Page 18 of Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance #2)

Days pass in a blur.

The weekend comes, and I realize halfway through Saturday that Coal and I are supposed to go to our parents’ vow renewal. Or, well, a prior version of me would have pushed for us to go.

But we don’t. We don’t even talk about it.

I have both Dad and Mom blocked, so whatever repercussions they rain down don’t reach me. I want to ask Coal if they’ve contacted him. But I can’t.

He does make us have a brother night Sunday evening, where the two of us haul up in the theater room and eat too much popcorn and candy and watch shitty movies.

It’s when we’re cleaning up the room that he stops, an empty popcorn bucket in one hand, eyes on the black screen. The theater lights are up.

“Is that how she always talked to you?” he whispers to the empty room.

My heart sinks. I don’t need to ask for clarification or examples. They’re in the set of his face, the harrowed look when his eyes find mine.

Whatever Mom’s said to him about us missing their vow renewal, Coal’s not hurt for himself. He’s hurt realizing the depth of how she’s treated me all these years.

“Don’t—” I clear my throat. “Don’t let her get to you the way I did. Don’t let it go so long, okay? If it’s too much.”

Coal bats away my concern. “Oh, don’t you worry. I let her have it the moment she tried to lay blame on me. That shut her up.” He pauses. “I’m guessing you never talked back to her? Always took whatever she threw at you because you felt you deserved it.”

I pretend to straighten the recliners we used. They’re already in line.

“Kris.”

The chair leather creaks under my hands.

Coal touches my shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

I look at him, deadpan.

He’s not smiling. Not letting me brush this off. “I’m serious. I’m proud of you for putting up boundaries. I’m proud of you for protecting my brother. Because I kind of love him like crazy.”

I chew the inside of my cheek. Boundaries. Is that what I did? It’s what I should have done, years ago. But I let it go until just seeing a missed notification from her was enough to set me off on a panic attack. Which I do have, I know now; and Wren’s hinted a few times at being willing to help me find someone to talk to about them.

But Coal shouldn’t be praising me for doing what I should have done years ago. For doing what was my responsibility to fix: protecting myself.

Is this how Loch felt every time one of us would compliment him? Uncomfortable and deflective because, deep down, it wasn’t heroic at all. It was the basest level of expectation, and we shouldn’t be heralded for meeting it.

His refusal to accept praise was grating. Wrong.

Is mine?

Coal hugs me. No warning. Just his solid presence and a too-brief moment of peace.

“You’ll believe me someday,” he tells me. I cling to him. “And I’ll keep reminding you of how brave you are until you do.”

School starts again.

I should go back.

I don’t.

No one says anything about it. Not Coal, not Iris. I ignore the emails I get about lectures and deadlines, and the decision to not go back passes over me so unobtrusively I barely notice it.

Coal spends as much time with me as he can, but he’s stretched between final meetings with the winter Holiday reps, the impending treaty signing, and the combined coronation-treaty party for after Easter. Iris comes to see me too when she’s able; and Hex.

I throw myself into helping Coal—to avoid Iris and Hex’s pity, but mostly to atone for my screw-up. We know St. Patrick’s Day stole from us; we know who, we know why. I expect Coal to come up with a gameplan for confronting them—confronting Loch —to get the joy back. I expect to walk into his office and for him to tell me, Today’s the day, we’re going to confess everything to the winter Holidays collective and hope they forgive us for losing the joy we owe them.

But he doesn’t.

Negotiations carry on. Party plans are made. I fight to stay attentive during meetings, and anytime there’s a task that needs doing , however mundane, I jump on it, hurling myself headfirst into all necessary writings, administrative duties, errant chores—hell, I even start coordinating with our head chef to dish out meals at the meetings. I’m desperate to be useful, shaking internally from the remnants of my earthquake, waiting for the aftermath rubble to crush me.

But then, about two weeks after I got back, we receive an invitation. To the coronation of the St. Patrick’s Day King.

Along with that invitation comes another device like the one used to steal our joy, only this one, if plugged in, would transmit joy to us.

Marta plugs it in, and St. Patrick’s Day sends back the joy they took from us almost instantly.

The need to atone darkens, warps, and the energy shifts every time I enter a room. Like I’m that sad, pissy dark shadow again that had to actively think do not be a prick to get through interactions without sulking. Everyone I’m near picks up on that, treating me like there’s a fifteen-foot security radius emanating around me.

