by B. E. Baker
He catches my arm. “At least take my card. Think on it. If you change your mind, call or email me.”
I stuff the card into my pocket. “Sure, yeah, okay.” I smile. “Do me a favor and hold your breath until I call.”
One less agent in the world would probably be a good thing.
I’m grabbing my bag when I notice that I’m not alone.
Cole followed me. “What happened before that guy interrupted?” His eyebrows are drawn together, his eyes sad.
I sigh. “I’m just exhausted.”
“Come home with me tonight,” he says.
“I’m not some kind of—”
He throws his hands up. “I came by jet, with Ben, Erik and Rogan. Friends on my football team.”
“Football?” I ask. “I didn’t think you guys liked football.”
He smirks. “You call it soccer.”
Right. “So you’re saying instead of staying in the hotel Henrietta Gauvón is paying for with the rest of the band who hasn’t been fired, go with you and sleep in the blue room. Alone.”
He smiles. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Oh. “I’ll need to grab my stuff from the tour bus.”
“I’ve got some drugs to smuggle,” he says. “How about you let me grab it.”
The joke I made when he picked me up in Frankfurt. He really is the good guy, the white knight. “I’m sorry.” I step closer to him. “I’m so exhausted from today, from the last month, really. I don’t know why I assumed—”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders, and I lean against him and breathe in the smell of Cole: sharp, clean, fresh. Like the mountain air of Liechtenstein. A place where the people loved me. A place where I felt safe.
“Let’s go.”
“Let me call a cab and text my friends to meet me at the airstrip.”
Cole somehow gracefully manages all my luggage effortlessly. Everything is easier with him. “I’m glad you came tonight.”
He hails a cab. “I am too. Your performance was—I have no words for it. It was everything.”
Any concerns I had that Cole came here to try and hook up evaporate when his friends arrive at the airstrip. He wouldn’t have brought Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest to an attempted seduction. Although they’re likely not as bad when they aren’t quite so drunk. I spend half the flight trying to explain why I speak English. Raised in America seems to be a hard concept for them to grasp while utterly smashed, at least, after finding out Henrietta Gauvón was my birth mother.
By the time they all sit still long enough to understand, they fall asleep. One by one, like dominoes in a row.
“I never understood the American phrase ‘sawing logs’ until right now,” I say.
“Erik has always snored like that,” Cole says. “He blames a deviated septum, but I think he’s never done anything about it because he likes the attention.”
“Thanks for getting me out of there,” I say.
“Happy to help,” Cole says.
I stare out the window, but it’s so dark that there’s not much to see.
“Why did you turn that agent down?” Cole’s voice is so quiet I barely hear it.
I turn toward him slowly. Sometimes, like right now, his beauty hits me like a club in a back alley. He’s at least three levels hotter than I am. Why does he like me at all? He kissed me after I played the piano and all his employees were impressed. Then after he saw me play at Jostli’s he gave me a ride to join the tour. . . And now tonight, he called my name aloud. The crowd would never have asked for me without someone prompting them first. He grew up in a castle and was raised to be a prince, proper title or not. Does he need me to be a rock star, to be worthy of him? Does he even like sweet, boring little Beth Graham? Or is he only interested in Elizabeth, daughter of Henrietta Gauvón?
“I don’t want that kind of life,” I say.
“You loved it up there, and the audience, they adored you.”
“It’s not who I am,” I say.
“You don’t need the dancers and the smoke and the distractions. You don’t need loud, busy music videos. Your songs have meaning and depth. You connected with people tonight. You can’t tell me that you didn’t feel that.”
“I’m nothing like my birth mother,” I say.
“You could have gone to Juilliard,” Cole says. “I agree that you’re much better served taking after your Mom and Dad than after her, but no one can deny that you inherited her musical talent.”
“She craves the attention, the praise, and the crowds,” I say. “I could have gone to Juilliard, but I chose not to.”
“I thought you said that you didn’t pass Algebra.” Cole frowns.
My fingers knead the padded armrest of the plane’s seat. “My dad was sick—he had arthritis and was having to step down from his business. We were interviewing managers when my brother Rob was hit with an IED in Libya. We thought he had died for two full days. I had my Algebra test during those two days, and I knew my family needed me. Juilliard was a dream—my family was real.”
“You could have asked to retake the test.”
“I failed that test on purpose. I could have asked to retake it,” I agree. “But I didn’t want to—I had made my decision. Rob needed months and months of rehab, and my mom and dad were struggling. I couldn’t leave them, not then. And I don’t regret it. I’d do the same thing again today.”
“This isn’t the same as that,” Cole says. “And recording an album doesn’t mean you’re just like Henrietta. You’re still you.” He’s right, about all of it, but it’s also true that the person I really am and the person Cole wants me to be aren’t the same. I’m sick to death of pretending.
It’s time for me to go home.
