Chapter 16 That Good #2
“I saw you when you played Gongboja Palace,” I tell her. “I had to promise my mother straight As for an entire year, but it was the best night of my life.”
“Best?” Marc whispers, reaching forward to swipe a piece of cheese, nearly enveloping me. This gets no translation and I freeze, reanimating only when Jang Mi makes eye contact.
“You will come to the Concert for Seongan Relief?” she asks.
The fan girl takes over, and I forget the complicating undercurrents, wrapping my hand around Marc’s forearm. “Has it been decided?”
She nods, gracious as a queen. “At Lindenholm in August.” She shifts gear again, switching into Seongan, making it impossible to avoid the sound of Marc burrowing deeper and deeper into my brain.
We resume our ride, and soon I’m peddling hard up rises that look like nothing from a distance. The pain in my ankle starts as a twinge and turns into a throb as we reach a trailhead, its entrance dark and cool.
A servant hands out hiking sticks and collects the bicycles, loading them onto a lorry.
We are, Tom tells us, to return to Lindenholm in minibuses.
He has planned our simple country outing better than some military campaigns, and I like the future Alix has chosen for herself.
She is a starter and he is a finisher. He’s never annoyed that she runs on vibes.
Jang Mi begs Mikkel to show her the proper way to hold hiking sticks, and they set off into the woods at a brisk clip. I follow more slowly. Despite the tight lacing on my boots, a dull pain grows in my ankle as we tramp over the uneven ground, and my pace drags with each step.
The nearest members of the party become distant flashes of color as the trail bends back on itself, the sound of laughter muffled against tree boughs and dense earth, and Marc falls back, following me up the path.
“What’s wrong?” he asks from behind me. I carefully step over a tree root. “You’re usually a good hiker. Is it your ankle?”
I would rather drink poison than admit it is. I’m not mad at him, I tell myself. He’s done nothing wrong, but I have spent every measure of nobility I have so he can run off with his pop goddess. There is nothing in my bank but pettiness, clinking around like loose change.
He catches the hem of my shirt. “You don’t have to go on.”
My eyes close on a tide of feeling. Sooner or later, we’ll have to talk about the kiss and my noble resolutions. I will never be more ready than now.
I toss the hiking sticks aside and lean against the trunk of a fallen tree. “Alright. Let’s talk.”
He crouches down. “You should see a doctor about that ankle. What if—”
I shake my head, dragging my boot out of reach. I can’t do this if he’s touching me. Caring. “Let’s talk about that kiss.”
Kiss. The word has a definition so broad it’s useless.
It encompasses the ceremonial greetings I extend to Mama’s cabinet ministers at a state banquet, as well as what went on and on and on last night, ebbing and flowing in intensity, delivering a million data points on all the ways I hadn’t known Marc before.
He looks up. “Are you upset?”
“Do I sound—” I clear my throat, ironing out the irritation, and lie right to his face. “I’m not upset. My ankle is sore, and you look like you’ve been dying to reach for your label maker.”
“Label maker?” he laughs. He knows what I mean.
When I got to Stanford, I luxuriated in untidiness for the first time in my life, tossing ready-to-wear clothes in a laundry basket in my dorm room, free at last from the rigidity of the palace.
Marc’s tiny ranch house was different. Because it doubled as a living space and a start-up office, organization was key to optimization.
When I got him a label maker that first Christmas, I thought he might kiss me. Vede, how long was I chasing that high?
Now it’s time to put Ella in her place.
He stands and leans against a trail marker. “It wouldn’t hurt to be on the same page about it.”
I suppress a bitter laugh. Marc might as well whip out the tiny keyboard, typing, “E.L.L.A = F.R.I.E.N.D.”
“First of all, it was great.” He doesn’t look at me when he delivers this gem, but it’s a nice little box neatly checked, a compliment firmly delivered. When I don’t readily agree, his jaw works, and I take pleasure in derailing this brisk exercise in self-control.
He tips his head back, exposing his throat. His teeth are set and he releases a ragged breath. “Two. You and Alix have been friends for a long time. So have Noah and I.”
“So have you and I.”
He nods. “You get it. There’s a lot of history between us, and we have a lot going on right now. We can’t afford distractions.” The label maker whirrs to life, the device spitting out a sticker.
I don’t disagree with him. I don’t. This painful stabbing under my ribs is just the fading specter of adolescent Ella having a fit. If he wants me to recite all the reasons we can’t be together, I know them by heart.
“You’re running a multinational business, busy taking over the reins of Lindenholm, planning a benefit concert, in the midst of a dating scandal with a world-famous pop star.
..” I pick tufts of moss from the notch of the tree and cast them into the underbrush, blinking away the stinging sensation. Allergies are hell this year.
His tone is clipped. “You’ve got a succession crisis to navigate, your family to hold together, your exit from the monarchy to plan, and all those appropriate men to avoid.”
I grip the moss. Marc heard me, back there at the pub. I brush my hands together and hop off the log, absorbing the pain radiating from my ankle. Good. I don’t look nearly as pathetic.
The air is so still I feel the weight of it on my skin, holding me down, rooting me to the ground. Last night was a dream, but you can’t live in a dream. My parents are proof of that, surely.
“I want to make sure we’re good,” he says. I imagine him affixing the label to my forehead, sliding a thumb across the surface to make it secure.
“I’m good. And now we know.” I grab the hiking sticks out of his hands.
“Know what?” he asks as I turn up the rough track.
“That we weren’t that good.” The lie scratches its way up my throat.
It takes every bit of royal training to make it look from the set of my shoulders and the angle of my head that I’m fine, navigating this trail alone.
I ask him about the concert, the logistics and details—everything I can think of to keep him talking—but, as we near the waterfall, I can’t hide how much my ankle hurts.
He slows to match my speed but doesn’t say anything.
Dominanstid, I’ll explode if he does.
Ahead, Alix hails us from the top of a large boulder. “Ella,” she shouts, “you look like you want to do violence. Has my brother been lecturing you about decorum?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Marc calls. Even without turning around, I know he looks like something out of a high-end recreational clothing catalog. Perfect hair. Muscled forearms exposed, his tanned skin clean and dewy.
I’m red-faced and sweaty, my hair a frizzy halo. Anyone can tell, just from looking, that we don’t match.
Alix hops from the boulder. “Seriously, Ells, this is supposed to be fun. We could take the shortcut to the road and send you back to Lindenholm. Marc, why haven’t you put her on your back?”
He moves to crouch in front of me but I stride past him, pride carrying me where my ankle won’t. “I’ll rest up ahead.”
“Ella, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
Somehow his consideration makes it worse. “I’m going to make it,” I clip. “I just had to stop pretending this isn’t a big deal.”