I try to rally. Coal needs me to buck up; Christmas needs me to get my shit together; if I’m not going back to school, I have to be useful, smile at these winter Holiday reps, why is it so hard? This is my future now. It always was. Fitting into whatever’s needed of me.

My screw-up with St. Patrick’s Day resolved itself. I didn’t even have to do anything, did I? Loch gave the magic back. He probably would have anyway, if I had never gone there at all. He’d have eventually reclaimed his Holiday. He’d have eventually owned up to the theft; it’s the kind of person he is.

I did nothing.

My self-loathing grows wings and loops around my head and my resting expression is a pained snarl.

So after a meeting where I’m supposed to be taking notes but miss half of what was said and Wren sighs at me—probably not in exasperation, probably in sympathy, but fuck both of those things—I march myself back to my room, self-imposed house arrest.

I rip out of the suit I’m wearing and drag on a hoodie and sweats. The ornate couch in my suite’s main room is stupid uncomfortable, but I flop onto it anyway and pull out my phone.

My thumb automatically goes to the text thread I had with Loch.

I do not text him.

He texted. To apologize, again, and again, but there’s been nothing since that first week.

Siobhán texted me too, apologizing on his behalf and wanting to still be friends and maybe I will, someday, but all I could do was text her that I’m fine.

I click off my phone and let it drop onto my chest.

If I close my eyes, it is like no time has passed. I could be back in my flat at Cambridge, trying to find the gumption to go to a class I hate, dreading every moment of every day coming at me.

And that familiarity is what finally slaps me upside the head.

The harrowing, aching sameness of slogging through my existence when I know now what it’s like to be me again. It might’ve turned out to be a mess, but—within that mess, within those lies, I found parts of myself, didn’t I?

I toss my phone on the coffee table and shove up from the couch, standing in the middle of the room, chest aching.

I don’t want to feel like this again.

I don’t want to be this person again.

But what do I do? I’ve gone into a state of detachment since I left Ireland because it hurts, but mainly I don’t trust myself to react. I’ve thought I wanted so many different things—a happy ending with Iris, my mom to come back, Loch —but they were all wrong for so many different reasons, so what now?

My mind trips, crashes to its knees over one word.

Ending.

Coal asked me something a while back. In all that writing you used to do about happily ever after, did you ever think through what being happy would actually feel like?

It sure as hell isn’t this. Miserable and on edge, like I’ve lost something, and every room I go into, I look around on instinct, expecting to see it—him—and I—

I slap my hands over my face and breathe into the hollow of my palms.

What does being happy feel like?

Not the ending.

The after.

What did I think I’d feel like after I got all those things I once wanted?

A barrage of words comes at me: content. Whole. Safe. Fulfilled.

It feels like lying on a bed under morning light and his sleepy weight on my chest.

It feels like my back cramping from bending over a coffee table, fingers spasming as I write and write and write.

I lower my hands, and my eyes snag on my desk across the room. I forgot to grab the notebook I’d filled when I left Ireland in a hurry, but my school shit is scattered from where I dumped it when I got back before Ireland, and I spot my laptop bag, right on top.

Why do I have to wait for an ending to give me those feelings?

Why can’t I have any of that shit now ?

I walk towards the desk on unstable legs, scramble through the clutter until I clear a space and ease out my laptop. I open it and pop it on and as it whirs to life, my breathing ramps faster, but something inside me settles.

I’ve been so obsessed with various endings giving me closure or happiness that I’ve neglected the journey to get to any of them. Like putting words into a story, word by word.

Why do the words that make the journey matter less than the words that make the ending?

I’ve spent so much time placing value on the end over anything else that I’ve missed so much going on around me. I’ve lost so many parts of me that I could have been enjoying rather than worrying how stupid mistakes would screw up some undefined future.

I’d started to get some of that back. With him. Because of him, and it aches like a wound now, but I can’t lie around here and go backwards anymore.

What about the journey I’m on right now ? What about this moment, the one I’m in? What can I do in this moment to help me feel content, whole, safe, fulfilled?

It wasn’t just because of him. It can’t have been just because of him.

I need to do this for me. I need that selfishness still. For a bit longer.

Once my laptop kicks to life, I drop down at my desk, pull up a blank document, and start writing.

It’s mostly nonsense—at first. The same meandering thoughts I spilled out in Loch’s library. Some of it coalesces into stuff about Bridge to Terabithia, decadent bullshit that rewrites what would have happened if that book had not ended so sadly. I dig out my old copy and reread it, and that sets me off on a frenzy of tearing through books I used to love but haven’t indulged in for years.

