7. Miri
7
Miri
C arter wasn’t in bed when I woke up. He’d left a note that said, “Went for a run. Be back soon,” but I heard the shower in the bathroom suite, so I assumed he had already returned.
I stood and stretched, walking to the balcony to open the doors on the beautiful beach below, squinting into the afternoon air. A dying plant on the table next to me caught my attention, and I touched a finger to its leaf, giving it a momentary prayer.
“Hang on, darling,” I thought before going into the room for a glass of water. I hadn’t had much luck before now, but maybe I could perk her up at least a little. When I returned to the balcony, I startled and dropped the glass of water where it shattered on the ground.
The plant, which I swear had been wilted only seconds ago, now stood upright, perfectly in bloom. It had grown at least an inch and flowered two new sprouts.
“What the bloody hell?” I murmured.
I hadn’t imagined that…had I?
Blinking, I walked closer, touching the small purple bud. The second my finger made contact, the flower opened and grew another few centimeters. I jerked my hand back and froze.
I did that.
I definitely did that.
“Bleeding Christ.” My heart raced, but I tried to keep my wits about me.
Certainly, I was hallucinating. Maybe the result of what happened to us in Ireland? There could be no other explanation for why I suddenly had the greenest thumb on the planet.
I thought about Ivy, about what she believed happened. The Fairies . I had survived a car crash that killed everyone else in my family. If anyone had reason to believe in the miraculous, it should have been me. Yet, there I stood, staring at my own fingers, wondering what was wrong with me.
I went for my phone, every instinct I had telling me to call Ivy and let her know. I hesitated because I didn’t have her new contact information, and she didn’t want to hear from me anyway. Besides, this was too unbelievable. What exactly did I plan to tell her? That I could grow flowers with my bare hands?
If it got out, my gran would lock me away. They’d lobotomize me, and no one would ever see me again. No, this had to stay with me until the grave. Not even Carter could know.
My phone buzzed in my hand, startling me back into reality.
Gran.
Like I’d summoned her, and if she’d taken the time to call me personally outside of our regularly scheduled one-on-ones, then that meant I was in deep royal shit. Fuck . I answered and tried to keep my voice level, like I wasn’t having a complete internal freak-out. “Hello, Gran.”
“Hello, Miriam, darling,” came her saccharine high-pitched voice. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know…” Discovering I have mutant powers. Nothing completely out of the ordinary. “Gardening.”
“You and your flowers,” Gran said with a small chuckle. “Such a lovely talent. You should foster that. Turn it into a humanitarian effort.”
I needed to get her off the phone so I could figure out how the hell I could grow plants with my hands!
“What can I do for you? This wasn’t in my schedule?—”
“Have you seen The Puck today?” Gran interrupted. “You know how I feel about public displays of affection. You and this boy from Chicago walking on the beach together. This after that fiasco with your uncle’s car. Miriam, he’s still furious.”
“Gran,” I tried to say.
“No, enough.” Her tense tone indicated exactly how far I’d stepped out of line. “I’ve tolerated this summer holiday for longer than I’d wanted. The time has come to return home.” My heart sank. Carter was in the background, rummaging through the drawers, looking for clothes that had long since mixed with mine.
All I could focus on was how terribly this was going to crush both of us. We’d only just started to feel better, started to heal. In each other, we found a solace we never knew existed. It couldn’t last. I knew that going into it, but it still hurt like hell that it had to end so soon.
“Sharon has lined up a few more events,” she continued. “Make yourself useful and show up on time. I’ve sent someone to bring you home.”
Bloody Christ, who the hell could that be?
“When it’s time to go,” Gran continued, “it’s time to go.” The slurping sounds of her sipping her tea radiated through the other side of the phone, the universal sign that the conversation was over and my input was no longer needed. “I’ll see you when you return. Love you, dear.” She disconnected the call.
My stomach filled with concrete and my eyes stung. I wanted to stay with Carter. Everything in me, every molecule, every fiber of my soul, needed to be close to him. The thought of leaving tightened my chest and made my blood run cold.
My arm brushed against the irises I’d grown, and I refocused on the most important thing that had happened.
