The Royal Rogue

by Halle, Karina

  "I needed to figure out what to do."

  "And? So? What are you going to do?" She's starting to panic, I can tell, the anger mixing in with fear. She's wiggling her jaw, something she does right before a game.

  I hope the chair offers me enough protection.

  "I'm going to do the right thing."

  "Which is?"

  "Zoya..." I say carefully. "You and me, this whole fake thing. I can't do it anymore. It's over."

  It's like all the color is drained from her face.

  "It's not over...." she says, voice just a wisp. She mumbles something in Russian and then says, "No. It's not over. You can't do this to me. You can't do this to me!" Tears start to well in her eyes.

  My heart breaks like I knew it would.

  "I have to."

  "No you don't!" she yells, marching across the room to the chair, eyes blazing and on fire. "You don't have to! You made a promise to me, Orlando. Do you remember that promise? You said that we could pretend. You said that you would do it for me so that Emily and I can be together."

  "You can still be together. Nothing will change."

  "It will change! Back home, I know people already suspect. I've seen the rumors in the press there. They already think something is going on and as long as it just stays a rumor, I'm safe. But if you do this, I'm not safe anymore. I won't be able to hide behind you, I won’t be able to be with her."

  "And I won't be able to be with Stella and my child!" I yell back. "I've made promises to her too."

  "But who will be hurt by the broken promise, Orlando? Me. I can lose it all. Everything. Do you know what it's like to lose everything you care about?"

  "Yes! I do. I lost my mother and she was my everything. I lost her and I still feel that loss, don't tell me I don't know what it's like."

  She clamps her mouth shut for a moment, breathing hard through her nose. "I know you lost your mother. But that wasn't a choice. This is a choice. You are choosing someone new over someone you have known for a long time. You say you're loyal to the bone but I guess that loyalty ends with me." A tear spills out from her eye and she turns around, back to me. I watch as she sobs. The only time I've seen her cry is when she loses but that's out of frustration, not sadness, not fear.

  She's afraid.

  I'm ruining her life.

  I'm taking away her love, I'm taking away her game, I'm taking away her life.

  "Maybe no one will notice," I say feebly. I reach out and put my hand on her back, tentative, like she might bite.

  She continues to sob and then brushes me off, head back, walks away.

  "You're a fool if you think that's true," she says. "If you leave me, I'll lose her. It's too dangerous otherwise."

  "Maybe that love is worth the danger," I tell her.

  Maybe my love for Stella is worth the same.

  But I only have the authority to play with my own heart. I can't do this to Zoya. I can't be the one with her demise on my shoulders.

  "Maybe there's some way to make it work," I manage to say.

  I already feel like I'm betraying myself with just those words.

  She sniffs and turns around to look at me. "How?"

  I shrug. "I don't know. Maybe we can just make this all work in secret."

  "And then what? You're going to still marry me? We'll have legitimate heirs to your throne and you'll be okay with keeping Stella and your child a secret?"

  Everything inside me feels like it's being ripped apart at the seams. I've never felt so powerless, hopeless, helpless.

  "I don’t know what else to do. I don't want to break Stella's heart..."

  "Have you told her you love her?"

  "No."

  "Has she said she loves you?"

  "Well, no."

  "Do you think she does?"

  I think back over the last while, all our time together. The tenderness. The easiness. Love has never come up and Stella can be hard to figure out. Sometimes I think all she's really focused on is the baby, not me.

  Maybe she doesn't love you, I tell myself. Maybe you're making this into something harder than it has to be. It was your idea to make a go of it, not hers. She seemed more than fine to have this child and keep you on the side.

  "If she doesn't," Zoya continues, "then is it worth it? Maybe put your own feelings aside for once and stop being selfish."

  "Selfish?"

  She shrugs before wiping away another tear. "You can still be there for her and be there for me. Maybe you're not with her romantically but that's your own heart on the line, not hers and not mine."

  Only my heart on the line.

  And I'm choosing my heart over everything else.

  Maybe that's as fucking selfish as they get.

  "You have a role to play," she says to me, hands on her lips. "The role you've been playing since birth. You're going to be the ruler of this country one day and I will give you a legitimate heir. There are going to be so many more sacrifices coming your way, that you better get used to the idea of putting your own needs aside. This isn't about what you want and what you want is Stella. This is about what you've been born to do, which is to play the role that the country needs from you. I know you may hate me for it but this is a sacrifice you're going to have to make today."

