CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stevie didn’t know why she had reacted so strongly to that. She wished that it hadn’t hurt her. She wished that she didn’t care. What she was doing was for her own benefit. The benefit of her family. She shouldn’t be emotional about it.
But…she was signing up to marry this man. To be with him. Forever. And that just felt… It all felt like too much. It felt like too much, and it felt terrible. And she was at the end of her tether over it. She marched out of the ballroom, and stopped. She looked down a long corridor, and saw movement on the other side of a glass door that led out to a terrace that overlooked the ocean.
She walked toward it, unable to stop herself from being curious. She opened the doors, and saw her sisters. They were sitting on the floor of the terrace laughing, the breeze tangling in their hair.
There was a platter of cheese and fruit out in front of them, and they were laughing and chatting with each other. More carefree than she had ever seen them.
“Do you like your rooms?” she asked.
Opal looked up at her. “Yes,” she said, looking rapturous. “Like a dream, Stevie.”
“It really is,” said Topaz.
She had never seen her sisters looking quite… Quite like that. But it was Daisy whose expression she wanted most to see. Her more skeptical, practical sister.
She looked up at Stevie.
“This is wonderful,” she said. “But I feel like… Let’s talk for a second,” said Daisy.
She took Stevie’s arm and led her inside. “I don’t want to say anything in front of them. I don’t want to embarrass you. You’re agreeing to marry him. And that’s not a business deal. I feel like everybody else is acting like you took a different job. They’re young. They don’t really get it. But… Stevie, I read all of the articles about it. And the way that they say something happened between the two of you. If you tell me that it’s not true. That it was made up…”
“It’s true,” said Stevie. She blushed heavily. She couldn’t help herself. Admitting that she was quite that human was…embarrassing. How could it not be because what had happened between herself and Adonis didn’t have anything to do with emotion. It had nothing to do with something soft or romantic that she might be able to dress it up in. She had thought he was attractive. And she had been afraid they were going to die. It had been base and life-affirming. It had been sexual. And saying as much to her younger sister felt…wrong.
“You love him?” Daisy asked.
Stevie winced. “Daisy, I barely know him. I… I would never recommend that you do what I did. It was… It was a morally questionable decision. I played it very dangerous with my… My health and my future. But we were trapped, and we didn’t know we were going to survive and…”
Daisy put her hand on Stevie’s arm. “Stevie. I’m not a child. I can see the man. I understand why it happened. You don’t have to pretend that he isn’t attractive, or that you didn’t do what any of us would be tempted to do.”
Stevie scowled. “Well. Well… You’re happy here?”
“Yes,” said Daisy. “Who wouldn’t be? But I’m not the one that has to marry a virtual stranger in exchange for all of this. So please don’t let us color your decision-making.”
Stevie closed her eyes. “But that isn’t realistic, Daisy. Of course it’s going to color my decision-making. You’re my responsibility.”
“We aren’t your responsibility. We are your sisters. We love you.”
“I don’t mean it like that. But I love you. You matter to me more than I can say. And… The truth is…”
She didn’t know what to say. Because the truth was more complicated than she wanted it to be. Because the truth was going to seem unfair. Because she was actually too afraid to dig for the deepest truth of all.
“Don’t worry about me. That’s the truth. Because I made my decision. And it was as much for me as it was for you. And yes, it’s a little bit more complicated than I wanted to admit. But that’s my decision.”
“Well, I can accept that. I can accept… If this is for you.”
She felt raw and wounded. She didn’t feel like it was for her. She felt like her sisters were enjoying their beautiful new life in a palace by the sea, and who could ever ask them to go back to a small house on a frozen mountaintop?
But if she was honest. If she was very, very honest, she also didn’t think that she could ask herself to go back to a life before he was in it.
A life where he wasn’t essential. Where he wasn’t part of it or her.
Because this was the problem. She had spent her life being a certain kind of sheltered. And that night on the mountaintop, she had learned something about herself she hadn’t known before.
That she was sexual. That she…had desires and needs and she had been neglecting them. That she wasn’t just a vessel; she was more than that.