When I’m not buried under stacks of books, I’m bent over my laptop, hands flying across the keyboard, chasing thoughts and seeing what congeals and letting myself expand.

I remember what Iris said a while ago, about what picture I’d send next in my text-photo-dump series. So I send her a shot of my laptop open to a document, and I look at it next to the one of the broken bottle on Loch’s kitchen floor, and then the first one, of Loch himself.

The progression—Loch, broken bottle, writing—has me shutting off my phone before Iris can draw her own artistic conclusions.

Coal doesn’t try to drag me to any more meetings, seeming to sense that I need time to do… whatever I’m doing. I imagine myself both a bird and an egg, building this nest of creativity around my unformed and delicate soul, nurturing it with stories I still love. I barely leave my room, but even in that solitude, I’m taking up more space than I’ve ever allowed myself.

I move and the air bruises.

Later—I’m losing track of days, but a story is forming, one I’m falling into with giddy abandon and I don’t think I’d eat if Coal didn’t bring trays of food, don’t think I’d sleep if he didn’t physically peel me away from my desk—the door groans open and I hear it enough to react.

“Let me finish getting this thought out,” I mumble.

“That should be your next tattoo,” Coal says. “Right across your middle finger, so you can flip me off and tell me to shut up efficiently.”

I do flip him off, but I glance up.

My brother is in a suit. Dark wine red and cut to his lean frame, every inch of him styled.

Iris is with him, which shocks me enough that I spin around in my desk chair, but she’s in a simple dress, not nearly as fancy as he is.

His style makes my mind race to the date, to events, to—

“The treaty signing? Give me ten minutes to—”

I’m halfway out of my chair when Coal shakes his head.

“It isn’t the treaty signing. That’s tomorrow. This is the opening reception welcome bullshit. And you’re not going. I wanted to—”

“I’m… not going?” I push back the hood of my sweatshirt, a headache throbbing in my temples at the transition from writing to playing catch-up. “Why? I should. I can—”

“Kris.” Coal cocks his head. “Don’t worry about it. Today’s event is a formality anyway. Iris came to hang with you.”

Hang with me? Why would she need to—

Oh.

It’s Loch’s coronation today too.

I sink down into my chair. The cursor on my laptop flashes at me, and sensation creeps in now that I’ve broken out of my delirium.

My body aches from being bowed over for so long. My eyes are scratchy and dry. A million different emotions try to take center stage; all this writing has lifted a curtain and, for once, my self-loathing isn’t the first to dive in.

“I’m glad you’re here, actually, Iris,” I say to my computer. “I’m working on that book. The one I sent you a photo of. The one I want you to draw pictures for.”

She pads towards me and I feel her over my shoulder. “Can I read some of it yet?” Her tone is bright, encouraging. “You didn’t even tell me what it’s about.”

Panic tightens my throat and the snap of my laptop shutting echoes in the room.

“It’s—”

Not done. Not ready. It isn’t perfect yet.

It probably never will be.

It’s about a little prince who lives in a world of joy and wonder and has everything. He has a loving family and magic that can make candy canes and snow and his dad is Santa Claus, and yes, it’s me, but it’s also not, because this little prince gets to experience his world the way he should. He gets to see it through big, astounded eyes and feel everything with excitement and awe. He goes on adventures and gets to be innocent and curious.

I shoot to my feet again, sniffing hard against the prick of tears in my eyes. “Give me ten minutes, and I can be ready for the—” Damn it, what was it? A reception?

The rigidity in my shoulders winds tighter, and that ever-lurking dark cloud draws closer, pulled in so quickly through this protective shield I’ve started to build.

Do not be a prick. For this, for something that matters, do not be a prick.

I head for the closet, but Coal steps into my path.

“ Kris. ” He barks my name, and I stop. “Can you honestly say you’re ready or even want to take on duties again? Stay here and keep writing whatever you’re writing and I’ll fill you in afterwards. Save your mental capacity for the signing tomorrow.”

I don’t want to feel this way.

I’ve taken steps to not feel this way.

But this is different. This isn’t depressed, this isn’t sluggish.

This is infuriated.

I don’t get mad at my brother. I don’t get mad at anyone.

Except Loch.

But this—this is a sudden, unstoppable eruption of feeling how many days I’ve spent locked in here, of calculating how many meetings Coal’s let me miss, of the real life expectations crowding around me all at once so I pace away from him, back to him, scrubbing a hand through my unruly hair and my eyes go to my laptop and I want to stay, but I have to go.

Being in here has helped me piece myself back together.

