Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
OLIVER
It was another awkward evening around the dinner table, during which Lexi was particularly quiet.
But thankfully, most of the conversation was taken up by my sister trying to convince my parents to open the Glenwither gardens and the conservatory for weddings as an additional source of income. Mum and Dad resisted the idea with a certain degree of disgust.
After dessert, I suggested Lexi go up to our room ahead of me. That seemed to work well last night and made for the least embarrassing way of dealing with what could be an incredibly awkward getting-ready-for-bed situation.
Now, I ease the door open to find the room in darkness.
Part of me is relieved, but also part of me kind of wanted her to be awake so we could chat and laugh about Dad’s outraged assertion that holding weddings on the property would “be the thin end of the wedge and before you know it there’d be a roller coaster, and a waxworks, and a bloody Starbucks. ”
But it looks like she’s all tucked up and asleep again. Or at least pretending to be, as part of her effort to avoid the awkwardness too.
It seems like sharing a room wasn’t even necessary. We’ve not been able to talk about the book in here because of the whole bugging situation. But, while it’s pointless on that front, I do like how comforting it feels to sleep in the same space as someone who sees a lot of things the same way I do.
Like last night, I tiptoe past the bed toward the bathroom, dodging the squeaky spots on the floor so as not to disturb her, if she is truly asleep.
As I brush my teeth, my eyes settle on the silk rose in the vase on the windowsill over the bath.
Motherfuckers.
And which motherfucker exactly is responsible for bugging me?
It’s shocking and yet also incredibly not shocking at the same time.
I can’t even bring myself to be furious about it anymore. Instead, I see it as vindication of my decision to get away from all this bullshit, regardless of what some members of my family and the media might say.
Fuck that whole “deserting his duty” horseshit.
It’s hardly like I’m a top-ranking royal. I’ve always had to earn my own money anyway. So why it matters to anyone if I make my living here or in the US, where I get way more privacy, I will never know.
The abandoning-my-country stuff is such utter bollocks. The royal institutions have done nothing but abandon me every time I needed them, every time the media turned on me.
After stripping down to my boxers in the bathroom, I head back into the bedroom with my pile of clothes.
This chaise is not exactly the most comfortable thing I’ve ever slept on, but being around my parents is so exhausting I could nod off on a clothesline.
Less than a minute after I’ve tucked myself in, Lexi mutters something.
Is she talking in her sleep?
I lift my head from the pillows to listen with both ears and also to peer over the foot of the bed to look at her. There’s almost no light in the room, but it’s obvious she’s lying on her back now, arms out of the covers.
“Oliver,” she says in a hushed voice.
“Yeah?” I whisper back.
Or is she saying my name in her sleep? The thought of that is immensely flattering. Until a second later when I remember her life is currently wrapped up in writing a book about me, so it wouldn’t be surprising if I were occupying her brain at all times, even when she’s not awake.
“Why isn’t your mother more sympathetic about the way the press treats you?”
She’s not even close to being asleep.
I lie back down. “Do we have to do an interview right now?”
It’s only after I’ve used the word “interview” that my stomach lurches at the thought of the bug. But then I remember it’s in the bathroom, and the door’s shut, and we’re talking in whispers, so hopefully it can’t hear.
“Obviously, I’ve seen the old stories.” There’s a rustling of sheets that sounds like Lexi sitting up.
“You mean the ones where they called her shit like Her Royal Thighness and Lady in Weighting?”
“Can’t hear you,” she says in a strained whisper.
“The shit about her weight.”
“What?” her voice is a little louder now.
Now I come to think about it, we have no idea if there aren’t other listening devices in here that we didn’t find.
I push myself up to sitting so I can look up over the foot of the bed again.
And there she is, half sitting up, the top of her powder-blue pajamas showing above the covers.
“I said…” I strain my voice so she can hear it but hopefully no one else can. “Do you mean the awful headlines about her weight?”
“Yes. But why did they do it?”
The British press ripped into my mother for years, mainly while she was at university.
“Because she was average-sized,” I say. “They see it as some sort of a crime if the women of the family are anything other than skinny-royal-size.”
