Chapter 14
Fourteen
ALERIC
I was pretty sure nothing about this was treasonous, but I was also pretty sure that Camillo was going to get reamed out when he got home. I had no clue how much influence his personal guard, his parents, or his brother had over him. He never talked about the king or queen and rarely spoke about the crown prince.
Cillian was a frequent topic, of course, and a frequent presence. I caught a glimpse of him in the window as we sped off, but I didn’t slow down. We were on a tight timeline. The truck was going to make its rounds near my apartment in the next hour, and I didn’t want to miss it.
The guy who sold ice cream in my neighborhood was old-school. His speaker sat on top of the truck, and the melody was like an old music box. I wasn’t sure he did much business, but I was pretty sure that didn’t matter. He was as old as dirt, and this was probably some sort of retirement hobby for him.
The only thing that did matter was that he had the classics: the cartoon shapes with gumball eyes, the lopsided, chocolate-dipped cones covered in peanut pieces, the rock-hard frozen snow cones with three muddled flavors, and heaps of sweets I hadn’t seen in shops since I was a kid.
He was one of the only places that sold the two-foot-long red licorice shaped like a rope, and God, that thing used to last me a week when I was knee-high. I only ever had enough money for one treat a week back then—back before my commercials were paying us a living wage. I’d hoard anything I got under my pillow and take nibbles of it for six days of the week.
I was currently about as broke as my parents were back then, though my first paycheck had finally hit my account now that the pilot had wrapped. I was able to pay my bills without crying and compromise, which was a nice surprise.
The thought almost made me laugh as we turned the corner near the park, which sat across from my apartment building, and I caught the look on Camillo’s face as he glanced around.
“Where are we?” There he was. The snob. The prince .
I swallowed heavily. “I live here.”
“I—oh. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s not like I don’t know it’s total shit, but it’s not as bad as it seems. People are nice here.” I pulled into the parking lot as close to the disabled sidewalk ramp as I could get without Camillo’s tag. Or… did he have a tag?
He was the prince. He could probably stick his car wherever the fuck he wanted, laws be damned.
Putting the car in park, I turned to face him. “Getting out of the toxic cycle of child acting was humbling. Especially when I finally got access to the trust my parents had set aside for me.”
He stared, unblinking. “The trust?”
“It wasn’t a law when I was a kid, but I think they wanted to make themselves look good by setting it up and depositing a percentage of my pay in there for every film I did.” I bit my lip and glanced away from him. “It had twelve hundred bucks when the judge ruled in my favor.”
“Shit,” he whispered.
“I’m not even sure how much I made back then. According to the internet, I was worth several million. I attempted to sue them, but no lawyer would take my case. They were broke as fuck, so they wouldn’t get paid, and I’d have to prove that the money didn’t benefit me as a child when I was decked out in designer clothes and being jetted off to whatever fucking country we were filming in that month.”
I heard Camillo swallow thickly. “Did they have anything to say about it?”
“Nothing, apart from calling me a burden,” I said.
I could still hear my mother’s warble telling me that I was a waste of space. She thought I could do a quick stint in rehab and get right back to it. She had no idea how bad I was because she hadn’t ever cared. I was a meal ticket, and when she realized her buffet had closed for good, there was nothing left but resentment and a little hatred.
“That’s cruel.”
“It’s life. Stage parents,” I said, waving him off. “One of the many ways I’ve put my therapist’s kid through college.”
He laughed softly. “Right.”
“Anyway, it was kind of hard to afford anything after it was all over. I lived with some friends I met in my group therapy sessions for a few years. That was nice. They got me a job where I could do customer service from home. Kept me from losing my mind or from being recognized in public. I wanted everyone to forget who I had been.”
I finally looked back at him, and Camillo was frowning at me. “Why did you get back into acting?”
“Because my parents weren’t wrong at the beginning. I did love it.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. “I wanted to see if I could love it again, the way I did before it all went to shit. It all felt very honest—which I know is a weird way to describe lying for a living.”
“No,” Camillo said softly. There was a warm touch against the back of my wrist, then his fingers traveled to mine, and his palm pressed to the back of my hand. He stroked a thumb over my knuckles, and I shivered. “I get it. It’s art. It’s leaving aside who you are for a chance to be someone else for a little while.”
Something like that, yeah. I smiled at his description.
“So. Is it better?”
I laughed and rolled my head to the side to face him. “I don’t know yet. It’s been an interesting journey so far, but ask me how I feel after I have to slide into the dick sock.”