But what good has it done?

And that’s the struggle I always run into. The fact that what I need to be whole is useless to everyone else.

“I need,” I start, looking at Coal, “to be a part of this. This is my Holiday, too. You said we were in this together.”

Coal jerks like I slapped him. “We are. Missing a few things doesn’t change that.”

I continue across the room and dig into my closet, find a suit, a striped blue one Wren had me wear last Christmas that I remember not hating.

“Are you sure?” I snap. “It feels an awful lot like you’re trying to get rid of me.”

“Kris.” My name comes on a wheeze from him. “You can’t honestly think that I’d ever want to get rid of you.”

“Why wouldn’t I think that?” I feel how ridiculous this is, arguing with him while yanking on clothes, and I don’t even care that Iris is in the room as I undress; and I hear what I’m saying like I’m suspended in a dream because I know, I know he’d never do this to me. But I can’t stop, something is breaking out of me that I never thought would escape, and I’m not even sure who’s talking at the moment, what part of me has control. “What else am I good for, if not standing at events like this and smiling for pictures? It’s sure as hell the only thing Dad made me good for. Why wouldn’t you eventually think that too?”

“Kris!”

“What else can I do for you? For our Holiday? What purpose do I even have? To sit up here and write about bullshit that doesn’t matter? So I’ll go to this fucking reception or brunch or whatever the hell it is, I’ll go to a dozen stupid fucking events and plaster on a smile because god forbid I smile for real, god forbid I exist outside of being a prop for everyone else’s entertainment.”

Coal surges across the room. I’m half into the suit, pants on and the shirt buttoned to my stomach, and he grabs my arms and yanks me into a hug and I shove against him.

“Get off me—”

He holds me tighter, harder, until the pressure of his arms pushes a gasp out of my lungs, and that gasp is quaking and painful.

I see Iris, over his shoulder, and I stop fighting him.

She looks furious.

Iris marches towards me and Coal glances to the side to see why she’s actually, physically stomping on the floor, and she uses that opening to shove me in the chest.

I stumble back.

“ Stop talking about my friend like that! ” she shouts. “God, Kris, I am sick of you talking about yourself like you don’t matter. Like you have nothing to offer. Coal didn’t want you going to the reception today because he knows whatever you’re writing up here is helping you find yourself again, and he didn’t want to interrupt that. And I came because you’re my friend, and I wanted to talk to you about what you’ve been doing. This was all the same shit you said after you told me you loved me, and you kept saying it even when I tried to tell you that you were wrong, you are wrong . So stop it !”

She shoves me again and I smack into the open closet door and hold there, gaping at her, all my anger wilting.

Coal’s hands clench and unclench at his sides. It’s unnatural for his face to look anything but goofy and smiling, so when he hits me with this heartbreak, it’s silencing.

He nods at Iris. “What she said. Who cares if what you’re doing doesn’t help Christmas? Doesn’t contribute ? I’ve told you, Kris. I’ve told you I don’t give a shit what you do as long as it brings you joy. You can be a part of this Holiday however you want, but if what you want to do, who you want to be doesn’t fit in with a standard role in Christmas, then fuck it. You’ll still be a part of this family, this Holiday. That will never, ever change. Do what makes you happy. ”

A tear spills down my cheek and I let it fall, going limp against the closet door.

“ Are you happy?” Coal asks, tentative; he takes a step closer. “I wanted you to start choosing things for yourself. This”—he waves at my desk—“is what I want for you, if it gives you what you need. Does it?”

Yes. No.

Almost.

I shrug, trying to get the rest of this shirt buttoned but my fingers fumble it.

“I think it will,” I mutter.

“I want you at any event you want to go to—but Kris, what do you want to do, right now? Not for Christmas or me or anyone else. Fuck that, and fuck you for thinking that I don’t want you to be a part of this. You’ll always be a part of this. You can’t escape me, ever.”

Coal grabs my hand where I’m uselessly prying at the buttons.

“I’m not leaving you.” He says each word deliberately. “Iris isn’t leaving you. And you know what? I hate the guy, like I’m seriously considering assassinating him with an icicle—no one would know, the evidence would melt—”

“Coal,” Iris breaks in.

“But I’m willing to bet Loch wouldn’t leave you, either.”

I flinch, shoulders hitting the door again. “He isn’t—”

Coal ignores me. “You’re worth staying for, Kristopher. You. Not what you have to offer people. You are worth it.”

