Chapter 20 #2
She shakes her head. “Despite the fact we’re sitting in a blanket fort, I no longer see you as a man-child. As I said, I was wrong to call you that.”
I widen my eyes at her. “Fabiana Fontaine is saying she was wrong?”
“All right. Don't rub it in.” She straightens her shoulders. “I'm sorry for calling you a man-child and all the other names. You've shown me that you're so much more than that.”
I hold her gaze. “Thank you,” I say simply.
“There's really no need to thank me, Max.”
“I'm thanking you for saying it, because we both know you didn't have to.”
I almost reach for her hand. Almost. I don't. I don’t want to scare her the way I did by the fire last night.
Man, was that only last night? It feels like a lifetime ago.
“I can see that you're not the absolutely horrible human I thought you were before as well.”
She lets out a surprised snicker. “Thanks?”
I hold a hand up. “That didn't come out quite right. What I meant to say was that I formed an opinion of you based on what you wrote about me, not on who you are.”
“Well, to be fair, I was the woman who wrote all those stories about you. The woman who persisted in showing the country the worst side of Prince Maximilien. I didn’t know anything else about you. All I saw was the man who wore a bright yellow tutu over his dinner suit to a state dinner.”
I shrug. “I’d lost a bet.”
She laughs once more, the sound fills the small space and warms my belly.
I chew on my lip. “Since we’re taking ownership here, I’m not exactly innocent in all this. I’ve played into the whole ‘Max in Neverland’ thing.”
“Never growing up.”
I gesture at the fort. “What’s so great about being an adult, anyway? The kids on the program see me as I really am.”
“They love you.”
A smile grows on my lips. “They’re the best. They show me what’s possible. They show me that no matter what life throws at you, you can not only survive, but you can also thrive.”
“It’s plain to see that you care deeply about them. Do you know what I think? I think you connect so well with them because you had to grow up too fast.”
I lift my gaze to hers once more, my heart thudding. No one has ever summed up my life in such a way. No one has even seen the real me. Not really. “What makes you say that?” I ask, my voice small.
“Because you’ve been in the public eye all your life, at first loved for the sweet but naughty child you were, and then, once you hit your mid-teens, you were scrutinized, your choices put under the microscope.
I remember reading about you getting drunk at your boarding school and nearly getting kicked out.
Why would you want to grow up when the country made it clear they adored the sweet but naughty boy?
And in growing up, you become this person whose life is both privileged and limited by the simple fact of your birth. ”
I listen as she speaks, my heart thudding like a drum, my mind whirring. As startling as it is to hear my life summed up in a few short sentences by her, the truth in her words is crystal clear.
How did this woman I’ve always thought of as a headline chaser, my arch nemesis, intent on capitalizing on my less than stellar choices, work me out so fully?
Fabiana understands me in a way I never expected.
She sees me. She gets me.
She toys with one of her fingernails before looking back up at me.
“What's it like being the youngest son? You've got a brother who is now the king of Malveaux, a sister who will soon be the queen of Ledonia, another sister who jointly runs a wildly successful enterprise with her Hollywood star of a husband. And not only that, all of them are married with children.”
I snicker. “Are you purposely trying to make me feel like the underachiever of the family?” I only half joke.
“Is that how you feel?” she asks, her voice low.
I shrug. “In a way,” I admit, and when her features drop, I add hastily, “Don't get me wrong. I adore my family, each and every one of them, and I'm incredibly happy that they found love and purpose in their lives.”
“But you’ve found neither.”
I snap my attention to her, her words cutting me to the core. “I'm only twenty-seven. I've got time.”
“Don’t you have to have an arranged marriage if you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-eight?”
I thin my lips. Of course she’s right. It’s no secret. It’s been the rule for Ledonian royalty for hundreds of years. But I never thought that rule would apply to me. I thought I would have met the one by then, fallen in love, got married.
The stark truth is I’ve never even come close.
She's the one to reach out and touch me, placing her hand lightly over mine. “I'm sorry, Max. I took that too far. Sometimes I say things without really thinking about the effect they might have on a person.”
“No. You’re right.” As I look into her eyes, my heart tells me that maybe, just maybe, she might be the one I’ve been looking for.
The thought settles into my chest like a warm ember, both hazardous and beautiful.
It's the kind of realization that could change everything for me.
She's not just someone I want, she's someone I need, someone who makes me want to be the man she sees when she looks at me the way she is right now in this moment.
I want to ask her so many questions about herself, but her words echo in my mind.
There are things you don't know about me.
But I want to know. All of it. I want to learn everything I can about this woman who’s bewitched me.
“How do you know so much about having to grow up too fast?” I ask, and instantly her demeanor changes.
“I don’t. I’m just observant, that’s all. Part of the job description.”
She’s not telling me the truth. She’s hiding something from me.
“What other completely useless apps do you have on your phone?” she asks, changing the subject.
I allow it to happen. I’m not going to force anything with her. “I have many.” I scroll through my phone until I find what I’m looking for and then show it to her.
“Sock Matchmaker,” she reads. “What is that?”
“You use your camera to scan socks to find their ‘soulmate’ pair. You can also watch them date other socks if you’ve lost one.” I turn the phone so she can see the app with its bright pink screen and dancing mismatched socks.
“Sounds very useful.”
“So useful. Then there’s this one. It’s a reverse fortune cookie app.”
“What does it do?”
“It gives you bad advice, like telling you to text your ex at 2 AM, or to invest your life savings in a Ponzi scheme.”
“A reverse fortune cookie app? That is not a thing.” She takes the phone from my hand, and as she does her fingers brush against mine, sending a ripple through me.
This is torture.
I watch as she studies the screen. Her blonde hair is illuminated by the light from my phone, her big eyes scanning as she pulls her brows together in concentration. She looks impossibly gorgeous.
Suddenly, I’m finding it hard to remember why I need to hold myself back.
She taps something out and then blinks at the screen.
“What did you ask it?”
She works her throat. “Whether I should be alone in a fort with a prince.”
“Really? What did it say?”
She clicks the phone off, shaking her head. “I’m not going to tell you.”
I chuckle. “Because it said it was a good idea, didn’t it?”
“You’ll never know, Max.”
“Is that so?” I click the phone back on, and as I read the answer to her question, something warm and urgent spreads through my chest, kicking up my heart rate. “As long as you make sure to kiss him,” I read aloud, returning my gaze to hers.
The atmosphere around us shifts, and in an instant, this fort we’re sitting in is no longer like an innocent game, but something a whole lot more intimate. So much more adult.
I want so badly to reach out and touch her, to pull her against me and press my lips against hers, to learn what it’s like to hold this woman who has filled my mind since the moment she stepped into my life.
This woman who has shown me tonight that she understands me in a way no one else does.
She clears her throat, lifting the lips I so sorely want to kiss into a small smile. “The app is clearly living up to its name by giving bad advice.”
“Look—” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“Shall we get ready for bed? It must be late, and I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted after today.”
Before I have the chance to respond, she pulls back the flap and quickly exits the fort, and I’m left sitting alone with Toffee, my heart still racing.
She feels this thing between us. It’s in her eyes when she looks at me with that intensity and fire.
It’s in the way she smiles at me, soft and sometimes almost shy, completely different from the sharp-edged wit she wields like armor in public.
It's in the way she leans closer when we talk, as if drawn by the same magnetic pull that's been driving me wild.
But for whatever reason, for whatever secret or fear that’s holding her back, she’s too scared to surrender herself to it.