he owed her.
He didn’t believe in fate. But he believed that people could make terrible choices that resulted in collateral damage.
His mother had done it, his father had done it. He wasn’t absolving his mother by acknowledging that his father had been a bad match for her, but… He didn’t want to create the same situation. To repeat the same cycle. He couldn’t bear it.
Or perhaps you’re afraid…
No. He wasn’t afraid.
He was simply… He was trying to protect her. That was all. He was trying to do the right thing.
But he would… He would make sure that she was taken care of. He was not holding luxury hostage. He would never do that. He would make sure that her sisters were always cared for. That she had a soft life. That she had a library. But she would be free to find another man. To have a garden. To fly a plane. She could be Stevie, as he had met her, but better, instead of Stevie, squeezing to fit into a box that she never asked to be in, in the first place, and loving a man who couldn’t give her what she wanted in return. Maybe she was right. Maybe it would be better for him if he could forgive his mother, let her go, have a confrontation with her, but he didn’t want to change. Because the way that he was, the things that he was, kept him…safe.
She had saved his life. He owed her nothing less in return.
She’d caused him pain, dressing his wound. Sometimes pain was a kindness. As it saved you from greater catastrophe. It would be so with this.
* * *
But when he walked into the library and found her there, and she looked up at him with a glowing expression on her face, he faltered. He didn’t want to be the one to take that glow away.