27. Gabriel
GAbrIEL
I’D BEEN HOME for four days and already I’d managed to alienate half the staff, to the point they turned around and went the opposite direction when they saw me coming.
Well, that was a first. An honor they usually reserved for my brother—or had before he met Noah and figured out how to smile.
With nothing to do and no one who wanted to come within fifty yards of me, I sat alone in Nicholas’s private library, moving chess pieces around the board in front of me.
There was a half-empty bottle of champagne beside me because wine only made me think of Alejandro, and it was too early for whiskey.
“Your Highness?” One of the secretary’s assistants stood at the door, and I didn’t bother looking up as I checkmated myself.
“What?”
“His Majesty wanted to know if you were still planning to attend the luncheon for the chancellor.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Is there an echo in here?”
“No, Your Highness.” He licked at his lips nervously, still not setting a foot inside. “Shall I tell him you’re indisposed?”
“Tell him I’ve died.” The poor guy went white as a sheet, and I sighed and reached for my champagne. “No, don’t tell him that. Nicholas gets pissy when people die around here without permission.”
A voice from behind the assistant said, “Why are you always making things so difficult?”
Oh great, just what I need.
The scared-shitless assistant ran off as Nicholas stepped into the room. He was dressed formally for meetings today, radiating all that king energy, and no doubt was coming to use it on me.
Fan-freakin’-tastic. I loved a good intervention.
Nicholas closed the door—that boded well—and his footsteps were slow and measured as he crossed the room and said, “You’re becoming…unpleasant.”
I snorted and flipped one of the rook pieces in the air, catching it before it landed on the board. “Must be genetic.”
He eyed the champagne beside me. “I heard you’re not eating.”
“No, I’m on a liquid diet.”
“Why?”
“Because I really need to lose a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight, that’s why.” In the form of Alejandro, who was still weighing too heavily on my mind. I was ready for him to get the hell out.
Nicholas took the seat across from me, and I didn’t look up, not wanting to see the judgmental look I know I’d find on his face. “I want to know what happened,” he said.
“You sent me to Solterra. That’s what happened.”
“I sent you to repair an alliance.”
“Yes, well, congratulations. The alliance is restored, the arts initiative is moving forward, and I’ve returned with only minor damage to my ego and a newfound appreciation for ghost peppers as a torture device. Success all around.”
“Gabriel.”
“What?” I dropped the rook I was holding to the board, and it scattered the pieces around it. “What exactly do you want me to say here? That it’s all your fault? Because it is.”
Nicholas didn’t say a word, only looked at me in that far-too-patient way I could never understand, because how did you keep everything so bottled up and not just…explode?
I’d been walking around for days with a restless ache that kept me up all night and threatened to eat me alive, because all I could think about was walking out of that room with Alejandro standing there too fucking proud to stop me.
But then, I’d been too fucking proud to stop the train once it was in motion, hadn’t I?
“You sent me there,” I said. “I went, I cleaned up your mess, so you’re welcome. But also, fuck you for that.”
He took what I threw at him without flinching. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“You know better than to lie. Talk to me. Let me be here for you the way you were for me.”
I rubbed my forehead, suddenly exhausted, like everything that happened over the summer had all come crashing down, and if I could just sleep it off I’d wake up and find that I’d dreamed the whole thing.
“I’m tired,” I said, hoping that was enough to make him go away for now.
“You’re heartbroken.”
My eyes shot up to meet his, and the empathy I saw swirling in his blue depths, the same shade as mine, hit me square in the chest. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You think I’m heartbroken and that’s why I had to leave Solterra? Please. It’s too hot and there are questionable spiders.”
“Had to?” Nicholas asked. “Why did you have to leave? I didn’t ask you to return.”
Shit. Had I accidentally said that? Whatever. “Well, it’s not like I could just move in. I’d already overstayed my welcome.”
“Is that what Alejandro said?”
More or less.
“Gabriel?”
“What?” I snapped, and Nicholas raised a brow.
“I asked if that’s what Alejandro said. That you’d overstayed your welcome.”
I looked toward the window where rain ran down the pane and thought how very apt that it should be cold and miserable today. It suited my mood well. “It was implied.”
“I see.”
My head snapped around and I found Nicholas stroking his chin like some wise old fortune teller contemplating my fate.
No need. I already knew the outlook: miserable.
“You don’t see shit.”
“I see that you’re miserable,” he said. Okay, so maybe he was better at this fortune-telling stuff than I was giving him credit for.