How had I done it?
I didn’t have a good answer. I needed to test it with other plants and figure out how to get rid of its errant energy buzzing under my skin. Like the rush of blood in my veins, the iris’s energy hummed through me, both foreign and familiar.
This meant something.
Carter wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. He smelled like soap and man, and hell, I loved him so much.
“You know,” he said, pointing to a spot in the backyard. “We ought to build you a greenhouse right out there.”
He was trying to be sweet, but I couldn’t focus. Too many thoughts raced through my mind, too many complications, too many things happening all at once. It irritated me—the paparazzi and the media and the public obsession with my life. They couldn’t leave me alone. They couldn’t leave Ivy or Lex alone. And the more famous Carter got, the worse it would be for him. He thought he was nobody now, but that wouldn’t last for long. Roxy had big plans for him, and based on what he’d accomplished thus far, so too did the universe.
Fuck the paparazzi. Fuck my family. Fuck the whole bloody lot of them.
I sank to my knees, right there on the balcony, and sucked Carter’s cock until he exploded down my throat, his fingers gripped in my hair, the back of my head banging against the concrete balcony wall. Then he lifted me up and set me on the edge, wrapping my legs around his head so he could return the favor.
I came loud and hard and hoped they could hear me in England.
Fuck all of you, you bastards!
* * *
For the next week, I tested the limits of my newfound ability. I walked barefoot on grass, astonished when it grew inches behind me. I held flowers, purposely asking them to flourish or not based on my whim, and they listened.
They listened!
The spirit of every plant I touched surged in my veins like manifestations of the great beyond. It tingled through my body with little vibrations. My connection to the earth had never been as great as standing in the wild with the thrill of nature’s energy coursing over my skin and down my throat to my lungs. I’d never felt more alive, more human.
Lying in bed next to Carter without telling him took work. In the two months we’d been here, he’d become my best friend, my confidant. I’d told him things I hadn’t even mentioned to Ivy or Lex. In many ways, Carter had become my best friend. With a heart full of sorrow, I pondered whether he might be my only friend.
He had a screenplay open on his lap, and I pretended to read a smutty novel one of my cousins had sent me. But I couldn’t focus. I chewed my bottom lip, thoughts racing through my mind.
“You know,” Carter said, “of the four of us, you always were the loudest thinker.”
I sighed in exasperation. “That’s not true. Your precious Weeds thinks a lot louder than me.”
He tilted his head in my direction. “What’s bothering you, Juliet?”
“Have you”—I shook my head, trying to keep it cool—“noticed anything strange recently?”
He chuckled and closed the script, setting it on the nightstand before rolling on his side to face me and putting his head in his palm, balanced on his elbow. “Strange things happen to me all the time. What’s going on?”
I sighed, rubbing my tired eyes. “It’s just—I have this feeling in my gut. I think Ivy might have been right about the fairies.”
“Fairies?” He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
I swallowed and put my book down, sinking farther into the mattress so I could lay on my side and face him, mirroring his pose. I grabbed his hand, linking our thumbs, brushing our vows up against each other, palm to palm. “I have this intuition. Something’s changed.” I stared at him, looking for any sign he was lying, that he had experienced something like growing flowers with his bare hands. But his furrowed brow and the confused expression in his puppy dog eyes told me he had no idea what I meant. “Gran is sending someone for me.”
Carter frowned, a defeated look haunting his gaze, and he kissed my knuckles. “We knew that would happen eventually. How long do we have?”
“Days. Weeks. I have no idea.” I hated how much my life had never been my own.
He hummed and rolled on top of me, positioning his hips between my thighs, his half-erect cock poised right at my opening. Tingles shot through my body when he kissed my neck, followed by little nibbles that went down my collarbone.
“Guess we ought to make the most of it, huh?”
He disappeared under the covers and yanked my panties down to my ankles. Then I forgot all about fairies and focused on other magical fingers.
