CHAPTER 15 #2
"Archie, Thomas said you needed to—" She stopped when she saw Viktor. "Lord Viktor. I didn't know you were here."
"Princess Bettina." He bowed slightly. "I apologize for the interruption to your morning."
"What's going on?"
I handed her the tablet without a word. Watched her face as she read, watched the color drain from her cheeks, watched her hands start to shake slightly as she scrolled through the article.
"Oh no," she breathed. "Oh no, no, no."
"Care to explain this?" The words came out harsher than I intended, edged with jealousy I had no right to feel.
She looked up at me, and I saw genuine fear in her eyes. "This is Chilly. We went on like three dates. We weren't even exclusive."
"According to Mr. Baker, you were in a committed relationship," Viktor said smoothly. "He claims you abandoned him for a title."
"That's not true. We barely knew each other." She was scrolling frantically now, her breathing getting faster. "These photos, this was after a group skiing trip. There were eight people there. It was completely innocent."
"Innocent?" The word came out before I could stop it, laced with all the hurt and anger and betrayal I was trying not to feel. "You're practically naked, pressed up against another man."
"I'm wearing a bikini. At a ski resort. After skiing. That's what people do."
"That's what some people do," I said, and I heard the disdain in my own voice. "Including my wife."
Her head snapped up. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I'm wondering what other surprises are going to surface about your colorful romantic history."
"Colorful romantic history?" Her voice rose. "You make it sound like I was running some kind of escort service."
"I'm just wondering how many other men are going to crawl out of the woodwork claiming they've been intimate with you."
"Intimate? I never even kissed him!"
"That's not what he's telling the media."
"Then he's lying!"
"Is he?" I gestured at the tablet. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've been keeping some secrets about your past."
Viktor cleared his throat. "Perhaps we should discuss how to manage the media response."
"Secrets?" Betty ignored Viktor entirely, her attention laser-focused on me. "What secrets? That I went on some casual dates? That I had friends? That I lived like a normal person before I knew I was supposed to be a saint?"
"You were supposed to tell me if there were things that could become scandals."
"I was supposed to predict that some guy I barely dated would lie to international media for attention? How exactly was I supposed to foresee that?"
"You were supposed to think about how your behavior might reflect on the royal families you were joining."
"My behavior of existing as a twenty-one-year-old college student?"
I knew I was being unfair. Knew I was taking out my fear and jealousy on someone who didn't deserve it. But the image of her in that hot tub, laughing and carefree with another man's arm around her, had lodged itself in my brain like a splinter.
"Your behavior of parading around half-dressed with men while you were supposedly committed to marrying me."
"I wasn't committed to anything! I didn't even know you existed when that photo was taken!"
"But you should have conducted yourself as if you did."
She stared at me in disbelief. "Are you serious? I was supposed to live like a nun my entire life on the off-chance that someday I might discover I was secretly royal?"
"You were supposed to have some sense of dignity and self-respect."
The words hung in the air between us, and I watched them land like physical blows. Betty's face went white, then red, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.
"Dignity and self-respect," she repeated slowly. "You're lecturing me about dignity? You, who spent a week lying to my face? You, who let me torture myself thinking I was developing feelings for the wrong person while you sat there playing your little games?"
"That was completely different."
"Is it? Because from where I'm sitting, you're both men who think it's fine to lie about me to get what you want. Him for fame and money, you for, what exactly? Entertainment?"
"I was trying to get to know the real you."
"No, you were trying to evaluate whether I was suitable princess material while keeping yourself safely anonymous. And now you're standing here judging me for having a normal past while you hid behind a fake identity!"
Viktor interjected smoothly. "Perhaps if we all took a moment."
"Stay out of this," we both snapped simultaneously.
I turned back to Betty. "I never lied about who I was fundamentally."
"Right, you just lied about your name, your job, your entire identity. But that's totally different from some guy exaggerating about our relationship status."
"What he's doing could destroy both our reputations."
"What you did destroyed any chance we had at a real relationship."
