I finished my article for Lemon. She wanted me to finish before we left so that she could make sure it got uploaded correctly. It was bittersweet writing everything down. I loved the chance to relive those experiences over again, remembering how much I had changed since I’d first come here. How much I enjoyed being with him. How much I wanted to be with him. But it was all tainted by the idea that soon I would be gone and it would be over.
“How many words?” she asked.
“Six thousand, two hundred and forty-three,” I told her. “We can call it an even six thousand.”
“I’ll let the press office know so they can get you your money,” she told me.
Six thousand dollars would help with my tuition problems, but it wasn’t enough to cover everything. I still had to figure out a way to make up the difference.
And then, before I knew it, it was New Year’s Eve and the night of the costume ball. I sat in my chair next to my fireplace in my perfect Elsa costume, sobbing my eyes out as one of the stylists did my hair in a massive side braid.
We would be leaving the next day. The next day! And I would never see Nico again.
“What is it, signorina? Should I send for someone?” the woman asked anxiously.
“No,” I said, wiping my tears away. “I’ll be fine.”
And no matter what, I would be. Reality would return tomorrow. I would take this night, this one last night, and I would make it count.
I had stopped crying long enough for them to finish my makeup. I slipped my feet into my icy blue flats just as Lemon came through the door.
Well, she didn’t just walk in. She sort of had to turn sideways in order to fit herself through.
“I was expecting Marilyn Monroe!” I told her.
“Scarlett O’Hara, at your service.” She curtsied. She had a white with green flowers antebellum dress on, cinched with a giant velvet green sash, and an amazing number of hoop skirts. She had somehow even gotten the hat with the green ribbon.
“Elsa, huh? Serafina’s idea?” I nodded. “I promise not to make any ice queen jokes this evening,” she told me as she whipped out a fan, fanning herself with it. “I do believe we have a ball to attend where some handsome princes are waiting for us.”
We took a couple of pictures with her phone. I had returned the one Seamus gave me to the drawer, after I took out the SIM card so that he couldn’t contact me again.
Entering the ballroom was like entering another world. Unlike the few frat Halloween parties I’d attended in college, no one was trying to see who could be the biggest slut in the skankiest costume. No, the women here were dressed like historical figures and princesses and characters from stories. I didn’t have to see anyone’s cleavage or their rear end. It was refreshing.
Caitlin found us first. She had dressed up in an elaborate pink and purple kimono and done herself up as a geisha. Lemon and I oohed and aahed over her outfit. “I got it as a gift the last time I was in Japan.” She pointed out Alex, who had dressed up like a pirate, including the hook for a hand.
I found Nico all on my own. He was walking across the dance floor toward me, dressed up as Mr. Darcy. My favorite character by my favorite author. He made Colin Firth look like a man in an ape suit. I ordered my knees to keep me upright. He had on black boots that went to his knees, tight light brown pants, a velvet blue coat, and one of those white necktie things they wore.
“Look at him,” I told Lemon. “I’m not even good enough for him.”
I hadn’t meant for that to spill out, but it did. A truth that, until now, I hadn’t really acknowledged.
“You are good enough for him,” she replied. “He’s lucky to be with you. And darlin’, if I ever had a man look at me the way Nico looks at you, I’d never, ever let him go.”
I took Lemon’s fan and used it, trying to cool my flush. He stopped before me and bowed. I knew this costume was another thing he had done just for me. Which made me woozy and light-headed. So not fair.
“Good evening, Queen Elsa. May I have this dance?” The orchestra started up, as if they’d been waiting for Nico to ask me. I nodded and he twirled me onto the floor.
We were halfway through our dance, with Nico telling me a story about a time when he was in college and he and Alex had gotten locked out of their dorm room and how they’d climbed the outside trellis to get back in, which had fallen off. He got to the part where both the police and the paparazzi showed up when there was a tap on his shoulder.
There stood Alex. “Pardon the interruption, but I have someone I wanted Kat to meet.” He looked suspiciously happy. “Kat, this is Franz von Croy. His family is from Austrian nobility. He’s a very distant cousin of Nico’s.” Franz was tall—not as tall as Nico—but tall. He had pale blond hair and dark brown eyes. He wore some kind of military uniform. He bowed to me, and I smiled back. What was this about?
“Hope you don’t mind him cutting in,” Alex said, as he maneuvered Nico away from me. That wasn’t what I wanted. We only had a few hours left. But Franz held out his arms, and I felt like I didn’t really have a choice but to dance with him.
I tried to look for Nico, and finally caught sight of him with a thunderous expression on his face that made my insides twist. He stormed out to one of the balconies. Franz was very nice, if a little boring. I didn’t understand what was happening. He asked me several questions about myself, and I really tried to be polite, but I just wanted Nico. Even our dancing was a little awkward. With Nico I could just move the right way, and we always seemed to dance in sync with each other. I stepped on Franz’s foot more than once, but he was very gracious about it.
As soon as the song was over, I thanked him and headed straight for the balcony. Nico was sitting on a chair, in the cold, his arms crossed over his chest.
