26. “Why Why Why” - Shawn Mendes
“Why Why Why” - Shawn Mendes
I’m not sure what I expected when Henry said hunting cabin, but I’m pleasantly surprised by the small lodge.
Plaid was at the forefront of my mind, and there’s plenty of that, but it has a certain charm about it too.
And I don’t know how they managed, but someone got here before us and lit a fire in the fireplace, so the chill in the air is already starting to vanish.
The whole place is a blend of warm browns.
The walls and floor are made of wooden planks, the furniture constructed from either supple leather or pine logs, and the wooden canoe hanging from the ceiling is polished a golden honey.
The tapestry on the far wall is a vibrant red and perfectly complements the plaid throw pillows on the sofa.
“Thank god there’s indoor plumbing,” I say after opening a door to reveal a commode and the world’s tiniest shower.
Henry cuts me a glance from the small round table, where he’s unboxing what appears to be a set of security cameras. “Like I would have let you pee outside.”
The door I imagine opens into the bedroom turns out to lead to a small closet. I turn in confusion, and that’s when I see it: a single bed, tucked against the wall near the fireplace. I thought it was a futon.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take the sofa,” Henry says without looking up.
“I was just worried about bed bugs.” I shrug as if he didn’t just read my mind. “I’m going to take a shower. Hopefully I can finish this one.”
Henry isn’t in the cabin when I get out. My heart takes a nosedive to my toes before I spot him through the window. He’s outside, perched on a chair and fastening something over his head. His shirt has ridden up, revealing a sliver of those rock-hard abs that still torment me in my dreams.
I watch him, his muscles expanding and contracting as he mounts a security camera.
I imagine him pressing me against the wall, hips rolling against mine, pinning me into place.
I can almost feel his fingers tunneling through my hair as he tilts my head and takes my mouth with his.
He needs so little of his strength to capture and contain me.
The thought makes me feel both small and protected.
It’s that last one that gets to me.
Henry has always made me feel protected. The fact that he’s currently outside in this brutal weather, installing cameras for my safety, is only one of the reasons why. The thought hits me with a bang.
I should be terrified out of my mind right now.
Someone is out there hunting me, and they won’t stop until they either accomplish their mission or are stopped.
If Henry hadn’t come back from London and made it his responsibility to protect me, and by some miracle I was still alive, I would be an anxious mess.
Wind blasts through the door as he opens it. He rushes inside, carrying the wooden chair in one hand and slamming the door shut with the other, then stops abruptly when he sees me. I’m still standing in the middle of the room like an idiot, water dripping from my hair all around me.
“God, Celia. You’re going to freeze to death.” Henry drops the chair and grabs a towel from the bathroom. It should be called a bath cupboard. The shower was hardly big enough to turn around in.
Standing behind me, he begins to dry my hair, squeezing the rest of the water out of it. Without all of my products, it’s going to be a frightful mess tomorrow.
The room tilts, and he drops the towel to grab me instead. “C?”
“I’m fine,” I murmur. “Just very tired.” I try to hold myself upright, but my legs aren’t following instructions.
Henry half carries, half drags me to the bed. After helping me lie down, he tugs my boots off. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks, tucking the plaid coverlet around me.
I hum in agreement. “I forgot I took sleeping pills before we left.” I realize as I’m drifting off that I forgot to tell him just how safe he makes me feel.
I wake to the scent of frying eggs. From my dwarf-sized bed, I can see Henry in the kitchen. He’s turned away from me, and I use the remaining moments until he realizes I’m awake to admire the strong lines of his back.
His soft T-shirt hugs his shoulders, then loosely falls to puddle around his waist. The sleeves are tight around his biceps. Before I can stop myself, I imagine shredding the whole thing off.
Enough of that. As I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stretch, I realize I slept the whole night through despite the lumpy mattress, which smells faintly of cat urine.
Henry pivots from the stove and gives me a devastating smile. “Good morning, sunshine. I hope you’re ready to be locked in here for the day.” He gestures to the window before turning back to plate the eggs.
A thick blanket of snow has smothered the world outside, leaving nothing but blinding white everywhere I look. I thought the penthouse was bad. How can I be expected to survive in a tiny five-hundred-foot cabin with Henry as a roommate?
