Chapter Twenty-Five
Prince Arthur
I wait anxiously in the lobby of The Ritz Paris.
I start asking myself why I agreed to come or why I’m anxious. I mean, how many fucking nights have I spent with her in this very hotel?
I’m not sure what Connie is gaining from this—a free house because Primrose is there?
Doubt it. Heard him through the walls so much that I actually can’t look him in the eye anymore.
Dirty bastard, he is. Didn’t know Primrose was like that, though.
Then again, the boys in our circle apparently have a tendency to corrupt the only girls who have ever loved them.
I’m picking at the skin around my nails as I wait for her. I’m not even banking on her showing up, truthfully. I wouldn’t blame her. After all that’s said and done, she does have a boyfriend.
As much as it sickenings me to admit, she isn’t mine anymore.
Sure, in some way she always will be—to me, she will—but big picture shit, she’s not.
Whether she ever will be again is a different question.
I like to think she will, that we’re stronger than whatever the fuck is between us.
We got through school, we can get through anything else, surely.
The door opens, I look up. Long legs, waist length brunette hair, best face in the world, dressed in blue—it’s her. Couldn’t be anyone else. No one else could walk in and gain the attention of everyone else waiting around the lobby.
Phoebe comes over to me, I stand up.
“You alright?”
She smiles, laughs a bit. “I’m okay.”
I nod, run a hand through my hair. Who fucking knew that after all these years, I’d still get nervous around her? Like speaking to your crush for the first time. That dip in your stomach that makes your voice all shaky and your hands sweaty.
We might be twenty-one now but I’ll always be sixteen around her.
“Connie got us the Windsor Suite,” I tell her even though she knows that.
“He knows I won’t stay anywhere else.”
As she stares at me, I see her shoulders drop a bit and her hands go slightly limp at her sides. Almost like she’s relieved to be here with me.
“Should we?” I nod to the stairs behind me, playing with the keycard.
She nods, smiles. “I’m going to kill him if he’s put flower petals over the bed.”
“Not your thing?”
She scoffs. “God no! So provocative.”
“Might wanna wait outside for a minute, then.”
Laughs, hits my chest. “You’d never. You know me too well.”
“Yep,” I breathe. “I do.”
I push the door open for her, she sighs, runs straight over to the window. Typical of her. If the view isn’t to her liking, best believe she’s making it someone’s problem.
“You know,” she spins around to face me. “I spent an entire month in this very room when you left. The concierge knows me on a first name basis now.”
I blow out a breath. “For that price, why didn’t you just buy an apartment?”
She waves her hand around. “What apartment is going to compete with this?”
I go over to the blue sofa at the bottom of the bed, sit down, take a deep breath. “So?”
She walks around the room, tucks her hair behind her ear. “All cards on the table?”
“I guess so.”
“There’s a lot to unpack.” She sits on the chaise by the window, crosses her tanned legs and looks at me. “Where do we start?”
“What about with what you told your boyfriend to run away to Paris with me?” I’m half joking but also actually concerned.
She swallows. “Told him I was staying with a friend.”
“In the country or…?”
“I’m not sure that’s really important.”
“I’m sure it will be when he finds out.”
“He isn’t going to.”
“So, I’m just a friend, then?”
“You can’t be anything else.”
“If Digby wasn’t in the picture?”
She shakes her head, looks away from me. “I don’t know.”
There’s a thick silence, the kind that’s so unbelievably heavy with unspoken words. When you have so much to say, it’s hard to start. There’s so much that I want to ask her but I just don’t know if I’m ready for the answers yet.
“What can’t you tell me, Phoebs?” I ask after a few minutes, my voice thick, coated in some kind of urgency.
“What do you mean?”
Her eyebrows furrow, her eyes glazed over with her own kind of urgency—begging me not to go there.
“This thing,” I lean back, spread my legs, clasp my hands together. “Whatever it is, it’s stopping you from what you want to do.” I lock eyes with her from across the room. “You said it wasn’t your fault and I know it’s not—whatever it is, I know it’s not your fault.”
She sniffs, she tenses her shoulders, her cheeks blush. She’s about to cry. “I can’t—” she swallows. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
The first tear falls and fear grips me.
“Because you won’t want to be with me and that’s the only thing I want,” she rushes out, stands up, starts pacing.
“You think I don’t love you anymore, but I do, Arthur.
The second I saw you on that rooftop, I knew my feelings hadn’t changed.
But this thing—this fucking thing—is going to change that. ”
She’s hyperventilating, wringing her hands, gasping.
Her blotchy, tear streaked face turns to me. “I don’t love Digby,” she shakes her head. “I don’t. You know I don’t—everyone knows I don’t. I can’t—” she breaks off, shaking her head over and over.
I stand up, go to her, wrap my arms around her with the right amount of pressure.
“It’s okay,” I mutter into her hair. “It’s fine, Phoebe.
It’s going to be okay. The shit we went through in school?
Nothing can get worse than that, I promise you.
Nothing you say or do is going to make me not love you.
Not loving you is impossible. There isn’t a me that exists in any form, universe—whatever—that doesn’t love you. ”
She stops trembling, looks up at me with her big round brown eyes. Like a scared fawn. And all I want to do is nurse her back to health.