He’s so sure. So goddamn resolved. I can’t find it in me to argue, to shove aside anything he’s said, because he doesn’t lie. Not to me.

And so I let myself feel his words.

They drip down into my soul and gather in a sad, brittle puddle and I imagine a seed planting under them, something new and fresh, but it has roots, god does it have roots, and those roots pulse with that surety.

You’re worth staying for.

“But he did leave,” I whisper. “He left. And he lied. And I—”

“He didn’t leave,” Iris says. “ You left him. He followed you. And yes, he lied about stealing Christmas’s joy. He lied about his uncle’s involvement. But can you honestly look at me and tell me you don’t get why he did? I only know a fraction of what shit his uncle put them through from what Finn has said—”

“You talk to Finn?”

“—and even I get why Loch had to go to such drastic measures. Yeah, he should’ve told you. But is what he did something you can’t work past? Do you think he is, at his core, a liar and a manipulator, or is he someone who got in over his head and made a dumb mistake?”

I wipe the back of my hand across my chin and shake my head because if I answer that, it all falls apart.

If I’d been in the same situation, would I have lied to him, too? To keep pretending for a moment longer, a second longer, that I wouldn’t lose him? Yeah. I’d have lied. I’d have been selfish and a little cruel if it meant getting to have one more minute with him.

But I was wrong about something that should’ve been obvious. I should have seen his hesitation and read it for what it was, but I willfully ignored it. Like I willfully ignored my mom’s abuse, and how things never fit with Iris, and—

My eyes roll shut on an internal wince and I’m so tired of myself.

Iris cups my cheek in her palm. “You’re afraid of people leaving you, but you aren’t showing up for yourself, Kris.”

“I’m going to ask you again,” Coal says. “What do you want to do? Right now? Do you want to go to some boring ass welcome reception, do you want to stay and keep writing—or do you want to, I don’t know, go to the coronation of a certain St. Patrick’s Day King?”

The air leaves my lungs in a huff and my eyes fly open.

“That’s why you both came,” I guess. “Isn’t it?”

Coal shrugs innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. This conversation happened naturally.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” He grabs my shoulder. “And I don’t hate you either. I love you. Iris loves you. So, Kris.” He squeezes, hard. “What’s it gonna be today? Whatever it is, we’re with you.”

I look, again, at my laptop. At the story, unwritten, waiting.

With a few keystrokes, I can create a happy ending.

But here, now? There’s nothing I can do to guarantee a happy path for myself.

At least, not in this room.

“You talk with Finn?” I ask Iris. More direct this time.

She smiles. “She said he’s miserable. His court backed him as king; Malachy tried to fight it, but Siobhán and Finn produced all kinds of receipts validating his greed, so he’s fully out. And despite all that, Loch’s miserable. I wonder why?”

Good.

Only it isn’t.

I don’t want him miserable.

“I won’t pretend to know everything you went through with him,” Coal says. “And I won’t pretend to like him. But I know you were singing in Belfast. I got to watch you have fun and let go in a way I haven’t seen you do in way too long. If you got to that place after a few days with him? It’s worth figuring out what remains of the two of you. It’s worth fighting for.”

I drop my head into my hands and breathe for a second, the whoosh of air in and out of my lungs resonating against the roar of my pulse.

And then I laugh. Bubbling laughter that seizes me and doesn’t let go.

“What’s funny?” Iris asks, half smiling, and Coal is grinning too but his brows are pinched in worry.

“This is the second time,” I manage, breathless, “that we’ve been in this situation. Last time it was Coal, talking him down after Hex left.”

Coal barks a laugh. “Well, if this isn’t the saddest friendship tradition ever: a relationship support group slash intervention. Remember when we used to go to bars?”

Iris folds her arms. “This tradition ends with you, Kris, because I’m learning from the two of you and your drama-filled bullshit. My happy ending will be normal and boring.”

The levity is like a part in the clouds, a respite of sunbeams.

“The coronation is today?” I ask Coal, my voice small, stunted.

His eyes light up. “It’d be good for Christmas to make an appearance. But, alas, I’m beset by this welcome reception—who ever should we send in my place?”

Iris and Coal get me ready, because apparently it’s unacceptable to confront someone you’re in love with while wearing a half-wrinkled suit that’s been stuffed in the bottom of your closet for three months.

They wrangle up a pressed forest green suit, low-slung boots, and a white shirt with no tie because I refuse to feel like I’m being strangled for this. My own anxiety will do that well enough for me. Iris and Coal fight about whether my hair should be up or down—down, they finally decide, and Iris does this thing to it with some volumizing spray so it’s intentionally messy, not the I got out of the shower and let it dry and this is what you get to look at style I usually go for.

