“He wasn’t wrong. My mother was a dancer in Vegas and my father barely acknowledges I exist. That’s not the background the next Queen of Wildemar should have.”
“I’m sorry your father treats you like that—he’s an ass. But the fact that he’s an idiot doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
“No, but it might change how your people feel about me.”
“You think they don’t already know? The papers have talked for days about how you were raised by a single mother. They don’t identify your father—I presume because he’s not listed on your birth certificate—but they have talked about all the rest. The people don’t care. And even if they did, I don’t care. I love you and I want to be with you. To hell with everything else.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I do mean it.”
I kiss her then, really kiss her, with all the messy feelings rolling around inside of me. She whimpers a little, then wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me back like we’re the last two people on earth.
I melt into her, all the angst and rage I felt at my father’s call draining away as I hold her. Kiss her. Touch her. Yes, I want the throne. I’ve never made any bones about that. But I’m not going to let my father use it as a bludgeoning tool against me, and I’m sure as hell not going to let him use it against Lola and our relationship. She means too much to me, and so does whatever we’ve spent the last two weeks building.
“I love you,” I tell her when she breaks the kiss several minutes later. “And I think you love me too. That’s more important than this merry-go-round my father has got me on—”
“It’s not!” she tells me, her whole body trembling as she backs away from me. “It can’t be. You belong on the throne of Wildemar. Everybody knows it.”
“Everybody but my father. And I’m done groveling to him, done trying to convince him I’m not defective.” It feels liberating to say it, and even more liberating to mean it.
“So what are you going to do then? Just spend the rest of your life feeding Kian information so he doesn’t cause absolute chaos in your country?”
“If that’s what I have to do to keep my country safe, then yes. That’s what I’ll do.”
“You’ll be miserable!”
“Not if I have you.”
She looks like she’s been hit with a two-by-four, which I get. God knows, I’ve been feeling like that since I first saw her at the lake, mouthing off to my detail in that tiny purple bikini.
“Garrett…” She trails off, shaking her head.
“Lola…” I mimic as I pull her back into my arms where she belongs.
“I’m not going to let you do this.”
“Too late. I’ve already done it.”
She tries to hand me her phone. “Call your father back. Tell him you were wrong. Tell him—”
I stop her with another kiss. She whimpers, bringing her hands up to push me away. But her fingers end up curling into my shoulders, and that’s when I know I’ve got her. That’s when I know she’s mine.
“I love you,” I whisper against her lips. “I love you, Lola, and no trumped-up ultimatum from my father is going to change that.”
She whimpers again, pulling me closer. Holds me tighter as her mouth moves against mine.
This time, I’m the one to pull away. “Not to be too uptight here, but it’d be nice if you said you loved me back.”
“I love you!” she tells me. “Of course I love you. How could I not?”
“That’s all that matters, then,” I tell her as I sweep her up into my arms.
“But it’s not, Garrett. Your country—”
“Will still have me. It just won’t have me as their king.”
“I’m not okay with that!”
“Yeah, well, you’re going to have to be. Because I’m not changing my mind and I’m sure as hell not caving to my father’s ridiculous demands.”
“You can’t just decide to give up the throne on a whim.”
“I already lost the throne. And what I feel for you is about as far from a whim as it can get.” I lower her slowly, carefully, to the bed before climbing in next to her.
“Yesterday you were all about the throne. What’s changed?”
“Nothing’s changed. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Yesterday I wanted the throne, yes. There’s a part of me that will always want it. But yesterday, I was all about you. Today I’m all about you. Tomorrow I’ll be all about you—”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do know that.” I lean forward to press kisses to her neck, her collarbone, the hollow of her throat.
She tilts her head back to give me better access even as she says, “We need to talk about this some more.”
“We will.” I unknot her robe and slide it off her shoulders. “Later.”
“But, Garrett—”
I stop her with a finger to her lips. “We will talk about his later, Lola, I promise. But right now, the woman I love has just told me that she loves me. I’d like to spend a few minutes celebrating that instead of talking about my father. Is that too much to bloody ask?”
She shakes her head, eyes wide and body trembling. Then she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me down for a kiss that goes on and on and on.
I give myself up to the kiss, to her. She feels so good, tastes so good, and I love her so much. I concentrate on that, on Lola, and do my best to ignore the part of my heart that is all about country, all about duty, as it shatters—once and for all—into a thousand irreparable pieces.
Chapter 30
Lola
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what to do.
I. Don’t. Know. What. To. Do.
The whole world has shifted on its axis and I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do now. Don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to feel or think or do.
Garrett can’t just give up the throne. He just can’t, no matter what he says. It’s as much a part of him as his blue eyes and his dark hair. Maybe even more of a part.
