Royce: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Skye Darrel

  Everett takes my hand and kisses it. “Okay.”

  “I’ll tell my parents tonight.” Mom and Dad don’t know I broke up with Everett last week—I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. Now I won’t have to.

  “I’ll stay here until they get home,” Everett says.

  “They won’t be back until seven.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  “Doing what?”

  He gives me a gentle look before he pulls my legs apart. He dips his head between my thighs. “I can think of a few things.”

  MY PARENTS are surprised to find us sitting in the dining room, but they’re happy to see him, especially Mom, who’s never given up on a miracle cure. The four of us have a long talk. I swear the atmosphere feels like Everett’s asking for permission to take my hand in marriage.

  Mom agrees at once. She still agrees, but with less enthusiasm, when I tell her this is one of those trips a girl’s gotta take on her own.

  My dad has his hands around a cup of coffee, frowning into the liquid.

  Mom nudges his elbow. “A trip can’t hurt, Michael. April’s never gone overseas, and this may be her last chance to . . .” Her voice cracks.

  I put on a smile for her. “You’re forgetting spring break my senior year. Cabo? Costa Rica? That counts as overseas.”

  She struggles to return my smile. “Of course, honey.”

  That spring break was the last time I’d been on a plane. It wasn’t a happy trip.

  “So it’s settled,” Everett says. “I’ll keep April safe.”

  “You had better,” Dad says after a long pause.

  They talk some more before Everett has to leave. We walk him to the porch, and it’s dark out. Mom hugs him and kisses his cheek, her eyes watering. Dad shares this macho bear hug with Everett that lasts like five seconds.

  My parents go back inside.

  Everett holds my hands, the porch lights casting soft shadows under his edgy cheekbones. “What happened during spring break, April?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your trip to Cabo.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Tell me,” he says, kissing my fingers. “Something bad happened, I could see it in your face.”

  “You could huh?”

  “Tell me, Princess . . .”

  I roll my eyes, blushing like crazy. “I had a boyfriend in high school. Danny. It was kids stuff.”

  Everett lets out a hard growl. “Was it?”

  “It was high school, Everett. Danny broke up with me in Cabo, he said we had no future together. There I was, with this terrible disease, which he was totally sorry about. And there he was, about to start college in another state. No future whatsoever. ‘Might as well call it quits while we’re ahead.’ That’s what he said.” I drop my gaze for a moment. “It crushed me at first, but then it was like a weight off my chest. I didn’t love him. He didn’t love me. No future. No expectations. I felt free.”

  “You don’t feel free anymore?”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “Me neither,” Everett says.

  Chapter Eighteen

  EVERETT

  Norway is wet and cold in late September. The private jet I chartered touched down in the city of Bergen this morning. It’d been a long flight, and April spent most of it sleeping against my shoulder.

  I loaned a car at the airport, and we’re driving out of Bergen into the countryside. Small worries nag at me. I probably should’ve hired a translator. I probably should’ve researched Lars Reijonen more, but all of that required more time. April doesn’t have much time.

  The landscape is beautiful. Autumn forests stretch to the horizon, intersecting with towns that get smaller the further we are from the city. The gray sky feels unending.

  She yawns in the passenger seat. I want nothing more than to let her sleep a few hours, but time is precious.

  We need to find this Dr. Reijonen as soon as possible. All we have is his address. The man lives on a farm somewhere in the northeast.

  “Are we there yet?” April asks softly.

  “Soon,” I promise her.

  But by nightfall, we’re still hours away. I’d judged the distance wrong, and the car’s onboard GPS reads like a damn puzzle. My map app only shows the major highways and cities near the coast, and we’re far from major anything. The interior of Norway is harsh and wild. It’s like driving into the last century.

  “That doctor must like solitude,” April says, watching the distant mountains. “It’s kinda nice.”

  There are no other cars on the winding road. I slow down so I can kiss her.