I focus on being simultaneously annoyed and impressed by their easy styling to distract from how nervous I am.

So I’m going to show up at his coronation. And… say what? I don’t even know. I should write something down. But there’s no time—I’m late as it is, so I’ll have to speak from the heart, and we all know that will go over oh so well.

This is such a bad idea.

Iris hooks her arm with mine and we follow Coal down to the foyer of Claus Palace. Hex is there with Wren, and the two of them look surprised to see me out of my room.

Hex immediately guesses why with an abrupt grin.

“Good,” he says as Coal hands me mistletoe.

“Kristopher?” Wren cocks her head, searching through her tablet like an answer will materialize.

“Kris is going to St. Patrick’s Day for me,” Coal tells her.

He stops me as I head for the door.

“And if anything… unfortunate happens again,” he says, “you can inform the new king that I do have a foolproof way to kill him, and no one will ever find his body in a fjord.”

I hug him. “Thank you.”

He clutches me tight before smacking my shoulder blade and pushing me away. “Now go. No stalling. I know you and I know your overthinking—Iris, don’t let him stall.”

“Wait—you’re coming?” I look at her.

“Of course I’m coming.” She hooks her arm with mine again. “You think I’m going to miss you crashing Loch’s coronation with a declaration of love? Over my dead body.”

Coal throws his head back with a groan. “Ugh, don’t make me play hooky from my own event!”

“I’m not going to declare my love. ” Am I?

My face is on fire.

“Nicholas”—Wren says his name in a chastising rush, like she’s terrified he is going to fuck off and go to Ireland—“you are needed in the ballroom. Now. Please.”

“I wasn’t going to—fine, fine. Okay. Kris— tell me what happens. Like the moment it happens. Or maybe Iris, someone, update me, okay?”

I think I promise to, I think I say something else, but I’m at the door and using magic to take us to Ireland and oh, this was such a bad idea.

Iris drags me onward, and I go.

The foyer of Castle Patrick is packed with people. People I don’t know, who likely don’t know who I am, either—St. Patrick’s Day’s court and their extended families, I assume.

Seeing them warms a new emotion in my chest. Pride.

He did it. He really did get them to side with him. They’re here, in support of him.

Fuck Malachy.

Servers rotate through the crowd, and from somewhere farther in, fiddle music plays.

Iris rejoins me from talking with a server. “Okay, they said the coronation happened already so this is like celebratory dancing and stuff. Loch’s in the ballroom.” She grimaces at me. “Good lord, Kris, your face matches your suit. Do not vomit.”

“This was a mistake,” I choke out. “I can’t—I should call him. This is insane, right? Barging in here—”

“No, this is romantic as fuck. ” She takes my face in her hands. “What did you used to write about when you were in love with me?”

All the blood in my body drains into my legs. “Wha— Coal told you about that shit? ” I’m going to kill him.

“That’s beside the point. What did you write about?”

My jaw sets. She pinches my cheeks together.

“Romantic crap, okay?”

“Romantic crap like this, hm?” She lets me go. “Make your own story. You deserve this sort of ending, Kris.”

Her words quiver through me like electricity, crackling life into my limbs.

She points at me. “Go get your guy in a sweeping, event-crashing declaration of how much you want to fuck his brains out.”

“God, Iris.” But it yanks a laugh out of me.

She smiles. “ Go. I’ll be right behind you. Definitely not recording the whole thing.”

“Oh, don’t record it.”

“Should’ve gotten me to sign an NDA. Now go. ”

I head off, heart lodged in my throat. My eyes snap to every face I pass, certain Loch will be here, and the whole thing will happen in the foyer—or the hall—or I’ll run into Finn and she’ll get into some argument with me and Loch will overhear and that’s romantic, his sister screaming at me—

But I get to the door of the ballroom, across from the dining room. Its doors were always shut before; they’re thrown open now, showing a wide space with rich mahogany wood in every corner, a roaring fireplace at the long end, a band on the opposite side. People spin through the room in varying shades of green, so at least I don’t stand out.

And there.

Near the fireplace.

Talking with a group, a glass in one hand, looking so goddamn good in a dark hunter green suit that I come to a shaking stop inside the room, drinking up the sight of him. His hair is back in that red wave, his face a little flushed from the warmth of the room, and he smiles at someone, a flash of white teeth that jerks the air out of my lungs.

What am I going to say to him?

