Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LILY
“Amethyst cluster to your left,” Teddy calls out, her hand motioning under it like she’s displaying it on The Price Is Right. She has really reorganized the vault by gemstone color.
“Now the ruby section’s on the back right, past the emergency rations and the spare ammunition.”
That makes sense. The blood-red rubies should be by the ammunition. Minnie hops down from the velvet couch and stretches out, the tiara on her head slipping off.
“Ope.” Teddy hurries over to attempt to balance it back in place.
I stand in the doorway, simply watching my best friend treat a secure vault and kind of panic room like a dressing room.
“You know this is supposed to be for hiding from assassins,” I tease her. It doesn’t matter how heavy life can get, Teddy has a way of lightening everything. It’s a talent. It goes from zero to a hundred in a millisecond.
“Multipurpose space,” Teddy says, adjusting the tiara until it sits at an angle. “Besides, if I’m going to be murdered, I’d prefer to be wearing a crown.” She strikes a pose, the diamonds catching the emergency lighting. “So? How are you handling everything?”
“It is what it is.” I try to shrug it off.
“Don’t.” She abandons the tiara, crossing to me.
“The princess thing. Double dads. The your-boyfriend-is-a-psychopath thing. Everything.” Calling Tristan a boyfriend sounds so strange.
We’re way past that. Sure, the relationship of being together hasn’t been long, but we’ve lived together for a while.
We probably know each other better than most couples that have officially been together for longer.
“Glass houses.” Her man is a psychopath too. I collapse onto the velvet couch. Minnie immediately tries to wiggle halfway into my lap. I swear she has no clue how big she is.
“Which are you worried about?”
“Any of it. All of it.” Teddy tucks her legs beneath her. “I’m checking in. Your mood is off and not just ‘I found out I’m secretly royalty’ weird. It’s more than that.”
I pick at a loose thread on the couch. “Tristan’s planning to contact my brother. Half brother,” I correct. “Prince Julian.”
“Okay.” Teddy waits for me to keep going.
“I don’t know. I guess that makes it more real.”
“The two men trying to kidnap you already made it real.” This is true.
“I suppose I don’t want things to change.
It’s like there is a whole other life over there I should be a part of, but I don’t want to be,” I admit.
Finding out I’m a princess was fun and silly in the moment.
It also makes for great jokes, but the reality of it is too big to comprehend, and I’m not sure I want to.
“They can’t force you to go back or whatever, as if Tristan would allow that to happen.” This is true. I bet he would offer to come with me if that’s what I wanted.
Since Tristan and I are fully together, he’s rather accommodating.
The bear had a thorn in his paw, that thorn being his belief that we couldn’t be together, and now that it’s been removed, he’s no longer cold.
In fact, he’s the opposite. The rest of the world can get cold.
I’ll take the scorching heat he makes me feel every day.
“And I keep thinking about what happens after.” I finally look at her. “If Julian helps us. If we stop the queen. Then what? I go from being Lily Swan to Princess Liliana of Grandeurs?”
While crowns and tiaras are fun to put on and play around with, a real crown is heavy, and I don’t mean the jewels. It’s not a weight I have signed up to carry.
“You’ll still be Lily.” She gives me a cheeky smile. “Soon to be Lily Vanderbilt.”
“He hasn’t asked.” I glance down. Why do I get shy over this topic? I shouldn’t be, especially in front of Teddy.
“You think he’s actually going to ask?” She barks with laughter.
“Hey.”
“I mean, really? Ask?” She laughs harder. “I’d be more shocked about him asking you to marry him than about us just stumbling across a marriage certificate that he’d simply gotten.” I snort a laugh. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that you are already Lily Vanderbilt.”
“Thanks,” I tell her.
“Lily Pad.” Teddy reaches over and snags my hand. “Victor picked you, I picked you, and Tristan picked you. Well, he more than picked you.”
“How do you go from ridiculous to hitting a nail right on the head?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” She shrugs. “Besides, the princess thing is just paperwork. Actually, it’s a little insulting now that I think about it. We’re queens. We’ve been queens for years. How dare they try to demote us!”
“Easy for you to say. Your family doesn’t have a throne.”
“This is true.” She grins. “We just have generational trauma and a vineyard. Much more manageable.”
I laugh, and it feels good. Real. Like I’m still myself even if everything else is shifting. “Wait, you have a vineyard?” Why is this the first time I’m hearing of this?
“I think a couple of minor league baseball teams too. Who knows?” What makes it even funnier is that she’s not joking. When Grams passed, Teddy found out about all kinds of shit she owned.
The vault door clicks. We both turn as it swings open, and there he is—Tristan, filling the doorway with his broad shoulders that I dug my nails into this morning as I rode him. I wonder if the little marks are still there. His eyes find me immediately, like they always do.
“Found you,” he says.
“As if you didn’t know where I was,” I say. “Stalker.”
“Occupational hazard.” He steps inside. His gaze flicks to Teddy, then back to me. “Can I steal her?”
“She’s not mine to give,” Teddy says, standing and brushing off her hands. “But yes. Please. Take her. She’s been philosophizing about crowns for ten minutes.”
“I have not—”
“Have too.” Teddy presses a quick kiss to my cheek and whispers, “Go get him, queen.” She winks at me before she disappears through the door with Minnie trailing after her, tail flicking the whole way.
Tristan crosses to me and pulls me into him.
I melt right into his body, mine always wanting contact with his.
If I thought I was gone for Tristan before I ran away, I had no clue how deep I could really sink.
I’d probably stalk him, but I don’t need to.
If I stepped one foot out that door, he’d pop up out of nowhere.
“Julian’s people have responded,” he says without preamble. “Video call in twenty minutes. Encrypted, secure, all the works.” Holy crap. That was fast. While I knew he was reaching out, I didn’t expect such a swift response.
“And?” I don’t know if I’m going to be in on this call.
“And I wanted to find you first.” His hands run up and down my back, trying to soothe me. “This could go wrong in a dozen ways. He could be loyal to his mother. He could—” want me dead too. He can’t even say the words.
“Or he could help us.”
“Or he could help us.” Tristan’s hand finds my waist, and he somehow manages to pull me closer.
“But I need you to know—whatever happens in that call, whatever he offers or demands—you’re not a bargaining chip.
You’re not a problem to solve. You’re mine, and that’s not changing. You’re my princess first.”
When Tristan calls me “princess,” it makes me feel sweet and delicate. I want to be that princess. Not the other. Besides, the things Teddy and I would get up to if we held real royal scepters wouldn’t be good for anything or anyone.
I run my hands up his chest to around his neck. “Possessive.”
“Always.” He kisses my forehead, then my temple, then my jaw. “Especially when I’m terrified about anyone trying to take you from me.”
I pull back enough to see his face. “I won’t let anyone take me. This is where I want to be. You are my family.”
“And here to stay,” he agrees, his thumb tracing my jaw. “I love you, Lily. Julian could offer me everything—protection, resources, a clean resolution—and I’d still burn it all down if it meant keeping you safe. If it meant keeping you.”
I turn my face into his palm and kiss it. “I love you too,” I tell him, knowing he will always pick me.
He kisses me, soft and slow. I sigh against his mouth, fingers gripping his shirt, and for a moment, the world narrows to only us.
When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard; he rests his forehead against mine. “Fifteen minutes,” he murmurs. “Then we talk to your brother.”
“Half brother.” That’s still so strange. I’ve gone from thinking I don’t have a family to now having a whole-ass half brother.
“Half brother,” he corrects, but he’s already leading me toward the door, his hand locked in mine. “Whatever he is, we’ll handle it together.”
Together. I like the sound of that.