“You haven’t smiled once since you came back home.
Even more alarming, you’ve yet to make a joke at my expense, or anyone else’s in the palace, for that matter.
Something happened between my visit to Solterra and your return, and I want to know what it is. ”
I leaned back in my seat and instead of reaching for the glass went straight for the bottle of champagne.
I took a swig and eyed my brother, looking all composed and shit, then blurted out, “I made a fool out of myself, that’s what it is.
I went to Solterra to clean up your mess and created one of my own. ”
“With Alejandro.”
“No,” I said, and then aimed the bottle at him. “Because of Alejandro. He’s stubborn, arrogant, and a complete pain in my ass. I put up with so much crap from that guy. Ate the most disgusting things. Smiled and acted ever the charming guest, and the one time I fucked up, he flies off the handle.”
“You fucked up?”
“Yes. Okay. But so did he. Ugh.” I shot up from my chair and slammed the bottle down on the table.
“Setting up all these damn rules and then just expecting me to know he’s okay with me telling people we’re together is ludicrous.
It’s insanity.” I spun away from Nicholas and stalked back to the window I’d just been looking out.
“It’s like he expected me to be a mind reader or something.
How was I supposed to know he wanted me to tell people I liked him? ”
“You like Alejandro?”
Was he not paying attention? “Yes,” I spat out, glaring at Nicholas over my shoulder. “I liked the guy, so sue me.”
Nicholas nodded, but didn’t say anything, and that was probably for the best because I was on a roll now.
“But he didn’t like me. Not enough to ask me to stay. No, that stubborn fucker kicked my ass out.” I whirled around and pointed at my brother. “Which is your fault. You dumped him and he dumped me. Congratulations, it’s one big happy fucking circle. Woo-fucking-hoo.”
“I—”
“If you say I see again, I swear to God I will punch you in the mouth.”
Nicholas’s teeth immediately clicked shut. Smart move.
I shoved my hands though my hair, frustrated all over again. Then I moved back to my seat and slumped down in it, my adrenaline zapping every ounce of energy I’d had left out of me.
“I’m sorry.”
God, that was almost worse than I see. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Clearly, it does.” Nicholas took the champagne bottle and moved it out of my reach. “You’re hurt and I hate seeing that. I hate even more that I had a hand in it, especially when you were so integral to my happiness.”
Nicholas leaned across the table and put a hand over mine.
“Talk to me. Tell me what happened between you and Alejandro. Maybe I can help.”
I let out a long sigh and shook my head. “I’m sorry, brother, but this is one thing I don’t think even you can fix. We had a moment, it burned bright and hot like the sun, and then just like that, it flamed out. Sometimes that’s the way it goes.”
“I don’t believe that. If you love him—”
“I said I liked him.”
“Gabriel.” Nicholas’s voice told me I wasn’t fooling him even a little bit. “You love him. I’ve never seen you act like this.”
“That’s because I’ve never met someone so…infuriating before.”
“Or maybe it’s because you’ve never met someone so perfect for you before.”
I screwed my nose up at that, because if he’d seen all I had to go through just to have Alejandro smile at me once… The percebes, the peppers, the humiliating polo match. Alejandro had made my life hell, and I’d let him.
And why? Because—
“You love him. Admit it.”
Jesus, it was like Nicholas was in my head, using our twin powers to read my mind or something.
But unless I said it out loud, it didn’t count.
He didn’t know shit. Hell, I didn’t even know at this point.
The only thing that was for certain was I felt something intensely for Alejandro, and that could be loathing, irritation…
or, honestly, heartburn, considering all those peppers.
“I don’t think anything about him,” I lied, and got to my feet. “And that’s the way it’s going to stay. So if this little pep talk is over…?”
“It is, for now.”
“Then I have a chancellor to go and meet, don’t I?”
Nicholas stood, a grimace on his face. “Um, how about I take that meeting, and you go and—”
“Find a new bottle of champagne?”
“I was thinking sober up.”
“I like my idea better.” I stepped around Nicholas and headed toward the door.
“Gabriel?”
“Hmm?” I said.
“Alejandro might be stubborn, but so are you. Don’t let anger and frustration stand in the way of your happiness. Pride is a cold mistress, unlike, I’m sure, a certain Solterran prince.”
Trust my brother to find his snark at this exact moment in my life. But since he wasn’t wrong and I had nothing to say, I did what I was getting good at: I walked out the damn door and left my troubles behind me.