My costume was flimsy, and I started rubbing my arms to keep them warm. “What are you doing out here?”
“Seething.”
“Seething? About what?”
His eyes glittered in the low light. “Apparently, I am an extremely jealous person. I didn’t know this about myself.”
“Who are you jealous of?”
“That pompous fool you were dancing with.”
“Franz?”
“On a first-name basis?” He sounded bitter and angry.
“I’m on a first-name basis with everybody. This isn’t the nineteenth century. And what exactly do you think is going to happen with him and me?” I was flattered, excited, and felt another emotion I couldn’t quite identify. Some kind of female pride, I suspected. I’d spent so much time being jealous of that English tart and here was Nico, feeling the same way. It seemed ridiculous, since I’d barely let Nico kiss me. What did he think I was going do with some guy I’d just met?
“I have imagined quite a few things. Including me going back in there and taking him apart with my bare hands.”
That shouldn’t have made me so giddy. I should have been appalled. I told myself that I didn’t need him to take care of me. That I wasn’t anyone’s possession. But some instinctual part inside me loved feeling protected and cared for. I didn’t even mind that he was possessive of me. Because I’d certainly had my fair share of feeling possessive of him. I came over to him and crouched down next to his chair. He turned to look at me. “I promise, I am totally immune to whatever charms he might have.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. He’s no you.”
It was what he needed to hear, apparently. He pulled me up and onto his lap, where he kissed me senseless. I started shivering, and this time it wasn’t from Nico. It was really, really cold.
“Let’s get back inside,” he suggested, and I agreed.
Nico stuck to me like my shadow. Which I didn’t mind. I didn’t want to talk to Caitlin and Alex. I didn’t even really want to talk to Lemon. Everything was focused solely on him. Every dance was with him. Every conversation with him. I wanted this night to last forever. Because it was the last memory I would have with him.
�
�My father is here,” Nico said, with a touch of wonder to his voice. I turned to see his dad surrounded by people, all wanting to speak with him. The king smiled and nodded at everyone, still regal regardless of his situation.
“He doesn’t normally come to stuff like this?”
“Not since the accident.”
“Look at him. He’s glowing.”
“He loves the attention. Feeling needed. Sometimes I worry about that. If I become king, what will he have to live for? What will make him feel needed? So often you hear the stories of men who retire and then die when they don’t have a reason to get up every morning. I can’t take that from him.”
“Your family will always make him feel needed,” I said.
“Most of his family will grow up and move away. He needs to be king. I need him to be king.”
I felt like I was on the verge of something important. But before I could say anything else, Caitlin and Lemon came to take me to the bathroom with them, since some women always had to go in packs.
“You do know what the Franz thing was about, don’t you?” Caitlin asked. “Alex was trying to make Nico jealous.”
“Tell him he succeeded,” I said. “Nico was, in his own words, ‘seething.’”
“Oh, that’s going to make Alex far too happy. He’s waited a long time for Nico to have a relationship that he could torment him about.”
They had a commercial bathroom right off the ballroom with stalls and a comfy couch to sit on. I sat there to wait. One of the stall doors opened and Violetta came stumbling out, coughing. I could very clearly see her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a white toga and had her hair piled up high on her head. Her eyes were glassy, and she was giggling.
“You okay, Violetta?”
She looked at me in the mirror with her eyes just like Nico’s. She looked euphoric and sweaty. Her pupils were dilated. I recognized that expression.
She was high.
“Just fine,” she replied in a breezy tone, giggling on her way out of the bathroom.
I had to find Nico.
I worked my way through the crowd until I found him, right where I’d left him. “Violetta is high.”
“Are you certain?”
“Trust me, I’m certain. I’d even bet that it was crystal meth she was taking.” I remembered the story Nico had told me about Violetta’s weight problems and how the press had made fun of her. A lot of girls used crystal meth for quick weight loss, while not realizing that the effects were short-term and that your body became accustomed to it so quickly that you’d have to take more and more to maintain that loss.
Then I realized that Nico didn’t have the reaction most family members had when they were told someone was doing drugs. He didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t try to rationalize it or explain it away.
Which let me know this was not the first time this had happened.
Nico took me by the hand and went to tell his parents. His father directed the head of security to find Violetta and bring her to something he called an anteroom. He wheeled off with the queen, myself, and Nico following. We went into a small room right off the ballroom, full of couches and benches. Nico and I sat down.
A few minutes later Dante and Rafe came in with their sister. I was glad Chiara and Serafina were in bed and wouldn’t be a part of this.
Violetta started asking questions in rapid Italian. Nico translated next to me. “She wants to know what’s going on, why she was pulled in here. My father is telling her because she’s high again, despite her promising the last time that she would never do drugs again.”
She looked furious. The queen looked sad, the king concerned.
“She can’t make that kind of promise to any of you. She needs to be in rehab.”