* * *
A few days later, we went to an event in Las Vegas that Sharon had arranged—a charity dinner with a bunch of aristocrats I’d never met before. Carter had agreed to come, so I didn’t have to go alone. Per my grandmother’s instructions, we kept the PDA at a minimum and when journalists asked who he was, I said he was a good friend from college. When they asked why we’d been caught hugging on the overlook, Carter smiled and chimed in with, “Don’t you hug your friends?”
“We’ve been through a lot together,” I added.
“Are you referring to Lex Fairfax and Ivy Washington?” one of them asked. “Didn’t you two used to date?” came another question from someone else. “How do you feel about them coming out as a couple? Did they cheat on you?”
Questions flew at us faster than we could answer, and I plastered that fake veneer smile on my face, pretending like they didn’t hurt.
Did they cheat on you?
Yes. And resoundingly…no.
“What a personal thing to ask,” I said. “Such bad manners.” I waved a finger at them and chidingly tsked before heading inside to the banquet. Despite having Carter with me, the whole thing was long and tedious, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. The minutes churned agonizingly by. The only upside was the money we raised for the Danae Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at curbing climate change and building sustainability.
Sometime after dinner, I stood at the bar, sipping a glass of wine and waiting for Carter to return from the bathroom when a familiar deep voice said from behind me, “Red wine? You know how that makes you an insufferable twat.”
“Bleeding Christ.” I jumped and nearly spilled my drink on my new dress. When I set my glare on the intruder, my heart sank into my stomach. I understood then what Gran had meant by sending someone to fetch me.
My cousin, Edward, the second son to the heir to the throne, stood next to the bar with a smug grin. Like me, he’d been a royal fuckup in his youth, but he was male and a few years older, so he’d gone through the worst of it in the days before smartphones. He hadn’t taken the brunt of the social media scrutiny the way I had.
Still, it pleased me to see family, and I liked Edward when he wasn’t being a righteous shit. I gave him a hug and a kiss on each cheek. “She sent in the artillery, huh?”
“Please.” He rolled his emerald eyes. “I was overjoyed to get away from that cesspool for a few days.” He picked at my plate of hors d’oeuvres, selecting choice bits of cheese and charcuterie to eat. Then he set his stare on me and smiled like a cat that had cornered a mouse, now deliberating the most entertaining way to torture it. “I heard a rumor about you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I took another sip of wine. “What’s that, love?”
“You’re sleeping with some American knob,” he said. “The staff talk from here to Kensington and back again.”
“It’s nothing serious,” I lied. It was everything serious. It was my last link to the greatest love of my life. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Gran thinks it is. You know how protective she is of her princess.”
“You’re here to drag me home by my slutty little pigtails, is that it?”
He barked out a laugh and straightened, snatching the glass of wine out of my hand before gulping down the last sips of it. “Eventually.” He put the chalice down and gestured to the bartender to bring me another one.
I pursed my lips and scrutinized him like a proverbial little sister. “I figured you’d be elbow-deep in blondes by now.”
“Who says I wasn’t?” He flashed that charming grin, the one that made the ladies swoon. “But a party is a party, darling.” He trailed his eyes over a cute brunette that passed and put his hands in his pockets, the hunter officially on the prowl. “And you know I live for free booze.”
I took a moment to admire his features. He’d inherited the same genes as his father and our grandfather, the same slope to his nose and the same set to his dark eyes. His elder brother, Arthur, had always looked more like their mother, something everyone in the family had seen as a blight after she’d released a tell-all documentary about our deepest, darkest secrets once the divorce had been finalized. Arthur may have looked the most like his mother, but Edward acted the most like her. He threw a big finger in the face of our traditions and dared anyone to do anything about it. I’d always admired him for that.
I caught Carter across the room, laughing as he charmed a group of strangers he’d probably just met.
“So that’s him, is it?” Edward’s gaze followed mine, and he leaned back on the bar. “Is he wearing my suit?”
“Oh, please,” I said. “That suit’s been at the beach house for so long, you forgot you owned it.”
“He sleeps in my room,” Edward teased. “He wears my clothes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t start.”
He shrugged. “It looks better on him, anyway.”
“He’s trying to break into the film industry. I’m helping him.” I straightened and grabbed my new glass of wine when the bartender set it down. “Roxy’s taken him on as a client.”