  We reach the village of Solmark, no more than a collection of wooden houses nestled beside a lake. The night grows cold, and the road is misty.

  I find a rustic hotel where the owner speaks just enough English to understand that we need a room and a hot meal. We eat dinner in a common room, boiled potatoes, salty salmon, and rich cheese that April says is delicious, but she takes a long time eating. Her eyes often stray to the fire in the hearth, her mind somewhere else.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “Yummy.”

  I kiss her hand. Another symptom of ALS is difficulty eating.

  When we return to our room, I peel off the layers of her clothes before shedding mine. April glances at my hard cock and her pallid cheeks turn rosy. She shakes her head. “Are you ever not horny?” she teases, folding her arms.

  But I’m not the only one who wants to forget why we’re here. Lose ourselves if only for a while.

  She bites her lip, her nipples puffy and her face flushed. She looks so fragile standing there, so vulnerable and small. I’m filled with guilt at my lust, and I start to go soft.

  “You should rest,” I say, stroking her hair.

  April gives me an eye roll. “I can’t rest like this.” She squeezes my cock, and I’m hard again instantly. “I want you.”

  She strokes my length roughly, licking her lip, and she parts her sticky pussy with her other hand.

  “You’ll get everything you want,” I say.

  I carry her to the bed and bury my face against her slit, curling my tongue in and suckling her clit until she writhes for me. Her taste fills my mouth, and it makes my cock throb for her. I climb up as she runs her hands down my abs.

  My girl is no longer shy when it comes to touching what she likes, and I offer myself to her with all my heart.

  “What are you waiting for?” she says, her breaths choppy.

  “Don’t want to hurt you.”

  She reaches around and smacks my ass, her small hands hitting hard enough to sting. “I’m not a doll, Everett. You’re not going to break me. I want you.” She licks her upper lip. “Do what you always do.”

  I lose my self-control, my cock pulsing with need. Rubbing my tip in her hot cunt makes me shake all over, her silky juices coating me as I thumb her clit. “You want to cum on my cock?”

  She moans in answer.

  I thrust into her with one punch of my hips. Nothing gentle now. I rock her under me, my cock pounding her tight hole as she clings to my body and I give her what she needs. Her pussy relaxes as we build our rhythm. I cup her face and look into her eyes, thinking how lucky I am to have met her, how much I love her, and how much I need her, in every way. She’s mine. As long as I live I won’t let go.

  She starts clenching around my cock, and I know she’s close. My thumb on her clit moves faster.

  “Let me feel it, baby. Cum for me.”

  April cries out as her walls ripple, and my balls pull up at the same time, my cock flooding her to the brim. I swallow her cries with my kiss.

  “Rest.” I hold her close.

  She squirms in my arms, the heat of her body melting into mine, and she makes a sound like a purr. “Thanks, Everett. Not many people get to make love in Norway.”

  “The Norwegians would disagree.”

  She pokes my ribs. “I’m having a romantic moment here.”

  My smile dies an
d I hold her face. The truth is I’m afraid Dr. Lars Reijonen won’t be able to help. I’m afraid I’ll lose her.

  I’ve wanted April since the day I laid eyes on her, but these past few weeks I’ve been feeling a different love as well. Deeper and calmer. A love separate from the body. I don’t care if she’s in a wheelchair or breathing through a tube. Alive is better than the void she would leave behind.

  Selfish of me, I know.

  I taste her mouth again and hold her closer. When she falls asleep, I stare at the wooden rafters of the ceiling, trying to imagine a world without her, and I can’t.

  THE GRAVEL ROAD AHEAD is strewn with twigs and leaves. Rain lashes the windshield, and mist wreathes the distant forests and mountain peaks. Our car bumps over the treacherous road, the tires fighting for traction.

  I smack the steering wheel. “Shit.”

  “Easy, Everett. Only rain.”

  “Freezing rain. It’ll be a bad day if we get stuck. The last thing you need is a cold.”

