27. Hank
HANK
Prince. As in actual prince.
I stare at Nick all cleaned up on my phone, trying to make sense of everything. It’s cold outside, but I need some fresh air. I pace on my front porch, digging my hands into my pockets.
Nick from Baltimore…is a prince. He’s wearing a crown in these pictures.
An actual, literal crown.
I shove my phone inside my mailbox. I can’t with those pictures.
Nick joins me out here, both of us ignoring the cold temperature. He’s waiting for me to say something, waiting for any kind of reaction. But every time I look at him, my brain just resets to the same thought.
Nick from Baltimore is a prince. He’s royalty.
“Hank, I’m so sorry for lying to you,” he says, in his real accent, not one that only comes out when he’s drunk.
“So when you say prince,” I say slowly, “you mean like an actual prince? Not like the singer Prince, not like ‘my dad’s rich’ Kennedy-type prince. An actual prince?”
Nick nods. “Yes. I am in line for the crown.”
“Wow.” The only crowns I’m used to are in my teeth. “So the whole nine yards…castles, thrones…and when you say royal jewels, you’re not talking about your balls. You mean actual jewels?”
“That is correct,” he says patiently.
I should’ve known. Nick always sounded way too formal to be American. Now, hearing the full British accent—charming and unfairly adorable—it all makes horrible, perfect sense.
I look into his big eyes, wide and hopeful.
“So what are you doing here in Sourwood?” I ask. “Did your royal jet make a wrong turn? Do you have a royal jet?”
He bites his lip. “I do.”
“Holy crap. That was sarcasm!”
“I wanted to get away from the shackles of royal life,” he says. “I wanted to experience what it was like to be…”
“Normal,” I say. “You wanted to be a normie.”
“There is a great deal of pressure that comes with being a prince.”
It’s one thing to fudge the details of your background. I tell people I was born and raised in Sourwood, but my family didn’t move here until I was four.
I didn’t lie about owning a country. Do royal families own their country? I’m confused about how that works.
“So just to confirm 100 percent—you’re not from Baltimore?”
He shakes his head.
“Have you ever been to Baltimore?”
Another shake.
“From my research, it seems like a very lovely place.”
“Your research,” I repeat with stunned laughter. Trying to make sense of the fact that a prince is on my front porch.
“Why? I don’t get it.” I think about everything I would do if I were a prince. The life I could give Brody. “You’re a prince. You get to go anywhere and do anything. You never have to think about money. If that’s the shackles of royal life, I’ll take it.”
“I am incredibly fortunate. You’re right. I’ve volunteered at enough shelters and hospitals to know how fucking lucky I am, and I am grateful for what my family lineage has afforded me. But…I’ve lived my whole life never being able to be myself, Hank.”
His jaw tightens, pain lancing his words.
“I have to be perfect Prince Nicholas, representing the crown every second of the day. Because there’s always someone watching, and if I stop being the perfect prince for one moment, if I’m accidentally human and make any kind of mistake, it will be front page news.
I can never be silly or awkward or upset or angry.
” He leans over slightly, as if the weight of it all is almost too much to bear.
“And I can never be gay. That isn’t allowed.
The future king of Ardenia needs a queen and a picture-perfect family.
I’ve spent my entire adult life dodging questions from reporters about my personal life, making sex workers sign ironclad NDAs so I could feel the touch of another man. ”
I rub his back. It’s instinct. Wanting to care for him.
I think back to all the times he talked about not being able to do what he wants because of his dad. This is not the family business I expected, but I remember how tortured he seemed over it, how hard it must be to be boxed into certain expectations.
“I came to Sourwood for a few weeks so I could know what it felt like to be free. Then I met you. I wasn’t expecting that.”
His voice softens.
“Everything began happening so quickly. I knew I should tell you, but I was already in too deep. I didn’t know how to come clean without ruining this. How do you tell the man you’re falling in love with that you’re a crown prince?”
I sink onto my porch swing. I love this spot—watching neighbors walk by in summer, seeing the first snowfall before the real cold sets in. The seat is freezing now, biting through my mesh shorts, but I don’t move. Because Nick just said he’s falling in love with me.
“You are?”
He nods yes.
Despite the awkwardness of the situation, my heart manages to do a flip. Yet the harsh fact echoes in my head: I’m falling in love with a prince.
I feel like every girl in a Hallmark movie.
Nick sits beside me and takes my hand.
“Please say something,” he murmurs. “Even if you hate me.”
“I think I’m too confused to hate you.”
“It wasn’t all a lie,” he says quickly. “How I feel about you—that isn’t. I really like you, Hank.”
I should be swooning over having a handsome guy admit he really likes me, that he’s falling in love with me. My mind is in too much of a fog, though. Maybe next time I date someone I should ask for ID before confessing feelings.