She sits up straight and cups her hand behind her ear. “Other than what?”
“Skinny-royal-size,” I say again.
“Skimmed meat foil pies?” she says.
A laugh flies out of me before I can stop it. But then I realize I don’t need to stop it. I can let it rip, because laughing with your girlfriend is a perfectly acceptable activity.
Have I ever laughed as hard with any other woman as I have with Lexi these last few days?
“What?” she says through a giggle. “You and your perfect royal English accent weren’t talking about meat pies?”
I’m about to give her another whispered response because we’re back to the sensitive topic again, but I realize there’ll be the same issue of her not being able to hear me across the entire length of the bed.
I wrap the top blanket around me, because she has no reason on earth to want to see me in only my boxers, even in the dark, and climb over the carved wooden footboard until I’m sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the mattress.
“I said that she wasn’t skinny-royal-size. Apparently there’s some unwritten rule that princesses have to be stick thin.”
“Yeah, you’d certainly need thick skin to put up with those ridiculous articles.”
“I said stick thin, not thick skin.”
“What?” She leans forward a little, and I can tell her face is crinkled up by the what are you talking about? tone in her voice.
I drop to my hands and knees and crawl closer to her, stopping halfway up the bed, somewhere around her knees. “I said, there’s some unwritten rule that princesses have to be stick thin.”
“Oh, right.” She leans back onto her pillows. “The article where she’s eating an ice cream and it runs down her chin was absolutely fucking brutal.”
“Ah, the famous ‘Can’t Suck It Fast Enough’ headline.” Merely remembering that, never mind saying it out loud again, prompts a pain in my chest.
“Awful.” Lexi pulls the covers higher, tucking them under her armpits.
“Anyway, when I was getting ready for bed, I was thinking after she’d gone through all of that, why wouldn’t everyone, and her in particular, have more compassion with how the press has treated you?
Why wouldn’t they have more understanding of why you’d want to get away from it? ”
“Yeah, you’d think, right? But that’s not how it works here.” I wrap the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
“Are you cold?” she asks.
“This place is really fucking drafty.”
She reaches across to the other side of the bed and heaves the covers back as if trying to shift a lead weight. “Get in. Then you can stay warm and I’ll be able to hear you. Two birds, one stone. And one comforter that feels like it’s made of stone.”
I freeze for a second. And not only because of the temperature in the room.
I realize it’s only a friendly get in to stay warm while we talk invitation. And that she wants to know my life story because she’s being paid to write it, not because she’s actually interested in me. But she’s still asking me to get into bed next to her.
But I am bloody cold, so I crawl up to the top of the bed, shove my legs under the covers, and prop up a couple of pillows behind me to prevent the carvings of the flowers or the birds or the nymphs or the whatever the hell they are from digging into my back.
“So tell me why everyone seems to have such an utter lack of empathy when it comes to what the media puts you through,” she says, as we sit there, facing forward, like an old, dysfunctional couple who’ve spent so many nights in the same bed that there’s no longer any need for eye contact.
“My mother says that she went through it and had to find a way to keep going, so I should find a way to power through it too. That she didn’t run away, and I shouldn’t run away either. Basically, she had to suck it up without anyone defending her, and there was no reason I shouldn’t do the same.”
“Seriously?” she says, aghast.
I nod.
Lexi rolls toward me, onto her side, her shoulder resting on the headboard. Even in the darkness I can see that her blue eyes are wide, her eyebrows raised. Well, I can’t see their blueness right now, but it’s seared into my memory.
“That’s fucking terrible,” she says.
“Yup. But that’s the way we do things in this family. Your research must have thrown up the motto ‘never complain, never explain.’”
She nods. “Which basically means let everyone walk all over you and never defend yourself.”
A surge of…is it elation?…rushes through me at how perfectly she’s summed up everything I’ve felt about this since I was a teenager.
I’ve never felt so seen in my life.
I turn onto my side to face her too. “That’s exactly it. That’s the worst part. It’s not that I wished people would stand up for me, but that I’m not even allowed to stand up for myself. The only thing I can do to escape it is to leave.”