  Her words have weight to them and they sink into my brain like a fishing line with a lure.

  I'm hooked and there's no escape.

  Trapped by my own promises and drowning in them.

  What am I going to tell Stella?

  Chapter 14

  Stella

  My phone is ringing.

  I open my eyes slowly, staring up into the dark. I can’t tell what time it is or how long I’ve been asleep.

  I reach over and grab my phone, glancing at it.

  It’s Orlando.

  And it’s only eleven p.m.

  I’ve been conking out so early these days, I’m usually fast asleep by eight o’ clock.

  I clear the grogginess from my throat and answer. “Hello?"

  “Hey,” he says, sounding tired.

  I hadn’t heard from him all day, which is unusual. I knew that he was going back to Monaco to tell Zoya and his siblings the truth and I also knew that he had to do it on his own time and in his own way. I wasn’t going to bug him about it.

  But still, I wish he’d contacted me at some point today, just so I could know he was okay. He’s been back there for a few days and it seems the longer he stays, the more sporadic our contact gets.

  It makes me scared, to be honest.

  Each time he went back to Monaco for an appearance of some sort, I was worried that the place – and his duties there – might pull him back in to that world. Back to his family and the people he loves.

  He always came back, though. With the biggest smile on his face, he’d scoop me up in his arms and twirl me around like a couple of teenagers deeply, madly in love.

  And I do love him.

  I always thought that when I fell in love again, it would hit me on the side of the head one day, like I’d be slapped with it and brought to my knees.

  It hasn’t been like that with him.

  Oh, I’ve been brought to my knees. But the fall was gradual and slow. My feelings for him have built up and up and up over the last month until there was no place for my feelings to go. My heart had been inside a cage before, a thick-barred cage with a heavy lock that I didn’t have a key for and didn’t care to pick. I let it sit in that cage and paid it no attention. The only thing my heart was good for was loving Anya and it did that very well.

  But ever since I found out I was pregnant, my heart began to swell against the bars. It grew and turned a beautiful shade of red. I began to notice my heart more and more every day.

  It was growing for my baby.

  It was growing for Orlando.

  I don’t know when it happened but one day I realized I loved him. A slow, languid feeling that rushed through my veins like drugs in an IV drip. The feeling never st
opped and my heart was let free from the cage, too big now to be contained.

  I love him. I truly do.

  I love him truly, madly, deeply.

  And the only fear I have now is that I’m not sure if he feels the same way. He’s definitely sweet and tender and affectionate to me. His words are romantic and his eyes are sincere. But Orlando is still a boy in so many ways and I feel like his past, his family, keeps him tethered, unable to grow. I’m afraid that he might not really know what love is.

  I want to tell him how I truly feel but I don’t know how. I just keep thinking that maybe my heart is big enough for the three of us.

  “Are you there?” he asks.

  I’m brought back to reality. I clear my throat again, “Yes, I’m here,” I say into the phone, loving the sound of his voice. It’s like an anchor. “Sorry, I just woke up.”

  “Long day?”

  “Kind of. I didn’t do much except watched that damn Disney Descendants movie three times in a row. The girls are all so obsessed and I don’t know why. None of the guys are attractive.”

  “I wouldn’t try and dissect the minds of young girls that much,” he says. “Seems like a frightening place. How is Sir Mokey?”

  “Fine. He sleeps a lot.”

  “Is he sleeping with you right now?”

  “No,” I say.

  But that’s a lie. He’s curled up at the foot of the bed, completely oblivious to me talking on the phone. Sometimes I envy him.

  “I guess you’re right. Otherwise you’d be sneezing, right?”

  Here’s the thing about my cat allergy: I’m pretty sure it went away. While I sneezed a few times in Cyprus when Orlando first picked Mokey up, I haven’t since. Now everyone accuses me of making the allergy thing up, making me admit that I don’t like cats.

  I refuse to admit it.

  Especially since Mokey has grown on me an awful lot. I used to not like cats because I hated how they wouldn’t give you their love, how you had to work for it and the harder you tried, the less they cared. There was no such thing as unconditional love with them and I guess in some weird way it kind of reminded me of my mother. I want the excessive love, I want to feel adored and cared for.

  I want Orlando back.

  “When are you coming home?” I ask and then realize that this isn’t his home. “I mean, back here.”

  “I was thinking tomorrow,” he says.

  “Good.” I say. “I miss you. What is your tattoo again? Tu me manques?”

  There’s a long pause and then he says, “Yes.” His voice is low and choked.