“You’re a prince,” I say for what feels like the hundredth time tonight. “I don’t even know what to call you now. What’s your full title?”
“Crown Prince Nicholas of Ardenia.”
“I couldn’t find Ardenia on a map if you paid me a thousand bucks.”
“It’s in Europe.”
“I know where Europe is.” I glance at him. “Do you live in an actual palace?”
“I do. It’s very nice…though rather cavernous. I really like your house,” he adds quickly.
“Oh please.” A ripple of embarrassment courses through me. My life can’t help but feel small next to him. “It’s a tiny little dinky place. No servants. No canopy beds. I’m mostly going off movies here.”
He smiles faintly. “You’re not entirely wrong.”
He squeezes my hand tighter, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. “Hank, I’m so sorry. I hope you understand why.”
“I do. I mean… how do you casually bring that up?”
And honestly, at first, everything he’s saying makes sense. He wanted to experience life as a normie. I bumped a tree into his head and convinced him to play on the Comebacks. I could see how easily lies could pile up. But my heart is way too involved for logic right now.
Nick blinks those big, puppy dog eyes at me, waiting for me to say something.
“Do you still like me?” he asks.
One look at his face gives me my answer. I’m in deep with this guy.
“Heck yeah.”
His whole body relaxes with relief. He leans forward and kisses me, soft and careful. It feels real. It feels true.
The world tilts a little, and I grab onto the porch swing chain like I might fall.
I let out a shaky breath. “I’m not even sure if my passport’s expired. Guess visiting you’s out.”
Does he even want me to visit? What’s going to happen when he returns to Ardenia? He’s expected to marry a woman, not a big, hairy dude.
“I don’t want to let you go, Hank.”
He leans his head against my shoulder as we stare out at the dark sky.
“We said we’d figure it out,” he says softly. “So we’ll figure it out.”
It’s a statement I believed until I found out he was a prince. Toll roads I could do. But state dinners? Diplomatic duties? Those aren’t in my wheelhouse. I didn’t go to college. I’m not the best at following world news. I’m a guy who sits in Barcaloungers, not thrones.
The ugly question in the back of my head charges to the front: Am I enough?
With Nick, I started believing maybe I was more than comic relief. That I could be someone special. But now he’s Crown Prince Nicholas of Ardenia. My head starts pounding as everything crashes together.
“So what happens now?” I ask him.
He stands up and extends his hand. Nick pulls me to him and envelops me in a rich kiss that silences all the voices in my head for a moment.
“You come back to bed,” he says.
“You got it, Your Highness.”
After a night of tender lovemaking, we wake up in each other’s arms. The events of last night are blurry, like a dream slipping out of my subconsciousness. In this bed, we are still Nick and Hank. Everything seems possible.
I don’t know if we can make it work. The niggling doubt at the back of my head believes Nick will forget about me as soon as he boards his royal jet.
But maybe there’s a way. I’ve fixed leaks and clogs that were once thought unfixable.
Nick’s eyes flutter open. Creases etch on his face from the pillow.
“Morning,” he says in a raspy voice, his accent drop-dead sexy.
“Morning, Your Highness.”
“Oh please don’t call me that.”
“Why do they call you that? Is it because your throne is so high up? You’re all big tokers?”
“I don’t know why, actually. It’s an old expression, and that makes it important.” Nick leans on his elbow, wipes sleep from his eyes. “In here, I just want to be Nick.”
“And you are.” I pull him against me for a morning make-out session which is quickly interrupted by his phone buzzing with a text. You know you’re head over heels for someone when you can kiss them before they’ve brushed their teeth.
“Ignore,” he says against my lips. “Probably Millie wondering if I want to meet for brunch.”
The phone stops buzzing. Not even a second later, the buzzing starts up again. Another round of buzzing possesses Nick’s phone. A call and a text.
“You’re popular,” I murmur.
“Millie’s probably pissed at me.” He groans as he sits up and moves out of my embrace. He reaches for his phone. “Shit. It’s Agnes.”
“Who’s Agnes?”
“My personal secretary.”
“Fancy,” I say under my breath. I check my phone, taking it off silent, and discover a slew of text messages from my friends. They share articles from different news sites, Instagram reels, and TikToks. Embedded in each post is a five-second TikTok of Nick and me dancing at the bar crawl.
Yo, am I crazy or is this the Prince of Ardenia? says the caption. It’s already racked up over twenty thousand views.
“This sprung up overnight and went viral, Your Highness,” I hear Agnes say in Nick’s phone.
I flip through my messages, links to articles with one bad headline after the next:
Ardenia’s Royal Nightmare
Prince Nicholas of Ardenia Discovered in Small Town New York
A Gay Prince??
“Our secret’s out,” I say.
“Hank,” he says, his face ghostly white. “I am so fucked.”