“Kris!”

Siobhán’s shout rips across the ballroom, barreling over the music, the chatter of conversation.

Loch’s head whips towards her.

He clocks where she’s looking.

And he sees me.

I intended to walk up to him. I intended to move, at all, but the moment his eyes hit me, any intention vanishes from my body and I am helpless but to stand there, in the crowded room, the music wailing around us, people dancing and Iris slowly pulling back from me with a wide grin.

Loch’s eyes stay on mine as he cuts away from the group around him. He doesn’t even say anything to them in explanation, not that I can tell. He puts his glass on a server’s tray in passing, looking at me, only at me, and I try to pull in a breath but get a single trembling gulp.

Then he’s in front of me.

The music is so loud. People spin and dance and it’s making me dizzy, all that motion passing by, and him, the fixed pole around which everything revolves.

My lips part. “I—”

He grabs the collar of my jacket and kisses me.

And it’s so much better than anything I could have said.

I throw my arms around his waist and arch into it and this is a form of wooing too, this is a conversation in the way his nails stroke across my scalp and hold me to him— I’m sorry, I’m sorry— and the way my hands cut up under the hem of his coat and clamp to his spine— I came back, I came back.

His fingers clutch into a fist in my hair and he pulls me away an inch. “Kris,” it comes out breathy and he’s smiling so big, his eyes darting all over my face. I’m smiling too because his hands are on me again, and it’s that simple. That necessary.

Heat crashes into me—from him.

And from the realization that we’re in a room full of people.

And most are looking at us now.

There are photographers. Journalists. Cameras flash and, ah, well, this is probably no less headline grabbing than tinsel-bombing him. I almost apologize before I remember he initiated this.

Siobhán whoops. Iris claps. I cast my gaze around, then look at Loch in wincing embarrassment.

He takes my hand, his smile wicked, and drags me out of the ballroom.

My lips are kiss-swollen and that knot in my chest is gone, so I follow him, I’d follow him anywhere.

He leads me through the castle, passing groups who call out to him; he doesn’t stop.

“Loch.” I hurry to walk alongside him. “I didn’t mean to take you away from your people. You can stay—we don’t have to—”

“Shush now, boyo,” he orders and yanks open the doors to the library.

It’s empty. The lights are off, the far windows showing the starlit night sky.

The doors slam behind us and I’m immediately shoved up against one, Loch’s fingers around my neck, pinning me there, and I melt, an elastic, pathetic mess in his hand.

“You came back,” Loch says, the fervor in his eyes set to ravenous as he fixes the whole of his attention on me.

My fingers are twisted around his wrist where he’s holding my throat.

My smile slips. “I’m sorry I—”

“I will na hear a single apology from you.” He kisses me, bruising, demanding, back on me hard and fast, pushing me up the door with his hand and the force of his body until my legs spread and I’m practically taken off my feet.

He peels back, panting into our space, whiskey and woodsmoke and his spicy cologne. His heated gaze dims, seemingly muted by physical control. “You came back.”

It’s a question this time.

“Yeah,” I gasp.

“There’s more we need to talk about.” Another roll up at the end, a question.

I pause, a hundred thoughts fighting for dominance.

“No more lies,” I say, and I mean it to come out declarative, but it’s probing.

Loch nods immediately. “No more lies. None.”

The awareness of his eyes on me, the intention behind them, is as effectively restraining as his hand gently pressing on my neck. He’s waiting, waiting for permission, and I realize he’s never been in control of this. He’s always been reading me.

“Loch.” It’s a husky plea.

His brows pinch in a relieved groan as his teeth go to my neck, that sharp pain alternating with the burn of his beard as he eats his way up the column of my throat, and I tilt my head into it with a hapless whimper.

“The bedroom—is up the— fuck, Loch.” I only know half of what I’m saying. The other half of me is ripping at the buttons on his shirt, trying to drag his coat off his shoulders.

“I will na make it to the bedroom.” Loch’s voice is jagged and fumbling already, and hearing the scrape in it shoves me right up there next to him. “I nearly took you in that ballroom, Kris. I’ve missed you so much, and I need to make you come.”

“Okay,” is all I can get myself to say, high and a little squeaky. “That’s—yeah, okay.”

He sucks a mark on my collarbone, and I scramble to anchor on him, lips moving in a soundless fuck fuck fuck.

“And do na pretend,” he growls into the skin there, “that getting screwed proper nice in a library does na turn you on.”

I laugh, head arched back. “And they say romance is dead.”

