Just Pretending

by Leah Rooper, Kate Rooper

  It’s what I’ll have to do tomorrow.

  “Hey.” Tiberius turns me around and lifts my chin to look at him. “Is everything okay?”

  I grab my elbows and step away. “Tomorrow at the castle, I’ll be hosting my first official banquet as the queen. It’s the Christmas Eve celebration, and it will be my party. Not my father’s. Not my mother’s. Not my brother’s. Mine.”

  “You’ve got this.” He smiles. “I know you. You are capable of amazing things.”

  “I’m the first ruling queen that Eldonia has had…ever. And I’m the youngest monarch in over one hundred years. I just…never imagined I’d have to do this alone.”

  Tiberius leans against the windowsill. “Alone?”

  “Before my father passed away, the plan was that I would take the throne once I found a suitable husband. But now, thanks to Daniel, the throne is mine. Mine alone. And sometimes, I wonder…if it is a mistake.” I bury my face in my hands. “It’s not that I don’t want to be queen. I do. I love Eldonia. I love its people. But I can’t help but think that everyone at that banquet is going to think Eldonia is doomed.”

  “Then tomorrow is a perfect opportunity,” Tiberius says and grabs my hands.

  “Perfect opportunity for what?”

  He flashes a grin. “To show them they’re wrong.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” I smile back at him and bounce on the balls of my feet. “Maybe I just need to release all this nervous energy. Want to help me?”

  His jaw drops. “Uh…”

  “Over here.” I walk to a corner of the room. The wall here isn’t immaculate stone like the rest of the studio. It’s splattered with splashes of paint in every color.

  “Y’know,” Tiberius says, “for aspiring artists, they’re pretty messy.”

  I know he’s kidding, but I explain anyway. “This is the splatter wall!” I open the doors to one of the big cupboards. It’s filled with big black cans, labeled in chalk. The names are mesmerizing: midnight blue, canary yellow, burnt umber, black pitch. A thousand possibilities live within these paint cans. I heave a couple down. “Can you grab some canvases from over there?”

  “Are we allowed to use this stuff?” Tiberius asks, grabbing some blank canvases.

  “Well, we do own the university,” I tell him, bringing the paint and an assortment of brushes over to the splatter wall. “I personally sponsor the art wing, giving each student a small break on their tuition.”

  “That’s really awesome,” Tiberius says, propping the canvases up against the splatter wall.

  “Okay, so your clothes might get a little dirty. We could always look for some aprons…”

  Tiberius looks down at himself. He’s wearing a button-up blue shirt and dark jeans. He throws a hand behind his head. “Why would a prince have to worry about sullying his favorite shirt? Of course, he could buy new ones.” He croaks out a laugh. “It’s not like this is his only set of nice clothes.”

  “Excellent,” I say. “Let’s begin. Watch me.”

  I dip a big brush in the yellow paint, then flick it. The paint flies through the air then lands on a blank canvas.

  “Okay, I got this.” Tiberius rolls his shoulders then dips his brush in the blue paint. He throws an arm back and flicks—except his whole brush flies out of his hand and smacks the canvas right in the center. It sticks for a moment then slides down, leaving a big blue streak in the middle.

  “Very intriguing technique, Your Highness,” I say, watching Ty slink forward to retrieve his brush. I flick mine again, splattering pink paint this time. A tiny bit splashes off my canvas, hitting Tiberius in the arm.

  He levels me with a glare. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Of course, I didn’t,” I say. “The students do get awfully creative here. Some of them use squirt guns, spatulas, sponges…”

  “What about hands?” Tiberius rolls his sleeves up to his elbows, then kneels in front of the paint cans.

  I raise a brow, but he just goes for it, sticking his hands into the red paint and then tossing it toward his canvas. It splatters out like raindrops.

  “Very ni—” My words cut out as Tiberius waves his hands toward me, red paint splattering across my green dress. “Excuse you, sir!”

  He waves his hands to the side. “Accident.”

  “I highly doubt that.” I walk toward him and flick my paintbrush like a magic wand. A line of paint splashes across his cheeks. “Oops.”