More than just self-sacrifice. It was easy right now to tell herself that what she was doing was for everybody else. But Daisy had given her an out. And sure, she would’ve felt guilty about it. But her sisters did love her.
And she…liked being warm.
She liked the soft bed. She liked having someone to draw her a bath. And she liked seeing Adonis’s beautiful, infuriating face every day.
She couldn’t say that she had feelings for him. Well, perhaps she could. But it was a stretch, she thought, to say that.
But it was also a stretch to say that she felt nothing for him. Or that it was only sex.
Yes. That felt like a stretch too.
And she felt like she was stretching. Every which way.
But if she didn’t feel something, she wouldn’t have been so upset, so offended by what he had said earlier.
By the way he had made her feel when he had rejected her kiss.
Because she had been caught up in the moment. In a romance that apparently hadn’t existed.
She had been caught up in feelings that didn’t… Didn’t really exist.
She had felt silly and small.
And really, poorly. Very poorly.
Because he had been her first kiss, her first lover, and when he hadn’t gotten in touch with her again afterward he had felt like her first rejection. But this really was a rejection. He hadn’t been caught up in his feelings. He hadn’t been unable to resist.
Tears stung her eyes. But she chose not to let them fall. She had a lot of practice with that.
“Don’t worry about me, Daisy. Really. I made my choice. I’m going to be Adonis’s wife. And I’m… Happy about that.”
* * *
Adonis was pacing and scowling. I’m going to be Adonis’s wife, and I’m very happy about that.
He didn’t want to hear her say that. With that sadness in her voice.
But he had overheard all of it. Her telling her sister that something had happened between them. He could also tell that she was upset. And that she was putting on a brave face for her sister.
He had upset her. He had done badly, and she…
In spite of himself, he wondered. He wondered why she was staying.
And this was exactly why he should stay away from her.
Because he couldn’t afford to be distracted by her. It was madness. A madness he didn’t need.
And yet he was consumed by it. Filled with it.
Was this how it began? The slow stripping away of your power?
He refused to call it love. He didn’t believe sexual obsession was anything like love, and yet people liked calling it that to make themselves feel better. He had engaged in any number of physical-only affairs. And no one had ever gotten their hooks into him quite like this. It was because she was different. It had to be because she had saved his life. Perhaps because she had been a virgin.
It was easy to develop this strange savior complex. Where he believed he had introduced her to the desires of her body. In this feeling of protectiveness, because she was precious in some ways. Coming from a life that he couldn’t even imagine. And she had been brought into his, which made him feel like he owed her his life the way that she had saved his.
And suddenly, all became clear to him. He reasoned that while he wanted to ensure that he maintained control over his emotions, the way that he was handling things now did not demonstrate control.
If he could not manage to treat her as his princess, then what was the point of control at all?
It was not real control, it was simply avoidance. And if there was one thing that Adonis had never done, it was avoid something. Not conflict, not pleasure, not hardship. He was a man who faced all things head-on. Including plane crashes. And most definitely including his fiancée and her feelings.
That was how he found himself following the same path she had just taken to her room. He did not knock. It was his palace, after all.
Stevie was standing at the window, and she turned abruptly, her breath sharp as she did so.
“Stevie, what can I give you?” he said.
Stevie only stared at him in silence, and then screwed up her face, staring hard at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Is this your way of apologizing to me?”
“What… What gives you that impression?”
He was utterly taken aback.
“Why do you want to know what you can do for me if you don’t feel sorry for what you did earlier?”
He scowled. “If I had wanted to apologize to you I simply would have.”
“I don’t think so. I think you feel bad.”
He gritted his teeth. Because of course he did. It was why he had come.
“Do you want a gift, or not?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I would like a gift. Who wouldn’t?”
“Then tell me what you desire.”
“A tiger.”
“I will find one.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. I don’t want a tiger. But you don’t know me.”
“Then allow me the opportunity to know you. By telling me what you want, instead of lying like a little weasel.”
“Why would a weasel ask for a tiger, Adonis? That doesn’t make any sense. It would be eaten.”