“Do you mean that?” She asks in a small voice. “Like, really?”
Shrug my lips. “Done with lying. As long as I’m alive, I’ll never lie to you again.”
Sniffs, takes a deep breath, hooks her arms around my neck. “I’ll tell you.” She nods, certain. “I will.”
I look down at her. “I love you.”
A small smile ghosts her lips. “I know you do—I do, too.”
I grin a little bit. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
She gives a small nod, tucks her bottom lip under her top one, her eyelids flutter and fuck—I can’t explain how or why what happens next happens.
Maybe it’s the look she gives me, maybe it’s the fact that her boyfriend’s in London wondering where she is, maybe it’s the fact he kissed her right in front of me or maybe it’s the fact that out of eight billion people, I found her.
Even if she doesn’t come back to me, I’ll die the happiest man knowing I got to spend what would be labelled the worst years of my life with her.
But they weren’t, not really. She was the reason I got out of bed in the morning.
I feel sorry for the people who will never experience her laugh being the alarm clock they wake up to.
The kiss is rushed, messy, fucked up but fuck me is it perfect. I pick her up, she wraps her legs around my waist, nails digging into my scalp. It’s the most messed up pain I’ve ever experienced.
I walk over to the chaise, lay her down, her bag falls to the floor but she doesn’t bat an eyelid.
Her busy hands pull my shirt out of my jeans.
I pull the straps of her dress down and when it pools at her waist I take a step back, admire what I fucked up all those years ago.
Sort of scold myself because who in their right mind would fuck that up?
Her throat bobs as she swallows, her chest heaving as she props herself up on her elbows.
“It’s been awhile,” I tell her with a grin.
“I’m aware.”
And then she grabs my belt, pulls me down to her and reminds me just how fucked up we both are.
It’s inexplicable, I know. Not many words or metaphors can pretty up what we’re doing. She’s cheating on her boyfriend and I have no plans to tell her to stop. We’re in too deep—have been since we were kids.
Phoebe’s the only habit I’ve never had an interest in breaking.
I reach under her dress, her lips brushing mine, one hand gripping my neck.
Fuck, I think, this is so fucking fucked up—why am I loving every second of it?
It’s too late to think about her dickhead boyfriend, anyway. We both gasp, her nails digging into my skin so deep she’s probably drawing blood. But all thoughts of registering pain or reason go straight out of the window.
“Arthur, I—”
I hold myself up with one hand, use the other to grab the back of her neck.
Her breath fans the side of my face, her hands can’t keep still and with the way she doesn’t know what to do with herself, I know Digby’s never had her like this.
But Digby can’t read music and I play Phoebe like my favourite instrument.
“I know,” I nod. “I know, it’s okay.”
? ? ?
As the evening summer sun casts a soft glow over her tanned arms draped over my body, I wonder what the fuck just happened.
We just had sex, in Paris, while she has a boyfriend.
“Was that wrong?” Phoebe asks in a soft quiet voice, eyes locked on the ceiling.
“Maybe a bit,” I nod. “But it felt right.”
“It did,” she whispers back.
We stay like that for a bit, how we used to, sweaty, spent and tangled in the sheets of our miscommunication.
I think about it—the times we spent in this room.
After her mum’s fashion show, we came back after drinking too much champagne and fiddled with each other's clothes until they came off. I mean, we were kids back then, it wasn’t mind blowing, you know, no fireworks but sex—believe it or not—rarely is.
It’s all fumbling hands, weird noises, laughing, wondering if what you’re doing feels good but having no breath to ask.
I’m not sure how our relationship got to that point at such a young age.
The constant sex. Maybe it was a co-dependency thing.
Giving your naked body over to someone is the most intimate thing you can do.
I’m not a prude or anything but I don’t think you should just be handing it over to people willy-nilly.
Not everyone knows how to take care of something so delicate.
I wonder, then, if this is us going back in time—falling into each other when our words fail us. I don’t know if she’s like this with Digby, part of me wishes she wasn’t but that part of me that knows her better than myself knows that she is.
I turn on my side, the sheet slipping down my waist. Stroke her hair out of her face, she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move, probably scared to breathe in case she’s snapped back into reality.
“You need to tell me, Phoebs.”
“It’s going to hurt you. I can’t.”
“Nothing can hurt me more than I’ve hurt myself, I promise you.” I sit up, against the headboard, look out of the window at all the sparkling city lights. “If you don’t tell me, this is just us falling back into old patterns and I can’t imagine Dr.Kane would be best pleased with that.”
She laughs, a small, tired huff, sits up, holds the sheet to her naked chest.
Turns to face me. “It’s okay if you won’t love me anymore.”
“You’re scaring me now.”
Phoebe reaches for my hand, grabs it, squeezes tight.
“You’re fixed now. I can’t fix this.”
I frown. “Every problem has a solution.”
Shakes her head, so sure. “Not this one, Arthur—and that’s okay. I’m okay with it.”
I start shaking a bit. “Have you got fucking terminal cancer or something?”
She smiles. “No.”
Grips my hand even tighter, takes a deep breath, her eyelids flutter, she sniffs, looking me dead in the eye.
“I’m infertile, Arthur. I can’t have babies.”