His hands are on my belt, pulling, freeing it.

But the energy dips. Doesn’t extinguish, just slants.

He backs away, hands gripped in the open edges of my pants. My shirt is parted, chest heaving, hair falling in my face.

A hundred romantic, sweeping speeches rush through me. All the things I should have said in the ballroom. All the things I’ve written about for years, the fairy tale endings and romantic stories that circled my fantasies. They collide against every moment I’ve spent with him—how I’m terrified but it’s a good terror; how I’m anxious but it’s a good anxiety.

In some alternate version of me, I weave such a poetic sonnet that it brings us both to our knees.

But all I can say, in the dimness of this starlit reality, is “I love you.”

Loch’s hands still.

He leans in and kisses me again, and it’s sweet and we’re both smiling.

“You’d better,” he says into my mouth, “interrupting my coronation like this.”

I tug at the waistband of his pants. “I had an invitation, asshole. I didn’t interrupt shit.”

“Arriving late then.” His lips drop to my earlobe and he bites down. “Dragging me away from a very important conversation.”

“I didn’t drag you away. I was standing there, minding my own goddamn business.”

He leaves a trail of sloppy kisses across my jaw, to my mouth, and we’re both hard when I work us free of our pants and boxers, breaths devolving into matching groans.

He holds my gaze, raises his hand, and spits into his palm.

Every nerve in my body throbs.

“You come in looking like that. ” He takes both our cocks in hand and thrusts into that tunnel, rubbing against me, and I croon. “Sex walking—what hope did I ever have, boyo? This was your plan all along. Distract me, tease me.”

My mind goes to static blankness, all needy pounding, his hand tightening as he twists and thrusts at the same time and oh fuck.

I wail deep in my throat. “Oh, yeah, this was just to mess with you,” I say through a wheeze, fingertips digging in where his neck meets his shoulder. “I’m not getting anything out of it at— fucking hell, Loch—”

He fits his lips over mine, not kissing, just connected. I can taste his smile, can feel the joy in him winding up as he tightens his grip and rolls his hips and we don’t need poems to bring us to our knees—I’m only upright because of the door and my hands on him.

His thrusts quicken, our breathing intensifies. He wraps his free hand around the back of my neck and plants his temple against mine, bracing, building us to the edge at ravaging speed.

And when a growl pulsates in the back of his throat, when he turns that growl into “Kris, Kris, ” I rocket over that edge with him, sweat-slicked ecstasy, a fierce unwinding.

I collapse against the door and he’s there with me, forehead to my shoulder, both of us trying to catch our breath as hands continue to touch and grope, rememorizing curves.

Gently, he uses the edge of his jacket to clean us off and tucks us both away before tossing it to the floor. He stays as close as he can the whole while.

“Kris,” he says against my neck. “I have so much to make up to you.”

“You don’t have to make up anything to me.”

“Like hell I don’t.” He kisses my cheeks, my eyelids, like he’s trying to brand every inch of me. “I do na even deserve to have you here with me right now, but you deserve every second of me proving how amazing you are. I love you too, and I—”

I kiss him, and he lets me take charge until we pivot and he’s the one flattened to the other door now.

“How long until you need to get back to your party?” I ask.

He smiles. “It’s my party; I can be gone as long as I please. The real concern is the more time that passes before we stumble our way back in, the more guarantee that everyone will know what we’ve been doing.”

“Well, if you put your coat back on, they’ll definitely know.” I knot my hands in the lapels of the shirt he’s still somehow wearing. “But where does all this gossip fodder rank on the St. Patrick’s Day King’s list of concerns?”

Loch cradles my head in his hands, my whole being in his hands. “’Tis na even on the list.”

God, his accent topples over itself, and that’s the final shred of convincing I need to haul him over to the cluster of couches by the unlit fireplace. I push him down and he sits with a bounce, gazing up at me in the low light, already looking thoroughly disheveled, so what’s more making out, then?

“Good. Because, as you once told me”—I straddle his lap—“I’m not ready to share you with anyone yet. So it looks like I’ll be responsible for your first scandal as King.”

His smile goes cataclysmic. “I’d expect nothing less, Coffee Shop.”

A laugh cracks out of me and I arch down to kiss him, embracing a happiness so potent that it becomes an immediate counterweight to every dark cloud of anxiety or panic I’ve ever felt. Not erasing them, not numbing them; balancing, so I see myself in a full spectrum between the two extremes, darkness to light and everything in between.

Iris told me I deserve this sort of ending.

Right now, I finally believe I do.