Page 20 of The Heir Apparent

I knew every iteration of his laugh, but this particular version was new to me. He hesitated. “Are you drunk?”

“Maybe, why?”

I could hear him sifting through his thoughts, deciding which one he would share with me. “I was going to kiss you, yeah.”

“Have you ever thought about doing that before?” I asked, my face flushing at my own recklessness. Our friendship was a delicate thing that depended on certain doors never being opened, even though we loved nothing more than to rattle the handles to see what would happen.

Again, he was silent. “Well, yeah… but maybe this is something we should talk about when you’ve sobered up.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll wake up in the morning and regret this conversation, and then you’ll avoid me for a while.”

He was right. The helicopter coming in to break up our potentially life-altering kiss had been both maddening and a reprieve.

“You know,” I said, barely following my own thoughts as they flowed out of me, “I’ve always suspected that if I didn’t have my title, I wouldn’t be half as interesting. Isn’t that pathetic?”

I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was smiling that smile of his, the annoying one he gave me when I was crabby in the morning or worried about an exam, the one that made me want to sink my teeth into his neck.

“You’re the most interesting person I know, and I couldn’t care less about your title,” he said.

He could name all 160 grape varieties that grow in Australia. He could easily have spent his life trading on his rebellious family’s fame but never did. He still borrowed library books. He danced with old ladies at weddings. When we first met, Iwas oddly determined to scare him by telling him stories about my parents, the worst ones that never made it into the tabloids: The time Papa shoved her and she fell back into a mirror. The time Mum found Annabelle’s nightgown in his bed and ran up to the roof with it. But Jack only listened intently and squeezed my shoulder.Oh, shit, I had thought.Who is this?He was undoubtedly the most interesting person I knew.

“Lex,” he said, “you’ve got a lot going on right now. I don’t want to pressure you.”

His voice in my ear and the gin in my blood was edging me to sleep.

“I wish you could come to the funeral,” I murmured. “I have to go alone.”

“I would come. But it doesn’t sound like the kind of funeral where anyone can just rock up and pay their respects.”

I thought of the impossible day that lay ahead, the second time I would have to trail a coffin as everyone watched.

“No, they’re checking every manhole and lamppost in central London for explosives,” I said. “Half the world’s heads of state will be there.”

“I’ll just grab a seat next to the Emperor of Japan then.”

“He can’t come—he’s having gallbladder surgery. He’s sending his son instead.”

We both laughed softly. It was that hour of night when nothing really counted.

“Will you pat Ragu for me?” I asked.

“He keeps looking for you. Every time I go to find him, he’s standing at the barn doors peering inside.”

My eyes were closing. “I’m falling asleep.”

“That’s okay. Go to sleep. Call me later.”

“Goodnight.”

“Night, Lex.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

2012

The thought that I must leave had first come to me when they found Mum’s body. I’d never wanted to flee before. I was a good princess. Obedient. Eager to please. But when the police pulled her from the Ligurian Sea, a desire to escape surfaced in me as well.