He’s stretched out beside me, sound asleep, but he looks tense even now. Like he’s preparing to do battle with his father again, or one of the many demons that haunt him day and night. How much more is he supposed to take without breaking? How much more is he supposed to suffer?
I hate that he has to go through this. Hate even more that the one person who is supposed to love him unconditionally, who is supposed to accept him no matter what, is the one most responsible for his pain.
What kind of a father does this to his child? Who blames his child for his abduction and subsequent torture at the hands of his father’s enemies? Who lords it over him, giving him ultimatum after ultimatum if he wants a chance at what is already rightfully his?
It’s Machiavellian. Diabolical. Evil.
Honestly, it’s amazing Garrett and Kian turned out as well as they did growing up with a father like this.
Garrett groans in his sleep, throws up a hand to ward off God only knows what. I reach out to stroke my hand down his back as I whisper to him that he’s okay. That everything is going to be all right.
He relaxes almost instantly and my heart breaks for him all over again. I want nothing more than to wrap myself around him. To hold on as tightly as I can. Because I do love him, more than I ever thought I’d love anyone. But that love doesn’t make me blind, and it sure as hell doesn’t make me forget how we got to this exact moment in time. Any more than it makes me forget that Garrett has wounds I’ll never be able to heal.
He was, quite literally, born to be King of Wildemar. It’s in his blood, in his lineage, but more than that, it’s in his soul. That his father has wielded it like a weapon against him all these months doesn’t change the fact that the throne—the crown—belongs
to Garrett. It always has and it always will.
Who am I to get in the way of that?
Listening to him talk to his father made me realize just how much he’s sacrificed to be king. It certainly cast a whole new light on his relationship with Savvy and why he’s made the choices he has in his life. It’s all been for Wildemar. All of it.
Even now, when he’s planning on staying behind the scenes to help Kian be the best prince—and then best king—that he can be.
He’s sacrificed everything to be king. He kept whole parts of himself—and his relationships—a secret. He spent his life thinking of the country’s best interests instead of his own. He endured months of torture without spilling so much as one state secret, even though it nearly cost him his sanity.
How can he even think about walking away from the throne?
And how can I even consider letting him?
He made it sound like it was a done deal when he got off the phone with his father earlier, but how can it be? The King may be a personal tyrant, but he’s savvy as fuck when it comes to his country. He has to know better than anyone just how good a choice Garrett is for Wildemar, and I have to believe he’ll eventually tire of whatever sick game he’s playing with his sons and do the right thing.
But that can only happen if Garrett doesn’t take himself out of the running for king. And that will only happen if I’m not around for him to hang his rebellion on.
Oh, I believe he loves me. It’s hard not to believe it when he holds me and touches me and takes care of me as tenderly as he does. But I’m smart enough to know he’s using me, too, even if he doesn’t mean to. Even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Losing the throne is a throbbing, aching wound, one he’s using the excitement of new love and incredible sex to stanch.
But that will last only so long before the wound starts to fester. Because, even though he loves me, he loves his country more. How can he not? And if I let him do this, if I let him use his feelings for me as a reason to give up the throne, eventually it will destroy our relationship. More than that, it will destroy him.
I can’t be a party to that. I love him too much to stand by and watch him bring about his own destruction.
I can’t let that happen.
I won’t let that happen.
So what do I do?
Do I tell him how I feel and hope he understands, even knowing that he won’t?
Do I break up with him without telling him the real reason I’m doing it?
Or do I just walk away now, while he’s asleep—when he can’t argue with me, can’t talk or sex me out of it?
Just the idea makes me hurt.
God, this sucks. This is why I don’t fall in love, why I work so hard to keep people at a distance. Because it fucking hurts when you let them close and shit falls apart. I wish it were more poetic, but it’s not. It just is what it is.
Garrett calls out in his sleep again, only this time he reaches for me. I stay where I am, let him find me. Let him take comfort from the warmth of my skin and the proximity of my body to his. I draw comfort from him the same way, loving the smoothness of his palm as it skims over my hip and the chill of his fingers as they brush against my skin.
I savor it as long as I can, hanging on to the feel of him—and the smell and sound and sight of him—for as long as I can allow myself.
And then I get up and start to pack.
It takes longer than it should, because I keep having to stop and wipe my stupid, watery eyes. Ridiculous allergies, always acting up at the worst possible time.
When I’m done packing, I pull up my favorite travel website to book a flight home. It’s the height of the tourist season, though, and the first available seat I can find—if I don’t want to fly standby—leaves in two days.
I book it, then try to figure out what I want to do. Do I want to stay here with Garrett for the next two days? Or do I want a clean break, to walk out the door of the suite and never have to see him again?
God. Just the idea has me shaking, has my breath coming faster and panic rising in my chest. I’ve known him only two weeks—two weeks! How can he have worked himself into my life so completely that the idea of never seeing him again devastates me this much?