  Slowly, he wipes his cheek with his shoulder. With deliberate movements, he picks up his paintbrush and begins working on his canvas again.

  Hesitantly, I turn back to mine and do the same. But I can’t keep from watching him out of the corner of my eye.

  He looks over at me, his blond hair falling into his face. “Eyes on your own canvas, Your Highness.”

  I let out a little laugh and try to concentrate on my painting, but my body is bristling with energy, and I can’t help looking over at him.

  “Is that a nervous laugh I hear?” he says, his eyes still trained on the canvas in front of him.

  “What would I have to be nervous about?” I say, but my voice is light with humor.

  “I don’t know.” Ty shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe you’re nervous I’ll do something crazy…like this!” He moves before I can even think about escaping and smears his red hand down the side of my face and neck.

  “TY!” I scream, jumping away.

  “Payback.” He smirks then looks me up and down. “I hope you’re okay with that dress getting messy.”

  I look down at what I’m wearing—a slim-fitting green dress with golden buttons and a flared skirt. Mother will have a fit if I come home with it stained.

  And I don’t much care.

  “You are going to pay for that, Ty.” I leap toward him, waving my brush like a sword. But my heel catches on the corner of one of the paint cans, tipping it over. Blue paint bleeds across the floor like an approaching tide. Tiberius grabs my arms and hoists me up, leaving red handprints on my dress.

  “You’re pretty clumsy for a queen, y’know,” he says, not releasing his grip on my arm. “Or do I just make you nervous?”

  I hide my response in a smile. There’s no way I’ll admit he might be onto something. “You’re pretty agile for a spoiled prince.”

  “Navigating around a ballroom full of giant dresses is almost harder than weaving through players on the—” He coughs and turns away. “In the clubs I frequent.”

  “Right,” I say, and put my hands on my hips. “Well, why don’t you skip over and grab us some more blue paint while I find something to clean this up?”

  I give him a final flick of yellow paint across his nose. He playfully swats me away and turns to the cupboard.

  I look around the room, searching for something to clean up the paint. There has to be a mop—I stop in my tracks. Tiberius is just staring at the paint cans. He’s so still.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” he says, hands clenched at his sides. “It’s not.”

  …

  Tyler

  I’m the biggest fucking idiot in the entire world. I can’t even grab one stupid paint can. Art is supposed to be easy. Art is supposed to be my escape from all the bullshit in my head. But in front of me are rows and rows of black paint cans with white letters. No, not white letters. White symbols that overlap and vanish and appear in other shapes.

  Why couldn’t they just put the actual color on the damn can?

  But I can’t get mad at the paint cans. I’m the idiot standing here with letters swirling in front of me in nonsensical madness.

  “Ty, what’s wrong?”

  Eva’s beside me now, her hand on my arm.

  My heart pounds, and I stare hard at the words, begging my brain to shift them into the right shapes. But instead, the letters seem to jumble even more. I give my head a firm shake.

  “Ty?”

  I don’t think I’m going to be able to lie my way out of this one.
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br />   And maybe I don’t want to.

  Eva told me things earlier—her fears, her hopes. Because she felt safe with me. Because she knew I wouldn’t judge her.

  I grit my teeth. Time to let some of these lies fall away.

  “I can’t read. Or write.” I don’t dare to look at her. “At least, not in the way everyone else can.”

  “What do you mean?” Her hand is still on my arm.

  “When I look at a word, the letters get mixed up. I have to stare at a word forever before it makes sense.” I turn away from her and sigh. “You must think I’m an idiot.”

  “Don’t say that,” she says, her voice firm and harsh. “You’re not an idiot.” She wraps her arms around my waist. A few stray pieces of hair fall from the swoop of her bun, lightly drifting across her face. “Tell me more.”

  So, I do. About the tricks I learned to fly under the radar at school, about the shame I feel every time I struggle to read a text from a friend, about feeling like I’m living in a world where I don’t speak the right language. I don’t know where the words are coming from—maybe it just feels good to say it out loud, to talk to someone about this other than Millie.