14
Cole
No matter how many times I relive that moment, my kiss with Beth, it plays the same. She smiled up at me, delighted I was there, joyous in my arms, and then, when I told her I had lost the vote, she ducked out and ran. Beth liked me when I might become a prince, but now, not so much. Last night she said she’d be going home soon, as soon as she could book a flight. This morning I need to convince her that even if I’m not a prince, I still have something to offer. In the nearly two weeks she stayed here before, she never slept later than seven-thirty, even jet lagged.
She still hasn’t left her room at eleven a.m.
I finally knock on her door. “Beth, you can’t hide from me forever.”
“Why not?” she asks.
I laugh. “Open the door.”
When she finally does, I’m surprised to see that she’s fully dressed, her bags packed, sitting on a fully made bed. “I have a car coming to get me in an hour.”
“Cancel it,” I say. “Please.”
She rolls her eyes skyward. “I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the wrong question to ask.”
I drag an over-embroidered chair closer to her and sit down. “I like you, Beth, a lot. I want to date you. I want to see you every day, and take you to dinner, and listen to you sing and play, and have you come cheer for me when I play football.”
She lifts one eyebrow.
“I like you enough to call it soccer. Privately.”
She snorts.
“I’m not a prince. I’m disappointed too, but it’s not like I’m destitute. I have a great job in Antwerp that my buddy has been holding for me, and I kept my father’s townhome there—it wasn’t entailed. Plus, my dad has a few billion dollars, even without the entailed property and the shares that go with the crown. A lot of that will go to Holly and whatever children she has since it’ll be split evenly among all heirs, but I bet I have nearly a billion dollars, between my trust and my share of Dad’s estate.”
She shakes her head.
“I’m not a prince, but I didn’t realize that you would care so much.”
Her eyes widen. “You think I care about money or titles?”
“Don’t you?” I swallow. “You w
ere happy to see me, until I told you that I lost.”
She stands up, her hands clenched at her side. “I don’t care about that at all, except that you’re perfect for it and those people are too close-minded, selfish, and—” She splutters. “Too bigoted to see it.”
“You didn’t walk away from me because I’m not a prince.”
She tilts her head sideways. “You’re a prince in every action and word. That’s the only kind of prince that matters.”
I inhale sharply, my legs itching to cross the space still separating us, my arms aching to hold her again.
“But you gave up too easily.” She bites her lip.
“There’s nothing else to do,” I say. “We can’t hold another vote on the same thing—and even if we did, it wouldn’t pass. It’s not like it was even close. I do think that they might approve an amendment to the law that allows Holly to rule, but she’s adamant that she wants nothing to do with the whole mess.”
“She’s a bull-headed idiot too,” Beth says.
I’d argue with her, but Holly is pretty bull-headed. It’s hard to argue with truth.
“This might be a stupid idea, and I’m not well educated or brilliant, but I was reading the Constitution online and I noticed—”
“Wait, you were reading the Constitution of Liechtenstein?”
She nods. “Yes, and I noticed something. I read up on how your dad got the amendment passed—you were only like seven years old at the time. Did you know that the dynasts were upset and the Landtag was against him?”
My mouth drops open.
“From what the records and articles say, he was brilliant. He went toe to toe with the entire parliament, and he told them that he would have a full veto power of everything, or he would quit and they could find a new prince.”
I laugh. “That sounds exactly like Dad.” Before his eyesight went. Before his heart problems. Before Noel.
“His son is every bit as phenomenal,” Beth says. “And I think you should do the same thing.”
I shake my head. “The people can’t help with this. It’s not up to them.”
“Your people love you. The Prime Minister said that, and I’ve talked to some of them in my time at the Adler. You walk on water to them.”
I try not to raise my voice. “It’s adorable that you want to help, but our government is rather complex. Trust me when I tell you that there’s nothing the people can do to reverse the House Law.”
“You’re not looking at it right,” she says. “Your dad gave the people something, in exchange for them entrusting him with more power than any other monarch in Europe.”
Huh?
“He gave them the right to vote him right out of power. They can, at any time, pull the escape hatch and terminate the principality, converting Liechtenstein to a democracy instead.”
I knew that, but I still don’t see how that would help us. “You want the people to fire my dad? Why? To spite Franz?”
“Do you know the biggest problem with showing up to a gunfight with a knife?”
Perhaps she’s using an American phrase I don’t know.
“You’re outgunned, literally. You can’t win a gunfight with a knife. You tried that, and the dynasts shot you down, brutally. It’s not time to quit, though, it’s time to rearm.”
“With what?”
“Talk to your people, the ones who have watched you sell your family’s art to set up educational programs for their kids, the ones who have watched you deliver Christmas presents.”
My eyes widen.
“Paisley mentioned it,” she says. “And I think that Distribution is about the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I don’t get the credit for that. It’s been around for a long time.”
“But you kept it going,” she says. “And you have signed treaty after treaty to open up new opportunities for your people. You learned to read and speak and write so that you could serve them, when others might have given up. You kept your country out of the EU to keep their taxes low. You take care of your parents.”
“Not that I don’t like the praise, but can you finish explaining what you mean about arming?”