The words hit harder than I expected. "A real relationship? You mean the kind where you're fantasizing about other men?"
"Other men? What other men?"
"How should I know? Apparently, you've got quite a history of intimate encounters that I'm only learning about through tabloid headlines."
"Intimate encounters?" She was shouting now. "God, you make me sound like some kind of..."
"Some kind of what?"
"You know what, forget it. Think whatever you want to think. Believe whatever makes you feel better about this whole situation."
"What I think is that you've been less than honest about your romantic past, and now it's blowing up in both our faces."
"What I think is that you're looking for an excuse to be angry at me because it's easier than admitting you screwed up too."
"I screwed up? I'm not the one with compromising photos splashed across international media."
"No, you're just the one who's too much of a coward to have an honest conversation without hiding behind a fake identity first!"
"At least I wasn't rolling around half-naked with other people."
"At least I wasn't pretending to be someone else while judging everything the other person said and did!"
"You think I was judging you?"
"I think you were evaluating me like a horse you might buy. Checking my temperament, testing my responses, making sure I was suitable for your precious royal bloodline."
"That's not what I was doing."
"No? Then what were you doing? Because it sure as hell wasn't getting to know me as an equal."
I stopped, took a breath, tried to find some calm in the storm of jealousy and hurt. "I was trying to see if there was a chance we could actually make this work. If there was something real between us instead of just political necessity."
"And now?"
The question hung between us, loaded with everything that had happened in the past twelve hours. Last night, she'd been in my arms, soft and vulnerable and mine. This morning, I was looking at photos of her with another man and wondering if I'd ever really known her at all.
"Now I'm wondering if the woman I thought I was falling for even exists, or if she was just as much of an act as you're accusing me of putting on."
The hurt in her eyes was immediate and visceral. "An act. Right. Because only someone putting on an act would be stupid enough to develop actual feelings for a man who was lying to her."
"Is that what happened? You developed actual feelings?"
"Does it matter? Those feelings were based on a lie anyway."
"They weren't based on a lie. Everything I told you about myself was true."
"Except for the part where you're actually a prince judging whether I'm worthy to marry him."
"I wasn't judging whether you were worthy. I was trying to figure out if we could be happy together."
"And your conclusion?"
I looked at her, at this woman who'd turned my carefully ordered world upside down, who'd made me laugh and made me want and made me feel things I'd spent years trying to avoid.
This woman who was now standing in front of me with tears in her eyes and accusation in her voice, defending herself against charges that I knew, deep down, were unfair.
But the jealousy was a living thing in my chest, and I couldn't seem to get past the image of her with someone else.
"My conclusion is that we're both too damaged by other people's lies to trust each other enough to find out."
The finality in my tone made something break in her expression. "So that's it? One tabloid story and we're done?"
"It's not just the tabloid story, Betty. It's everything. The deception, the accusations, the fact that we can't seem to have a conversation without it turning into a fight."
"Maybe because you keep treating me like I'm some kind of criminal instead of someone who got blindsided by media attention!"
"And maybe because you keep acting like my attempt to know you was some kind of unforgivable betrayal instead of a man trying to find something real in an impossible situation!"
"It was a betrayal. You let me think I was doing something wrong by having feelings for you."
"And you let some guy parade your private moments around international media without thinking about how it might affect the people you're allied with!"
We stared at each other across the room, both breathing hard, both looking like we'd been through a war.
Viktor, who'd been silent during our entire fight, cleared his throat. "If I may offer a perspective?"
"No," Betty said, her voice flat. "You may not."
She turned to me, and I saw something in her eyes that looked like defeat.
"You want to know the truth about Chilly Baker?
He was a guy I went on three dates with during my sophomore year of college.
We went to a couple of movies, got coffee a few times, and went on that skiing trip with a group of friends.
I didn't sleep with him. I didn't even kiss him.
And when he asked me to be exclusive, I said no because I didn't feel that way about him. "
"Then why is he saying that?"