“Roxy’s involved?” Edward shook his ginger-colored head at the mention of our estranged cousin, a fellow black sheep. “Are you trying to see what it’ll take to make her put you on lockdown?” He meant our grandmother. “She sent me to bring you back; now I understand why.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My little cousin moves in with some American nobody, and you’re surprised I came to sort you out? And here I thought you were the smart one.” He wrapped those giant arms around me and pulled me into a bear hug the way he used to do when we were kids, lifting me off the ground while I struggled.
“No.” I tried to squirm away. “No, no, no!” It got tighter and tighter and tighter.
“Say mercy,” he said. “Say mercy!”
“Let. Go. Of. Me!” I elbowed him in the ribs, and he dropped me.
“God love ya, little coz.” He gave me a pretend punch to the chin and winked. “Okay, now say your goodbyes to your Hollywood heartthrob. I’m going to find someone to suck my cock, yes? And then we’ll head home.”
“What? Right now?”
I couldn’t leave now. It was too soon. I hadn’t gotten my greenhouse started. I hadn’t had my fill of Carter. I hadn’t?—
“Yes, right now,” he mocked. “Gran’s got that debutante dinner thing tomorrow night. She insists you attend.”
“Ugh.” Despair coiled through me, lining my stomach with dread. “I’d rather cut off my right foot.”
“When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.” He repeated Gran’s favorite phrase before winking and disappearing into the crowd.
I took a deep breath and set my focus on Carter. This would hurt almost as bad as it had when I’d had to say goodbye to our other two halves. I grabbed Carter’s shoulder, interrupting a story that must have been hilarious considering how hard everyone was guffawing.
“Excuse me, Carter,” I said. “Can I steal a dance?”
“Of course. I’ll see you guys.”
I led him out onto the floor, and Carter grabbed one hand, putting the other around my waist to pull me in. We left room between us for Jesus and Gran’s rules, but the live band played a version of “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Billie Holiday that forced us to get close anyway. We swayed back and forth to the slow, sultry rhythm, and I tried not to let the weight of what I had to tell him pull me under.
I wished we’d met at a different time, a different place, when it could just be the two of us. Not that I would forgo what I had with Lex and Ivy, but Carter and I could have made sense in another life.
“You look so beautiful tonight,” he said. “You look beautiful all the time, but especially tonight.”
I smiled, relishing the warmth that oozed from my heart into my legs and up my spine. “Such a charmer, Romeo. Are you trying to get into my pants?”
He leaned and pressed his lips to my ear. “Is it working?”
I chuckled, committing everything about this moment to memory. I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want the song to finish and force me to leave this night or the beautiful thing the two of us had found in our grief.
“I need to tell you something,” I said, the words tasting like garbage as I uttered them. “It’s not a good something.”
His expression softened as he met my gaze, but he must have seen it there because he nodded and frowned like understanding had finally hit him.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” he said. “The clock’s struck twelve, and you’re about to turn into a pumpkin?”
I nodded, blinking back tears. “My cousin’s here to collect me.”
He pulled his lips into a thin line and looked down to the ground between us, holding me tighter, squeezing my hand harder.
“Listen to me,” I said, tilting his chin up. “You can stay at the house in Malibu as long as you need. No one will bother you. You have my word. I love you.” I nodded toward the rest of the room. “They love you. The whole world’s going to love you, Romeo.”
I wanted to kiss him and hold him and tell him Ivy and Lex would always have each other, but all we had was us—Malibu and the Aston and the stage. I wished I could abscond with him. I wished I was like my cousin, able to sneak off into a private coatroom to do what I pleased.
But if he and I disappeared together? It would be all over The Puck by morning.
“I love you,” I told him again. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he repeated back, his voice cracking as he blinked back tears.
“Until the end,” I said.
He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly in a desperate attempt to keep his composure. “Until the end.”
I enjoyed the rest of the song, forcing myself to stay in the present with him. Eventually, my cousin found me, and I let him take me back to our ivory tower. That was when I knew the dream was finally…truly…completely and totally…over.