“The dick sock? Is that exactly what it sounds like?”
I burst into laughter. “Mhm. It sure is. No one wants to see it flapping around.”
He hummed thoughtfully, making me blush. It was too easy to fall back into the memory of his little safe space. His tiny apartment above a café where no one could find us. His lips had been so warm, tongue wet and soft, hands so fucking talented.
I wanted to do that again—to drop to my knees for him, to obey him, to beg him, then to mark him with my come.
“Do you think—” My sentence died at the sound of the tinkling music box melody. “Oh shit. He’s here.”
“He? Who?” Camillo looked entirely alarmed and on edge, like he was about to pull out a sword and duel someone.
I had no time to explain. I threw open the door and swung my legs out. “Get your chair and follow me. I’ll stall him.”
“Aleric!” he cried.
I pointed at the old-school truck now turning the corner, and I took off in a jog, twisting to run backward so I could shout, “Come on! You said you trusted me!” I caught a single glimpse of his surprised face before turning back around and jogging to stop the old man and his wares.
Leaning back on the curb, I stretched my feet out and looked up and over at Camillo, who had our loot in his lap. He was holding an ice cream bar by the stick, pinched between two fingers and his thumb. It was meant to be a Ninja Turtle, but it looked more like Frogger after he was squashed by a car.
And the gumballs were not any place eyes were meant to grow.
“This is your idea of a happy childhood?” Camillo asked, turning the ice cream from left to right.
I bit happily into my snow cone, saying a little prayer it wouldn’t chip a tooth because I had no energy for an emergency dental appointment. It tasted like freezer burn and summer. “Mhm.”
“Aleric.”
“Camillo,” I mimicked in his posh accent. Twisting around, I rested my chin on his bony knee. “Taste it.”
He pulled a face. “This looks…unnatural. And full of chemicals.”
“Of course it does. It’s a neon green Ninja Turtle. And the chemicals are what gave our generation this amazing constitution.”
He swallowed thickly, then put it up to his mouth and took the smallest bite.
“You bit your ice cream,” I said flatly. “Fucking heathen.”
“You bit yours!”
“This is a snow cone. It’s different.” I crunched into mine again as I settled back around, and I heard him slurping a couple of times because, as I knew it would, it began to melt.
“Oh God, oh no ,” he whispered.
Rolling my eyes, I twisted back around again and saw a pale green streak dripping down his wrist. He was holding the ice cream bar in the air and away from his body, so I snagged him by the edge of his sleeve, met his gaze, and licked.
His entire chest heaved with his inhale.
I did it again.
“Aleric,” he whispered.
“You really like saying my name.”
He said nothing as I let him go, and his hand fell slowly toward his trousers before he seemed to remember he was holding melting ice cream. “Christ, take this thing off me. I can’t do it. It’s…it’s not good, Aleric. I’m sorry.”
I burst into laughter as I snatched it away, took a big bite of a gumball, then walked over to the bin and threw it inside. As it did when I was a kid, the gum turned into crumbly powder before firming up into something barely chewable. The ice cream tasted like sugar and food coloring—the sweet flavor of youth.
“Mine’s better,” I said as I sat back down and thrust it at him. “This one you can bite without being a heretic.”
He gave me a flat look as he took it and sank his teeth into the slowly melting ice. “Oh. That’s much better.”
I nodded and pulled one of the licorice ropes off his lap. “If you’d listened to me and trusted me like you said you did, we could have avoided the turtle problem.”
He said nothing as he pursed his lips around the ball of the cone and sucked. My dick went a little hard, and I took it out on the licorice wrapping, gnawing off a huge chunk with my molars. His smirk showed me he knew what he was doing.
That was payback.
“And that?” he asked, pointing to the candy. His tongue sounded thick with how cold it was.
I held up the end and waved it at him. “Chemicals. Red dye. All the shit that’s bad for kids these days.”
He curled freezing cold fingers around my wrist, then took a very delicate bite. His teeth were so white, a little crooked, and sharp. I damn near swallowed my tongue.
“Not bad.”
“That’s like five stars coming from you.” I set the licorice down on his thighs and went for one of the gum cigarettes. The poor man only had a handful, but they were enough to take up space in my cigarette case. I put the paper between my lips and blew.
Camillo reared back. “What was that?”
“Cocaine.” It was a struggle to keep a straight face when Camillo choked, but I managed it.
His eyes went wide. “Aleric! You can’t be serious!”