  “Every time I wrote you an email,” I say to her, “it would take hours.”

  “You wrote me an email every day for over a month.” She smiles.

  “You were a pretty good motivator.” I push a stray hair back from her face, and a little red paint from my hand streaks along her forehead. I don’t think she cares. “You helped me a lot.”

  She walks over to our open paint cans, carefully stepping around the pool of blue paint on the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  She kneels down on the ground and beckons me closer. “Just trust me.”

  I’ve already followed her this far. I sit down across from her. Eva reaches over and dips her finger into the can of pink paint.

  “When there are no words,” she whispers, “there is art.” She takes my arm and paints a swirling pink line up and down. She sticks another finger in the red paint can and gently trails it along my hand. “There is color and texture and life.” Her face is luminous as she smiles at me. “You make my life colorful, Ty.” She drops her hand, waiting for me.

  I know what to do.

  I dip my finger in some blue paint and hover my hand over the smooth dip of her collarbone. “I could paint a thousand pictures of you. I would paint us a place where we could be together, away from everything else.”

  “Oh, Ty.” She leans forward and runs her finger along my neck, tracing a whimsical pattern. “You already make me feel like I have that place. Finally, a home where I belong.”

  I tilt her chin up, leaving a streak of blue paint on her skin. Her eyes are watering. “You and I are a team, okay?” I say.

  Eva grabs the collar of my shirt and pulls me into a kiss. My hands run from her face, to her neck, down her arms. When she pulls away, she looks at the blue handprints I’ve left on her. “Don’t stop,” she murmurs, her voice husky.

  So, I paint her. I paint her skin with the red fire of her spirit and the blue peace she makes me feel and the pink warmth of her heart. I paint her skin to show her how I feel, with color and light and all the feelings surging inside.

  We go back and forth, scrawling paint across each other’s bodies. But the lines get messier and the kisses get longer.

  Eva falls away from me, gasping. I crawl over to her. Her face is smeared with lines of paint from my fingers and loose strands of hair waft over her eyes. She’s more ruffled and disheveled than I’ve ever seen her, and it’s so damn sexy. And if I think about the fact that I did that to her—that it was my hands messing her hair, my lips smearing the paint across her lips, that it’s me she’s looking at with that half-lidded gaze…

  I shake my head. Get a hold of yourself, Evans.

  I scan Eva’s arms, covered in big smeary lines and shapes. “I don’t think there’s any more room.”

  Her gold eyes flicker. Then slowly, she reaches for the top button of her dress and undoes it.

  I breathe in a sharp gasp. Ice flows through my veins, and I feel like I’m frozen. This can’t be happening. My eyes are glued to her, watching her long fingers slowly undo the buttons on her dress. I blink, but she’s still there, in front of me. This can’t be happening.

  Eva reaches the last button and then shifts her shoulders. The dress falls away from her, green fabric pooling around her waist.

  “Now there’s room,” she says, her voice low and raspy.

  I have to move. I have to speak. I have to breathe. I really should breathe, or I’m gonna pass out. I heave in a breath and draw my eyes from her body up to her face. Her lips are slightly parted, her cheeks flushed underneath the streaks of blue and red.

  “Just thinking of something to paint.” Is that my voice?

  I move my hand toward her, and I can see the change in her breath, now sharp, quick gasps. Heat pulses between us. I dab one finger on her collarbone. Then I dip my finger into another color, and dab that on her, too. Her eyes track my movement, each touch of my skin on hers. Finally, I use the black paint, and my finger glides across her skin, connecting all the dots. I can feel the frantic beating of her heart.

  I practically yank my hand away when I’m done. She dips her chin, looking at the picture upside down. “Christmas lights,” she whispers, then looks up at me.

  “I remember the first night we were together in Chicago, you talked about the Christmas lights in Eldonia,” I say. “Now we get to see them together. I want to see the world with you, Evangeline.” Then I reach for her, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her to me. Our mouths collide, and her fingers clutch desperately at my shirt.

