Chapter 9 #2
Sam sighed. “Oh, Gen. Let’s order and talk through this. We’ll need sustenance and this will be a long conversation.”
Gen rubbed her stomach. “I don’t think I could eat anything honestly. I feel all tied up in knots after the day I’ve had.”
“I understand, but who knows you best?” Sam pointed a thumb at herself. “Me, that’s right. You always go from sad to angry to contemplative, and then you get hungry.”
Gen wasn’t sure why she felt offended but she did. “I do not.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
“You. Do.” Sam called Frannie over and ordered for both of them while Gen silently fumed on her side of the booth.
Frannie faced Gen. “Are you all right?”
Sam waved the question away. “She’s got man problems, same as you.”
Frannie gave her a sympathetic look. “Oh, sorry to hear that. Well, fries and pies can make anyone feel better. I’ll get your order in, and bring your drinks in a couple minutes.”
Once Sam’s coffee and her tea arrived, Sam started talking. “First of all, I am your best friend and I fully support whatever you do or don’t want to do.”
“Thank you.”
“That said, I think you’re being an idiot.”
Gen had been about to take a sip but put the cup down instead. “Sam!”
“It’s true. You have a hot man, who also has a secure job and financial stability, after you and you’re turning him down. I understand why, you don’t want to trade one prison for another—”
Gen’s gut clenched again.
“—but not all palaces are prisons, and neither are all men.”
“Maybe not. Maybe it would be okay. But I’d never get away from my mother if I married Gabriel.”
“You’ve got to stop letting your mother run your life. You’re still basing decisions around her. Base them around you.”
Gen bit her lip. Was she doing that? She thought she had been making decisions based on her own needs, but maybe Sam was right.
“Beside, you can be a selfish bitch if you become queen, you know.”
“Probably the opposite. I’d care more about the people than myself.”
“Obviously. But you can be a selfish bitch to your mother and she can’t do fuck all about it.”
As the food arrived, Gen absently began eating. The fries were cooked perfectly, thin and crispy on the outside, and soft and steaming hot in the middle.
“I told you that you’d start eating once you calmed down a bit.”
“Shut it,” Gen said without any heat behind it, and ate another fry.
Sam smiled, then bit into her burger.
Gen noticed she was eating with more gusto than usual. “Didn’t you eat dinner?”
Sam shook her head as she finished her bite. “I meant to sneak into the kitchen and grab something but I wasn’t able to. Didn’t you eat with the prince?”
Gen nodded but said, “Only lunch though. Nothing since that picnic.”
Sam sighed and stole one of Gen’s fries even though she had plenty of her own on her plate. “It looks like the men in our lives can’t really take care of us, huh?” She took another bite.
“What man? Do you mean your father?”
Sam drank some water. “No, Cary.”
Gen’s mouth dropped open. “You’re not serious? You went out with him? I thought he was just a dance at the ball!”
Sam shrugged. “My parents want to arrange my marriage. The guest they’re entertaining?
A matchmaker. I had to get all dressed up just to spend five minutes meeting her, then she told me to ‘leave the room so the adults can talk’.
What a fucking joke. If I’m not an adult, are they arranging a child marriage?
I got so pissed at my parents, my mother especially.
‘This is how things are done’ and ‘we only want the best for you’.
So much bullshit. I’d rather elope with Cary than marry whatever asshole they pick for me. ”
Gen reached over and put a hand on Sam’s arm. “I’m so sorry.” Though marriages were arranged in high society, even with some royalty, it was such a thing of the past to her. But not in Sam’s culture.
She squeezed Sam’s arm. “But to quote you, ‘You’re being an idiot’ and I mean that.”
Sam wiped her hands and stared at Gen in disbelief. “Do you honestly think my parents are right with what they’re doing?”
“I never think it’s right for a parent to force something on a child, even an adult child.
If you do elope, divorce laws are not on your side.
” It was hard for a woman to seek divorce in Valleria, though laws were slowly changing to give women more rights.
“That’s why I think if you do want to elope, you should do it with someone better than Cary. ”
“It’s hard for me though. So many men just want to fuck the ‘Asian’, they don’t actually want to be married to one. They don’t want to ‘pollute’ their bloodline—that’s an actual thing someone said to me by the way—so I have to take the handouts. I don’t have other options.”
“You could run away. I could help you. Or we could run away together!”