  She touches my elbow. “I’m sure you’ll think of something to warm me up.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  April smiles and checks her phone. “Still no reception.”

  “We're close. The map puts Dr. Reijonen's farm right in this area."

  The only problem is I’m not exactly sure where this area is.

  I drive slowly through the wet gloom, past two road signs in Norwegian, until I spot a rickety red house perched on a hill. It has plank sidings and a sloped roof, the rain pouring off in sheets. There’s a woodshed nearby. A wire fence surrounds the property.

  The house is no farm and barely qualifies as a cottage. Home of Dr. Lars Reijonen.

  “There it is,” I say.

  “He must really like solitude.”

  We park outside on a dirt lot that’s turning to mud from the rain.

  “What now?” April asks.

  “We knock.”

  I get an umbrella from the backseat and hold the passenger door open for her. We make our way up the front steps. The cold air scrapes my lungs, and smells of earth and wet grass. April pulls her parka tighter.

  I knock while she huddles under the front overhang. No answer. I knock harder, rapping my fist on the wood with its flaking white paint.

  April looks at the distant mountains. “This place is beautiful, kinda reminds me of our lodge. But there it was sunny.”

  Her voice is brittle.

  “We’ll go back when you’re healthy,” I say.

  She smiles, holds my free hand. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  The door opens at last.

  A man in his fifties with a full beard faces us, holding a double-barreled shotgun aimed at my chest. Gun aside, he’s built like a lumberjack.

  At his feet prowls a large chestnut cat. Smaller than my Achilles, but not by much. It’s covered in thick, glossy fur. Wary eyes watch me.

  The man barks out something incomprehensible. Norwegian, an educated guess.

  “Dr. Reijonen?” I ask.

  He frowns, then says in accented English, “Who are you? What are you doing on my land?”

  The cat hisses and flatten its ears.

  “I’m Everett Royce. This is April Finch. We need your help.” I don’t know if I can make it any simpler.

  “British? Nei, Americans. Lost? Politistasjon forty kilometers north. Go there for help.”

  He starts to close the door, and I jam my foot in.

  “We’re not lost,” I say. “You’re an expert on neurodegenerative diseases, yes? You worked for a biotech company in Oslo. I’ve read some of your papers. You gave a guest lecture at Harvard Medical School six years ago. I watched it on YouTube. You almost found a cure to ALS before you retired.”

  I’m aware of how ridiculous I sound. April’s mother could give a better presentation on this man. Any eighth-grader could for that matter. But I’m too rushed for finesse.

  Reijonen scowls and lowers the gun, his eyes darting between April and me. “You or her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Which of you is sick?”

  April and I trade a glance.

  “Me,” she says, extending her hand. “Hi—”

  Reijonen doesn’t take it. “I am sorry, but you are wasting your time. I cannot help you.”

  April opens her mouth and closes it again. Her face crumbles.

  “Wait a second,” I say. “We only want to talk.”

  “Who are you again?”

  “Everett Roy—”

  “I mean what is she to you?”

  “I’m her fiancé. I love her. I won’t let her die.”

  Reijonen lets out a belly laugh. “You won’t? Do you think you are God? Get out."

  April tugs on my sleeve. “Let’s go Everett.”

  I squeeze her hand gently and shake my head. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to get answers. I’ll wring it out of him if I have to.

  “Dr. Reijonen, you came close to finding a cure. I’m asking you to try again. If it’s a question of funding, I’m prepared to give—”

  “I do not want your money.”

  “What do you want?”

  Reijonen levels the shotgun again. “Get off my land and take the dead woman with you.”

  Every fiber of my body turns rigid. “What did you call her?”

  April pulls my sleeve. “Everett, please. Let’s just go.”

  “The disease will kill her,” Reijonen says to me, his accent thicker, his tone vicious like he’s accusing me of a crime. “There is nothing you can do that will stop it. You should never have loved her.”

  My fist lashes out and crunches on his jaw.