  “This is hardly fair,” she murmurs against my mouth and starts undoing the buttons of my shirt. When she reaches the last one, I shrug out of it, letting it fall to the paint-splattered floor. Eva leans back, her gaze traveling over me.

  Then her hands move, whispering over my shoulders, trailing down the lines of my chest, caressing my sides—

  I flinch. “Ouch!”

  “You’re bruised.” Eva gives me a sympathetic smile. “You really shouldn’t be allowed around reindeer.”

  I look down at the brown and purple mottling my side. “Yeah, well, it was definitely worth it.”

  “Here,” she says. “Let me kiss it better.”

  I look up to the ceiling and gulp. I can only hold my breath as her fingertips brush over my marred skin, and she plants the lightest kiss.

  I gather the courage to look down at her. Her gaze is downcast, dark lashes following the movement of her hand as she traces a line of paint over my stomach. The dark green fabric of her dress still pools around her hips, and my gaze drifts up, over her stomach and chest, along her long neck, up to her lips.

  I can’t stand the distance between us anymore and pull her against me, again. The feeling of her soft curves against my body sends shoots of electricity up and down me. My hands roam over her back, her shoulders, her waist. I want to touch every inch of her.

  We fall to the ground, her beautiful body stretched out against the stone. Her hair falls free from its bun and flows out around her like a crown, mixing with the blue paint. “I thought you said we’d only get a little messy,” I say.

  “Is that a complaint I hear, Tiberius?” She trails her hands over my body and eyes me knowingly.

  I could get used to a view like this.

  “I take the reputation of this university very seriously,” she continues. “Maybe I could persuade you to change your mind?”

  Eva sits up and swirls her fingers through the spilled paint. Then she reaches forward and trails a blue line along my jaw, down my neck, across my chest. She draws a circle around my belly button. And then looks up at me from behind her lashes.

  I might as well give up breathing now.

  I should probably give up on life while I’m at it.

  She is literally going to kill me.

 
She tilts her head. “Perhaps I could—”

  “I really need to kiss you now.” I clasp her face. Our mouths meet, and my fingers tangle in her hair. She makes a sound of protest as I pull away for air.

  She takes my hand and twirls her finger in my palm. “So, Ty…are you only going to kiss me?”

  I inhale sharply. My heart thuds in my chest. But my eyes roam her body. “I…I…” Not like this. Not when everything about me is a lie.

  “Wait,” she says. “There’s something I want to say first.”

  I feel like I could evaporate from my body right here and now. “You can tell me.”

  She bites her bottom lip. She couldn’t be nervous, could she? Damn, I should tell her everything that is running through my head right now—how incredibly beautiful she is, how smart and brave and kind.

  “I think I’ll write it,” she finally whispers. She stands and walks over to the art supplies, finally coming back with a slim paintbrush, dripping with black ink. “Give me your arm.”

  “Eva. I’m not going to be good at this,” I say. Because the thought of trying to focus enough to read something is terrifying. “You’re going to think I’m stupid.”

  “I could never think that.” She looks up at me, her gold eyes blazing.

  Even if you find out who I really am? Because that is the most stupid thing I’ve ever done.

  “You really want to torture me today, don’t you?” I hold out my arm for her.

  As if in answer, she sits in my lap, and I know I’m completely at her mercy. I surrender my arm to her.

  She finds an empty space, and her brush flows across my wrist, writing up toward my inner elbow. “Don’t look at it yet,” she says when I try to peer through her curtain of hair. “Okay, done.” She drops the brush but keeps hold of my wrist. Then she pushes on my chest, so I lay flat on the ground. “Maybe I’ll let you read it in a bit.”

  I least I don’t have to try to read it in front of her. I smile and tilt my chin up to capture her mouth in a kiss. I wrap my free arm around her. Her body presses down on my mine, the kiss deepening.

  “E-E-E-Eva? EVA?! E-E-EVANGELINE?!

  Eva sits up with a gasp, hair tossing over her face.

  A strange broken sound comes from behind us, a sound that might be a man’s voice, but might also be the wail of a ghost.