Everyone looked shocked when I spoke, as if they’d forgotten I was there. “The drugs have literally altered her brain so that she can’t quit without help. I don’t know what she was on before, but crystal meth is not something to mess around with. She needs professional help.”
“I am not going to rehab,” Violetta said, grinding the words out. Her euphoria had turned to aggression. I noticed that she didn’t deny doing drugs, or that, as I’d suspected, it was specifically crystal meth.
“You have to stop, cara mia. Please. This will kill you. We can’t keep going through this.” The queen looked devastated. “I can’t lose another child.”
Violetta actually rolled her eyes. “If I promise to stop, can we please drop this? Nobody wants the embarrassment of me going to rehab. The paparazzi would be all over this.”
The queen and king exchanged glances, and I had to say something. Part of my master’s degree program had focused specifically on drug addicts because so many of the children in need had addicts in their lives.
“It’s better for your family to be embarrassed than for you to wind up dead. It’s good that you all love her, but coddling her doesn’t help anyone.”
“Why are you even here?” she hissed at me. “You are not part of this family.”
“You’re right, I’m not. But Nico’s my friend, and your family has been so loving and kind to me. Which has been great for me, but obviously terrible for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re a spoiled brat. You have an amazing life that people would kill for, and you’re destroying it with drugs. You’re like a little girl breaking her toys.”
That got her full attention. “Do you think you can speak to me that way?”
“I think I can speak to you however I want. I’m not your family. I don’t love you. I don’t care if you’re angry at me. Somebody needs to tell you the truth. Your family has protected you from the negative consequences of your actions. They’ve believed your lies and enabled you. It needs to stop.”
I stood up and looked at her parents. “If she wants to live her life this way, fine. Let her do it. But cut her off financially. Kick her out of your house. She is a grown-up. If she wants to wreck her life, you don’t have to finance it.”
“You can’t really be listening to her,” Violetta said to her parents. “Don’t listen to her! Don’t send me away! I need you!”
“Don’t let her manipulate you. You have to be serious and give her an ultimatum. You have to make decisions and stick to them, no matter what. I know it’s unnatural for you to turn your back on your daughter. But this safety net you’ve given her is actually hurting her. If she kept stabbing herself in the stomach, you wouldn’t keep handing her knives, would you? She’ll get serious about this when you do.”
The entire room was silent, everyone just staring at me. I asked Nico to borrow his phone.
I went into a web browser and did an image search with my mom’s name. It pulled up her mug shot.
There had been studies that showed teens were less likely to smoke when you showed them what it would do to their faces. They couldn’t care less that their lungs would turn black and that they would die. But they did not want extra lines, wrinkles, and yellow teeth. Their vanity was what kept them from hurting themselves.
I went over to Violetta and stood in front of her, showing her the image on the phone. “This is my mother. She has done crystal meth for the last twenty years or so. Look at her face.” My mother had open sores. Her face was drawn and sallow. She was losing her teeth. “This will happen to you.”
For the first time, Violetta looked scared. I gave the phone back to Nico, and he looked at the image before turning his phone off.
I addressed the king and queen again. “You should get a family therapist to help you through this. It will make a big difference to everyone. But most of all, she has to go to rehab and she has to do the work to get better. It won’t be easy on anyone.”
I had to leave then, because this was all feeling too personal and too real. I was worried I might start crying. I didn’t want to go back to the ballroom. It seemed like a too happy and too fake place with all of those costumes. A wave of exhaustion slammed
into me. I had remained cool and impersonal in there, not taking the bait and not yelling at her. It had worn me out more than I would have imagined. I sat down on a bench next to the anteroom, my entire body sagging.
Time passed, and Nico came out of the room. He stopped short when he saw me. “I was just coming to find you.”
“Here I am.”
“Violetta agreed to go to a rehab facility. They’re taking her right now. Some of my father’s secretaries are making the arrangements. How did you know that would work?” he asked, sitting down next to me.
“I didn’t. But I know how loving parents are with their druggie kids, and your way obviously hasn’t worked. I thought I would try mine.”
He closed his hand over mine, holding me. “Thank you. Thank you for helping my sister. For helping all of us.” He let out a ragged breath. “You see, I do know what it’s like to watch someone I love slowly killing herself.”
I put my head on his shoulder and sighed. “Life sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?”
He put a finger on my chin and turned my face to look at him. “I was actually thinking that my life right now is pretty wonderful, cuore mio.”
“Even with what your sister’s going through?”
His intensity shocked me. “Even then.”
We stayed silent, just looking in each other’s eyes. I felt like I could see his soul. I had never felt so connected to anyone before.
“Do you want to go back to the ball?”
“No. Honestly, what I really want is to go to sleep.”
He nodded. Then he stood and pulled me to my feet, leading me toward the front hallway and the stairs.
I had probably way overstepped my bounds in that room, but it felt good that I was able to help. Pretty soon I’d be doing this exact same thing on a daily basis. It helped to lessen some of my sadness.
The same sadness that nearly overcame me when I realized that this would be my last night with him, and it was all about to end.
Royal Date Page 19