“I know you’re just being deliberately difficult.”
“Maybe. But I’ve been known to be. I’ve spent the last six years playing the part of mother to six sisters. You learn to be a little bit difficult as a matter of necessity.”
“I’m quite certain you do.”
“I’m not easily manipulated. So if this is an effort to do that—”
“It isn’t,” he said. “You’re right. I am… Sorry.” The word felt unfamiliar in his mouth.
“Oh. That sounded like it was difficult.”
“Nothing is difficult for me.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Nothing.”
“I am trying to get to know you. Why can’t you take it as a gesture of goodwill?”
“I don’t know, something about you makes me think that you’re prone to weaponizing your knowledge.”
“That’s unflattering.”
“I don’t know that I trust you.”
“Why not?”
“Why… Why didn’t you tell me? Who you were. Why didn’t you tell me who you were when we were up there together? You let me believe that it was somebody else’s wedding. And you didn’t tell me who you were at all. Why?”
“Because,” he said. And he could feel the truth of it rising up in the back of his throat, making the back of his jaw ache. He didn’t want to say it. And yet, he had already begun. He was trying to give her something, so he might as well give her the truth. He wasn’t…ashamed of it necessarily, but he had also never spoken it aloud to anyone before. “Because there were unintended consequences for the way that I chose to handle my mother. She wasn’t the only one who witnessed my behavior and formed an opinion. No. The whole world did. And with you, this woman who had no idea who I was, and what I thought might be the last days of my life, I wanted to be the person that I was there. No baggage, no presuppositions, no titles.”
He didn’t know whether or not he was shocked or gratified to see her expression soften. Perhaps both.
“I understand. My name doesn’t carry any… Any weight at all. So it didn’t cost me anything to tell you who I was. But you didn’t know everything about me. You didn’t know that I have never slept with anybody. You had never seen me in my little house. You didn’t… You let me be me. In a way that I hadn’t been for a very long time, so I guess… That’s another way we’re more alike than different. We keep finding strange ways.”
“Yes,” he said, the word coming out rougher than he intended them to.
“I don’t know what kind of present to ask for. You’re a prince and the kinds of things that you might be offering me are beyond my scope.”
“What do you like?”
“I like…so many things. I like to knit. I like to garden. I like books.”
“Books,” he said. “I can give you books. There’s a library in the palace. And it is always stocked with new books.”
“Really? Not just…musty classics? Which don’t get me wrong, I like, but I like a little bit of popular fiction.”
“Yes. We have a book buyer for the palace.”
“That’s…amazing.”
“Yes. And you can go use the library. Anytime you wish. You could sit in there all day. Until you have official duties, there’s nothing else for you to do. You could be a lady of leisure.”
“I don’t even know how I would begin being one of those,” she said.
“By being leisurely.”
“It sounds nice…”
He extended his hand. “Come with me.”
She looked at him for a moment, her expression skeptical. But then, she took his hand. And he led her from the room and down the great hall.
They went up a curved flight of stairs that opened into a massive room. There were bookshelves from floor to ceiling, ladders all around that slid on rails so that you could reach the heights.
And he watched her expression transform to one of wonder.
He wished he could make her look like that all the time. He wished he gave her more…than he took.
Funny because he would have said he had. Because she was a peasant and he was…him.
His feelings on the matter had changed.
There were places to sit all over the grand room. A chaise lounge by the fireplace.
“Should you wish to use this room, and have amenities brought to you, all you have to do is ask.”
“So if I wanted to… I could ask for a cheese platter and the blankets and some hot chocolate?”
“Yes. And then another. And another. Being a princess is not only about the work you can do, or about etiquette. It can be about this too.”
He felt something in him soften. “This is not just for your sisters.”
She nodded slowly. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Except there was no of course , because he hadn’t made sure that she knew about this before.
But he was in control of himself now. He had recognized where he had failed her, and he wasn’t going to do it again.
That was what mattered.
He had dominion over these rogue feelings for her. And if the library could make her happy while he continued to withhold the physical, then all the better.
He had fixed it. And now it was done.