  The gun falls from his hands.

  April shouts, but I’m lost to rage.

  I push him into the house, down to the ground, and I punch him again. His cat jumps away.

  Reijonen is fucking laughing. Not fighting back, just laughing.

  All the frustration I’ve felt about April’s condition—wanting to help but knowing there’s nothing I can do myself—concentrates into a singular explosion. His nose is bleeding. My wrist hurts, the skin of my knuckles raw. My eyes focus on a crack in the hardwood floor. I imagine banging his head into that crack until the floor caves in.

  “Everett stop!” April yells. “Stop it!”

  She drags me back from the brink of murder, pulls me against the wall, and we slide to the floor together. She holds my face and looks into my eyes. “Stop.”

  My body calms. She reaches me. She could always reach this place inside me I didn't know existed until the day we met.

  Lars Reijonen lies two feet away, still cackling. As if I’ve just told him the greatest joke in the world.

  I look around.

  The house is bare inside. Rough plank walls and an old-fashioned stovetop in the corner. A sofa covered with furs. Wooden chairs and a table. The air stinks of smoke and leather.

  Very slowly, Reijonen sits up. His beard is caked in blood, a bruise already forming on his jaw. No more laughter. He stands, grabs a chair, and plants it in front of us. He leans the shotgun against a corner and sits.

  The open door clangs back and forth from the wet wind.

  April sobs silently into my chest, and I hold her, kissing her hair. There's no sound but the rain's patter.

  Reijonen watches her until she stops crying. “You all right?” he asks.

  She wipes her eyes and nods.

  “You?” he grunts to me.

  “Solid. How's your nose, broken?”

  “Nei. Close the door before you flood my house.”

  I do as he says and return to my girl. We sit on the hard floor with my arm around her shoulder. “I apologize,” I say to Reijonen, but mostly I say it for April.

  “We got off on the wrong foot,” he says after a while. “Yesterday was the anniversary of my wife’s death. Margareth, her name. I was not expecting visitors.”

  One look at him and I know Margareth
didn’t die of old age.

  “What happened to her?” I say.

  “Car accident. Weather was worse than today. The other driver hit my wife head-on. He lived, she died. Medics had to cut her out of the wreckage. It could’ve happened to anyone, but it happened to my Margareth.” Reijonen scratches his jaw. “I lost interest in research after that.”

  “We didn’t know,” April says.

  “Of course you didn’t. Why would you? Margareth was not famous. She didn’t publish any papers or had her name in the news. She was no one to you. But to me, she was the world and everything in it.”

  April and I look at each other.

  “Sorry for intruding,” I say to Reijonen.

  The doctor grunts and his eyes shift to April. “Describe your situation. From the very beginning.”

  She tells him, from her ALS diagnosis at age fourteen to the present. I know her life like I know my own. Her symptoms were mild at first, but over the past year they've been getting worse. By the time I met her, she was already having trouble walking, but she could mask the symptoms with medication. Not anymore.

  Reijonen listens with his head bowed and his face grim.

  “Juvenile ALS is always genetic,” he says. “My research focused on gene therapy. I aimed for a cure, not just for ALS, but a host of other diseases as well.” Reijonen sighs. “Even before Margareth passed, I encountered difficulties. My team had finalized a potential treatment. Laboratory testing showed potential. We were preparing for human trials, but . . .”

  The doctor’s eyes are distant. “But what?” I say.

  “My treatment involves injecting synthetic genes into the spine. These synthetics replace the mutated genes that cause ALS. But the synthetics must match a patient’s unique genetic profile, or the body would reject it. The new genes had to be re-created from scratch for every patient. We had no way of mass-producing the treatment, and every treatment costs millions to develop. Our investors believed the project was not commercially viable. Financing ceased.”

  I sit forward. “Can you recreate your treatment by the end of this year? Time is of the essence.”

  The doctor shakes his head. “Time is money. I would need suitable facilities, assistants, I would need—”