She sighs like my primary school teacher used to, as though it’s ridiculous I can’t read what’s right in front of me. “You ask the people to go to bat for you. They will vote the monarchy out if the dynasts won’t change the law and allow you to step in for your dad.”
That’s not a gun to a gunfight—that’s a gun held to the temple of every member of the Princely House. I’d literally be threatening them. They give me what I want, or I take their cake away forever. I have no idea whether it would work, but even if it would. . . I can’t do it. “I don’t deserve it.”
Her shoulders fall. “Huh?”
“You don’t know everything. If you did, you’d get that it was probably for the best that I’m not Prince. I’m sure in America they don’t reward the person who has committed a crime.”
“I feel like I’m on an Acme cartoon and someone just yanked the rug out of the way and knocked me down a hole.”
I should have just told her I’d think about it. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve been silent for a decade. Suddenly the truth claws at me, desperate to get out. “You remember my brother, Noel?”
She blinks. “I never met him, but yes, Paisley and I discussed him further. He passed away after a protracted fight with cancer.”
“He stopped taking his medicine,” Cole says. “And Mom and Dad blamed Holly—they thought she knew. They were sure Noel would have told her. They were two peas in the proverbial pod. He told her everything.”
“Paisley mentioned that.”
“Okay, so.” I inhale and exhale. Can I really say it? “I knew.”
“You knew what?”
“Mom took Noel his medicine morning and night. She stood and watched while he took it.”
She frowns.
“He needed someone to help him with his plan. Some days he couldn’t get out of bed. Mom would have seen if he hid the pills, no matter where he put them.”
She closes her eyes.
“He told me he didn’t want to do it again—he showed me the data. The rate of recurrence was very high. His odds of recovering again were never good, but the odds of relapse afterward were fairly close to 100%.”
She reaches across the space between us and takes my hand.
Normally that would make me happy, but not right now. “You don’t understand.”
She picks up her phone and dials a number. “I need to cancel my car. Yes, that’s alright. I’ll pay the fee.” She hangs up. “I think I get it. You let me know if I leave anything out.”
I swallow.
“You watched as your little brother suffered. Chemo is basically poison. Doctors poison the patient and hope that the cancer dies before the person does.”
I nod.
“And after enduring that, your entire family was elated. Noel might never have children thanks to the radiation and chemo, and he might be weaker and suffer other issues, but he was alive, he was cured.” She pauses and meets my eye.
“Yes.”
“Then when he was sick again, you had just finished college. You came home, ready to start your life, with a job lined up, I imagine. Your family was too preoccupied to welcome you back because. . . Noel was sick again. You felt alone, left out, unwanted. Noel had always been closer to Paisley, and your parents obviously cared more about their sick child than you. You were easy, and you required no special care and attention.”
“I wasn’t upset about that.”
She shrugs. “I would have been.”
“Maybe a little,” I say, “about the Noel and Holly thing.”
She smiles. “Cole, when your brother Noel begged for your help, you heard him because you loved him. You didn’t like watching him suffer. And you also felt special, because he asked you, not Paisley.”
“Maybe a little bit,” I admit.
“You did it beca
use it was the right thing to do,” she says softly. “Paisley told me that she sees that now, that his quality of life was unbearably bad, that he made his decision and she should have understood and forgiven him for it.”
“They can’t ever know,” I say. “They’ll hate me if they know.” To my utter horror, I begin to cry like a distressed toddler, in front of Beth.
She kneels down and shuffles across the carpet toward me. This time, when she takes my hand, I let her. I pull her up and into my arms, but not like I wanted to earlier. This time she’s salve on a stinging scrape, she’s sunlight after a nightmare, she’s warm wind in my face after a long winter.
“You hurt more because you kept it from them,” she whispers. “Your family loves you, and they’ll understand. You did what you did because you loved Noel. You were willing to be the bad guy to spare them the pain.”
“What if I did it because I was jealous? He had everything I didn’t.”
She shakes her head. “No. I know you well enough to know that’s not true. What you did was selfless, and I’m almost positive your parents will see that too. Paisley will, for sure.”
Even the thought of telling them causes my hands to tremble. “I can’t.” I shake my head. “My dad would regret adopting me.”
Beth sighs and stands up. “You know your own family better than I ever could, but I fear you’re not giving them enough credit.”
“You can see, though, why I can’t force myself into the position Noel would have taken, right? I can’t help him die and then, like a mob boss, force his family to give me his job.”
Beth shrugs. “I’m American. I’ll never understand, probably. We always take what we need, like mob bosses.” She glances at her phone, and I wonder whether she’s about to order the car again.
“Will you consider sticking around a while?” I ask. “Let me take you on a few dates. Talk to that agent, or if not him, another one.” I pull out my phone and open the browser. “This is one of the videos. It has three hundred thousand views, and it’s only been twelve hours.”
“Is that a lot?” She lifts one eyebrow.
“It was in the newspaper today,” I say. “You should check out the article. Downstairs. Maybe while eating some food.”