“Oh my God, no. I’m not serious. It’s sugar. Christ, is it against some royal decree to have a sense of humor?”
“I have a sense of humor,” he defended.
That was debatable, though I had a feeling there was something bigger lurking under his skin. Something a little wild and a lot precious that needed to be treasured. I swung around to my knees, knowing I’d regret that later, and I picked up one of the other cigarettes and put it to his lips.
“Blow.”
He didn’t.
“Humor me.”
He sucked in air through his nose, then gave a little puff. Sugar hit me in the face, filtering up my nostrils and making the back of my throat taste sweet. I grinned at him as I broke it in half and peeled away the paper.
“Mm. Thank you, but I don’t chew gum.”
I normally didn’t either. I hadn’t in years, but now was a good time to give it a try. I spit the Ninja Turtle gum into the wrapper and popped the gum cigarette in my mouth. It was hard as a rock, but the taste was worth it. It was every moment I’d ever been allowed to feel like a child—which had been so few and so fucking far between.
Instead of turning back around, I rested my forearms on his thighs and leaned against him. His chair rocked back a fraction against the brakes, and he met my gaze. I had a feeling no one did this with him. I doubted anyone had ever been allowed, and I had no idea why I was now.
“Can I see your apartment?”
“No.”
He looked hurt
“There’s no working elevator, and I’m not going to be the dickhead who leaves your chair downstairs and carries you.”
His expression softened. “I trust you.”
“Enough to carry you, but not enough to get the right kind of ice cream?” I asked with the hint of a smile.
He blinked, then burst into laughter. It was lighter than I’d heard it before. Freer. His eyes crinkled in the corners, and somewhere beneath all his fucking pomp and circumstance, I heard the man who was himself without title or past.
“Exactly.” He sobered after a few more giggles, then lifted a hand and hesitated before laying it against the side of my neck. “I want to see where you live.”
“It’s shit, Camillo. And I mean that. It’s clean, but there’s nothing nice about it. The grout has mold stains, and I never clean the baseboards. And I think there’s, like, four days’ worth of dishes in my sink.”
“I can do dishes.”
“First of all, the prince of fucking Caverna is not doing my washing up. Secondly, do you actually know how to wash dishes?”
He didn’t look upset. He probably got those questions all the time. “My mom wanted me and my brother to be able to do things. She knew life for us would be…weird. We’d always have a cleaning staff, and we’d be raised by nannies more than her. And everyone would know our faces all the time. I think she wanted to know that she could create a few tiny parts of us that were normal.”
“So, dishes?”
He shrugged and stroked the side of my neck with his thumb and didn’t stop when I leaned into it. “And laundry. Every Thursday, I’d come home to an unfolded pile of laundry on my bed, and I had to put it all away before I was allowed to turn on the TV.”
“Harsh.”
He laughed, softly this time. “It taught me that I was very particular about how things are hung up.”
“I barely have a closet. Also, I never fold anything.”
He looked affronted.
“What? I don’t. It’s not worth it. I bought this super-cheap portable steamer online, and I just give everything a de-wrinkle before I have to leave. Everything else just gets dumped in a drawer.”
“I—” He stopped and shook his head.
“What?”
“I want to see it.”
I glanced over my shoulder. I could just make out my front door from where we were sitting. “Will Cillian murder you if we walk?”
Camillo sighed. “He won’t know. And no. I’m allowed to do things. I haven’t had death threats against me in years, and I think a lot of people have forgotten who I am.”
My gut twisted, and I sat up a little higher on my knees. “You know that’s going to change, right? If this show is a success. It’s going to be like the accident all over again when it was all anyone wanted to talk about.” I vaguely remembered when it hit the press, but Camillo and I were nearly the same age, and I was deep, deep in a hole of my own destruction then.
He bowed his head and nodded. His hand dropped from my neck to my chest, pressing over my heart. “I know. I knew what I was signing on for. So it’s probably better I enjoy the moments I can walk across the street on my own, right?”
I supposed he had a point.
“And you’ll have to move too. You can’t be Prince Camillo and live here. You’ll be mobbed.”
I knew that too. I was already making arrangements. My manager had a listing of places that I’d be able to afford on my current salary, and I wasn’t telling anyone this, but I also had two other possible projects lined up after we wrapped.
No one but the cast and crew had seen what I was doing so far, but life was already different. Which was what I wanted.
Wasn’t it?
“Come on,” Camillo said, pushing me back. “You can piggyback me.”
Well, if that wasn’t incentive enough to go, I didn’t know what was.