She looks down and runs her fingers along the stitching at the edge of the sheet. “Is there anything worse than a family that would sit back and watch their kid be walked all over and do nothing about it?”
Whoa, that statement sounds like it has something serious behind it. But she shrinks lower in the bed as if she’s snuggling down for the night.
“Is that the thing that bothers you the most? Is that your biggest fear?” Her whisper is huskier now. “That you can’t stand up for yourself?”
“Oh God, no.” I hitch the sheets higher up over my chilly shoulder as I also sink a little further into the pillows.
“The thing I worry about is—” I pause and look down at the eyes that are gazing back up at me through the dark.
“Are you asking me this for book reasons or because you’re actually interested? ”
“Is that your biggest fear, then?” she says. “That no one will ever be genuinely interested in you for you? That all anyone will ever care about is that you’re a royal and the wealth and influence they think comes with it?”
“Well, it wasn’t what I was going to say. But now you’ve mentioned it, I’m wondering if I should worry about it more. So, you know, thanks for adding to my pile of paranoia.”
She giggles and kicks me under the sheet. The second her toe makes contact with my shin, a glitter cannon fires up my leg sending sparkles across my skin.
“Oh, stop,” she says. “I think you’re pretty good at seeing through people. And I’m damn sure you wouldn’t have let me come here if your gut hadn’t said I’m one of the good guys.”
And, of course, she’s right. But I can’t put my finger on why I trust her, any more than I can put my finger on why I can’t stop myself from trying to kiss her every time we’re within two feet of each other.
Which is what we are right now, so I need to keep a grip on myself.
“So what is it?’ she asks.
“Sorry. What is what?” My brain’s so all over the place from the fact I’m lying here in bed next to her that I can’t even remember the original question.
“What’s your biggest fear?”
“Oh, that’s easy. That I’ll never have any purpose. That I’ll exist for no reason. What’s yours?”
“Whoa. You can’t drop a bombshell like that and then move on to ‘What’s yours?’”
“But that’s it. It’s pretty simple. What really is the point of what my family does?”
“Well, tomorrow we’re going to your charity event.
And that charity would likely not exist without you.
All the members of your family do a lot of charity work.
That has to be a good thing. And at the other end of the scale, the big state events and pomp and pageantry bring tourists into the country.
And thousands of people pour out into the streets and they have a great time and form little communities among themselves, and that’s a good thing too.
And I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of shit in between that I don’t even know about. ”
“Christ, what’s happened to your hatred of hereditary privilege? Sounds like you’re on the verge of giving up the war correspondent thing and going to work for Giles.”
“I was trying to make you feel better. Just because I think the concept is wrong doesn’t mean I can’t admit there’s a smattering of good things that occasionally come from it. But if I worked for Giles I’d probably punch him in the first five minutes.”
“I’ve been wanting to do that for years.”
Lexi rolls onto her back and stares up at the bed canopy.
“Now I’ve told you mine,” I say. “You have to tell me yours.”
“My what?” she says, eyes firmly skyward.
“Don’t act dumb. What’s your biggest fear?”
“The book is about you, not about me.”
“Sure, but maybe I’m interested to know. For my own reasons.” My own reasons including that she might be the most fascinating and captivating person I’ve ever met, and I can’t stop wanting to find out every single little thing about her.
With a loud, dramatic yawn she rolls over, away from me, curling up with the shape of her backside under the covers facing in my direction.
“Suddenly very, very tired. Can barely keep my eyes open,” she says softly. “But feel free to stay there to sleep if you’d be warmer and more comfortable.”
My heart jolts. And I can’t figure out if that’s because the invitation is a surefire sign that she trusts me too.
Or if it’s because I’m afraid that if I stay here I won’t be able to trust myself.
Or if it’s because lying here next to Lexi, doing nothing other than sleeping, might be one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Because, if that’s the case, where do you go after that?
But my life has been about nothing if it’s not been about taking chances.
So I turn onto my side, my rear end facing hers, and pull the heavy covers over me, along with what is possibly the biggest sense of peace I’ve ever experienced.