Sam shook her head with a sad smile. “I would love nothing more than for both of us to leave all this behind, but I can’t access my trust fund for another year at least, and you don’t have a trust fund at all.
And as much as I love this diner, I don’t really want to work in one.
I have no coordination and would drop food on the customers all the time. ”
Gen giggled. “You would! But you’d look sexy doing it.”
“Damn right I would.”
They separated and spent a few minutes eating, Gen worried about Sam, then thinking about Gabriel, then her mother, and her thoughts just kept spinning around in her head.
“The prince isn’t like Cary, you know. He’s a playboy but with how he’s acted towards you, I don’t think he’d keep it up after marriage.”
Gen glanced up. “We haven’t really talked about that, but you never know. Men don’t put their wives and mistresses in the same box so, to many men, having one does not exclude having the other.”
“Don’t give up on something great because you’re afraid, Gen.
Whoever the prince is, he’s not like your mother.
He wants you, and he won’t leave you. Not just because of the public perception of it all, but because I think he genuinely likes you.
I think you’re so used to people being mean to you that you don’t recognize it when someone isn’t doing that.
You keep bracing for the worst because that’s what you’re used to, but that doesn’t have to be your ‘normal’ anymore. ”
Gen looked down into her teacup. The words echoed so much what Gabriel had once told her. Could they be right?
“How do you feel about the prince?”
“I…like him. Despite myself, I do. He’s ridiculously gorgeous and that mustache…
” She cleared her throat while Sam laughed.
“Anyway. He is nice to me, even when I’m not so nice to him.
But he’s also bossy and controlling and doesn’t take my feelings or wishes into account.
So what if I’d be a princess and a future queen with him?
If I’m a miserable one, what’s the point?
Power? Fame? Fortune? Those aren’t enough for me.
Maybe they would have been if my father had been alive, but they’re not anymore.
I do like him, I could maybe even love him, but I need more. ”
“Then I think you have your answer.”
Gen nodded, and slowly sipped her tea. So that was it. She was finally done with him.
Yet…it didn’t feel final. It felt unfinished.
GAbrIEL
Gabriel entered the sitting room and glanced around. Gaston brooding with a drink by the fire, Leticia chatting with Ferdi and his parents, Agnes chatting with Clotilde and Lucien on the sofa. He went to make himself a drink and Gaston came up next to him, requesting a refill of his own.
“Where’s your darling Genevieve? Did you not return to the palace with her?”
“Only briefly. She had an engagement at the Kaur’s so I arranged a car to take her back there.”
Gaston clamped a hand on his shoulder. “If I were anyone else, I would probably believe you.”
Gabriel nodded to the rest of the room while he handed Gaston his drink. “Think they’ll buy it?”
“Maybe.” Gaston took a sip of his refilled drink. “Our brothers are distracted, but our mother and sister not as much. Father will notice everything of course, and say very little until he gets you alone.”
He sighed, then turned to face the room, his own glass of wine in hand. “Shame. I was hoping to evade an inquisition tonight.”
“No such luck, eldest brother. So, why isn’t she here?”
“She doesn’t want me.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“It’s what she told me.”
“Is it? Or did she say she didn’t want this life?”
Gabriel looked down into his drink. “Truthfully, I wasn’t the best partner for her. She told me what she wanted, what she needed, time and again, and I ignored her requests. It makes sense she doesn’t want me. I fucked it up.”
“I don’t know about that. I watched her at the picnic today, you know.
She’s not like the other ones you’ve dated.
She was polite and respectful, but she wasn’t trying to curry favour with any of us, not even you.
But she likes you. She would blush whenever I asked questions about the two of you at lunch. ”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course I did. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t another…well, anyway. It’s important to suss these things out early. It’s not worth getting your heart broken later. She seemed like the kind of woman…”
“You should finish that sentence quickly and hope I don’t punch you at the end of it.”
Gaston laughed. “I was only going to say that I think she’s the type of woman who hasn’t been loved properly before. Maybe she’s been ignored, and maybe you did ignore her wishes too.”
“That’s very insightful.”
“When you only have your own thoughts for company, insight is the inevitable result. But what do I know? I was told I wasn’t enough recently myself.”
“Gaston—”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Deployment will fix me soon enough. I’ll be too busy, then too bored, to think of her at all. You’re a good brother to care so much.”
“I’m an excellent brother because I care so much.”