But the day goes better than expected. We find a few battered board games stowed in a closet, and for tradition’s sake, I smoke Henry’s ass in Monopoly. There’s an old VHS player hooked up to the antiquated TV, and we laugh our way through a small stash of terrible American Westerns.
Whoever made the fire last night also stocked the cupboards, so we haven’t starved yet. Now it’s close to dinnertime, and Henry pulls out several questionable-looking boxes. “So, deluxe cheeseburger macaroni or”—he eyes the second box with a raised brow—“tuna tetrazzini?”
I pull a face. “Isn’t there more roast chicken in the fridge?”
“You polished that off at lunch.” He opens the refrigerator. “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
I launch the TV remote at his head, and he ducks behind the door.
“There is a little bit of cheese, enough milk for a family of eight, and approximately six grapes.”
We end up eating bowls of cereal on the sofa. “You know, this would be great for your rebranding campaign,” he says.
“What would?” I slurp another spoonful of milk, not caring that I’m acting like a slob right now. “Me dressed like a hobo, eating dinner in what is essentially your bed?”
He laughs. “The fact that you eat breakfast cereal for dinner in your pajamas.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s what Rosalind has in mind.”
“It makes you relatable.”
I set my bowl on the coffee table and tuck my feet under my large sweatshirt, stolen from Henry. “I thought the whole point of the monarch was to be this mysterious entity that no one truly knows.”
He shrugs and devours another mouthful of cereal. “Not necessarily. You’ll always be a bit of a mystery, but it’s good for the people to see that you’re human, too.”
“And here I thought ‘ice princess’ was a good image.”
Setting his bowl down, he angles his body toward mine. “You couldn’t be an ice princess if you tried.”
“That depends on who you ask. Maisie, for instance.”
“I thought the two of you made up.” He takes one of my hands between his and begins rubbing warmth into it.
“We did, but I was pretty cold before.”
Henry presses his thumbs into the pad of my palm, and I fight the urge to moan. “It’s not like you didn’t have a reason,” he says quietly.
The same uncomfortable silence swirls around us, and I let my gaze wander. I can’t meet his eyes, not when we both know I can’t give him what he wants.
“Do you remember when you were thrown from that horse?” His words surprise me out of my determination.
My head jerks up. “I still have the scar.” I tug my hand from his grasp and push up my left sleeve. Heat races through me as he touches the puckered skin.
It was a bright day with a faint breeze, perfect for riding. One minute I was astride a beautiful mare from the palace stables, and the next I was flying through the air. The impact broke my arm in two places. I told Henry it looked like a swan. He held me as we waited for help.
The memory isn’t painful. In fact, it’s almost sweet to remember a time when Henry and I did nearly everything together, and that most of my childhood memories are entangled with him in some way or another.
Breaking my arm was painful. Doing so while my best friend and the boy I was falling for held me made the moment tender.
But when I look at Henry’s face now, he doesn’t appear to be reliving a sweet shared memory.
His brow is furrowed, and the hard set of his jaw tells me he is barely containing his anger.
He yanks the sleeve of my shirt back down and stands abruptly.
I watch him attempt to pace the room, but he can only take two steps before he’s met by a wall.
“Would you care to explain what’s going on? Because I’m officially confused,” I say.
The silence stretches around us, growing thick and elastic. His fingers bury themselves in his hair, and in that moment, I know he’s scrambling to find a story to sell me—something believable and as far from the truth as possible.
He turns toward me slowly, the indecision on his face as clear as if I had written it there with a Sharpie. He still doesn’t trust me, even though he wants me to trust him.
“You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know.” I push off the sofa and move to the bathroom, shutting myself in before he can do anything to stop me.
“Celia, please,” he says through the door.
“I’m not interested in your fabrications.”
There’s a pause. “What if I tell you the truth?”
I look in the mirror. I’m not tall by any means, but I can only see myself from the chin down unless I duck.
Roberts’s in-laws must be tiny, or else someone doesn’t know how to hang a mirror.
I lean my head back against the door and remind myself to take slow, calming breaths.
One, two, three, four, five. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five.
“I’m not sure you’d recognize the truth if it bit you on the nose,” I finally say.
“Will you listen if I try to explain?”
“Give me one good reason why I should.”
“Because,” Henry says, “despite all of the lies, you’ve always believed that what we had was real.”