It doesn’t make sense. But that doesn’t make it any less true. And staying here, whining about it, will only make it harder when I finally do leave. On both of us.
With that thought in mind, I go down to the lobby and book another room several floors below the Presidential Suite. I think about changing hotels, but with all the clothes I’ve bought over the past week, it seems impractical. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to get them to another hotel, and the last thing I want to do is stick around the suite, packing them up, while Garrett tries to talk me out of leaving.
When I’ve got the key to my new room, I snag a couple of doormen from the lobby and request help moving my things. Garrett’s still sleeping when we get back to the room, thank God, so I close the bedroom door to cut down on the noise and let the doormen do their job.
And then I settle down on the couch and wait for Garrett to wake up.
It doesn’t take long, which I’m grateful for. If I have to sit here too long I’m afraid I’ll start crying again. And this time I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.
A few minutes after I hear him rattling around in the bedroom, he comes into the living room dressed in nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans, ridiculous abs on full display. His hair is a little messed up from his nap, but his gaze is alert—and wary—when it meets mine.
“Where’s your stuff?” he demands as he moves toward the bar.
“I had it moved out. I’m leaving, Garrett.”
He pours himself a whiskey, neat, and downs it in one long swallow. “You want to tell me why?”
“You know why.” I cross to him, try to take his hand, but he freezes me with a look. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m no longer dealing with my lover, Garrett. Instead, His Royal Highness, Prince Garrett, is in full attendance.
“I know that I told you I loved you. I know that you said you loved me back. So, no, Lola, I don’t know why.”
“Because you don’t belong to me. You’ll never belong to me.”
“That’s bullshit—”
“It’s not! You belong to Wildemar, as you should. No matter what your father says, you are the crown prince. And I have absolutely no doubt that you will be king one day. But not if you stay with me.”
“Why?”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“Why won’t I be king one day if we’re together? My people already love the two of us together, so that argument goes out the window. We’ve already established that I don’t give a shit what my father thinks, so that argument doesn’t work either. So, again, I ask, why will being with you hinder me from taking the throne?”
“Your father said—”
“Fuck what my father said!” he roars, and for the first time I see the rage under the ice. “Either you want to be with me or you don’t.”
“It’s not that simple,” I tell him, voice wavering a little under the fierceness of his gaze. And the pain of losing him.
“It is that simple. You’re the one making it complicated.”
“If you really believe that, then you’re lying to yourself. You may feel that way now, you may feel that way next month or maybe even next year. But at some point, maybe when your father dies, maybe before, it’s going to hit you just what you gave up to be with me.”
“I’m not giving anything up. It’s already been taken from me.”
“He just offered to give it back. And you can say that it’s bullshit, you can say it’s just a mind game he’s playing with you, but what if it’s not? What if it’s a genuine offer? Do you really believe that you’re going to be okay walking away from it for a woman you’v
e known for only two weeks?”
“I’m okay walking away from it for you, because I love you.”
“You say that now, but you don’t know.” My father told my mother he loved her, then walked—no, ran—away the second he found out she was pregnant. And Garrett has so much more to lose than my father ever did. He may say, now, that he wants to be with me, but how can he be certain when he’s already been through so much? And, even if by some miracle he does mean it, how can I let him throw away the one thing that matters to him more than anything?
“What you mean is that you don’t know,” he says as he stalks toward me, eyes narrowed. “I’m standing here, baring my soul, telling you exactly how I feel about you, and you won’t accept it.”
“That’s not fair.”
“There’s no fair, Lola. None of this is fair. There’s only what is. And what is is that I love you and want to build a life with you. Why can’t you believe that?”
“Because no one does this outside of books or movies. Nobody just gives up a kingdom for the person they love. That’s fairy-tale shit. It doesn’t happen in the real world.”
“How would you know?”
I think about my father, about the way he threw my mother away the second she became a risk to his reputation and the empire he was trying to build. About how he spent his life trying to pretend away my existence because it was inconvenient for him to have an illegitimate daughter with a showgirl who wasn’t always discriminating about the kinds of jobs she took on.
I don’t tell Garrett that, though. Partly because he already knows and partly because he would tell me he doesn’t care. And while he’s not like my father in any way that really matters, I can’t help but remember what Savvy told me about their relationship. He’s not been like that with me at all, but does that mean he never will be?
Besides, even if he means what he says, how can I ask him to walk away from everything that matters to him for me? How can I honestly expect that he wouldn’t grow to resent me?
His perfect fiancée, Felicity, couldn’t hold him. Savvy, who is pretty much the sweetest, most nurturing woman on earth, couldn’t either. Why the hell would I be able to, when I’m about as far from sweet or nurturing or perfect as a person can get?