  It sends a current of fear up my spine.

  “Orlando, what’s wrong?”

  The silence hangs in the air.

  Finally he says, quietly, so quietly, “I talked with Zoya.”

  I take in a sharp breath. “Oh? What did she, uh, say?”

  “She made me realize that…that I need to make a sacrifice. That my whole role in life is to do things I don’t want to do. She…”

  Oh no. No. No.

  My heart, my big beautiful red heart, is this close to deflating.

  “What?” I whisper. “What happened?”

  “I made a promise to her, Stella. And I can’t break that promise.”

  Everything inside me cracks, right down the middle, sand rushing into the dark and hollow places. My red heart is bleeding. The pain is cold.

  “You’re not breaking up with her?” I manage to say, my voice breaking.

  “No.”

  No?

  Oh god.

  He goes on. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I made a promise and—”

  “You made a promise to me too!” I cry out, the anger lashing through me, surprising me. Mokey lifts his head in shock.

  “I know, I know,” he says through a groan. “I know, okay? I’m just…this is fucked up, Stella. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You keep your promise to me!”

  “If I keep my promise to you and break hers, what credibility do I have?”

  “You’re worried about credibility?” I shriek. “Fuck you.”

  “Stella. Calm down. The baby.”

  “What the fuck? Calm down? And don’t bring the baby into this, it’s obvious the baby means nothing to you.”

  “That’s not true!” he roars through the phone and sucks in his breath. “I’ll come tomorrow and we’ll talk this through.”

  “Wait, no. What is there to talk about?”

  “I need to make this right.”

  “How? How are you going to make it right?”

  “I made a promise that I would be by your side and that’s one I’ll keep. I won’t desert you. I’ll be there for you.”

  “But you won’t be with me,” I say softly. The pain is so cold and so sharp that I can barely talk. It feels like I’m dying, that crack widening, spreading me apart, filling me with ice.

  I’m losing him.

  I’ve lost him.

  He’s choosing someone else over me and our baby.

  How can I ever think that his word is good? How can I ever trust him to remain in our lives?

  How did I ever believe I could trust him with my heart?

  Now I’m more glad than ever that I’ve kept my love for him a secret.

  It will remain in me.

  And hopefully die there.

  “I want to be with you,” he says. There’s desperation in his voice but it means nothing to me. “Don’t you see? I want you. I want to be with you and the baby in the way you need, but I can’t. I just can’t. So I’ll have to do what I can to make sure I’m still with you as much as I can be.”

  Now I’m angry. It’s amazing how quickly sadness can turn to anger, like it’s a river looking for an outlet. The ice thaws and it’s raging.

  I’m raging.

  “No!” I yell through the phone. “You don’t get to decide anymore. You made your choice and now you’re done and now this is up to me, okay? It’s up to me whether you get to be in our child’s life or not. I don’t trust you. You’ve broken the trust I had. You’ve made your choice and it was the wrong one. The right choice wasn’t even me, okay? The right choice was the baby.” I choke back the tears. “The right choice was the baby.”

  I hear a sob on the other end. “Stella. Please.”

  “No. This is how it’s going to be. If I need you, I’ll be contacting you and that’s it. You can fight it if you want but you won’t get anywhere. And don’t for one fucking second think that I need you, because I don’t. We don’t. I’ve been a single mom for a while and I do a damn good job at it. So you can fuck right off with your hard choices and your roles and your fake life down in Monaco. I’ve got a real one up here and it’s going to be even better without you in it.”

  And with that, I hang up.

  I already feel regret at my words but the anger pushes those feelings away. He deserved it. He broke my heart, broke my trust, he chose someone else over us. Even if I know it wasn’t an easy decision, even though I know deep down where he’s coming from and I know he’s not a bad guy, it doesn’t matter.

  I have to think of the baby first.

  That’s the only thing that matters, not my heartache, not anything else.

  He has his duties.

  And I have mine.

  * * *

  “She’s ready for you now.”

  I look up to see Maja exiting the door to my mother’s room. My hands are clasped in my lap. There’s another Hello Magazine on the table in the waiting room and there’s a headline on the front that says When Will The Royal Rogue of Monaco Marry? But it’s taken all of my strength not to open it up.

  It’s been a week since Orlando ended things. Or, more accurately, didn’t end things with Zoya. I’ve been trying hard to deal with my emotions, talking to Aurora a lot, Maja too. Aksel just wants to beat the shit out of Orlando and I think Henrik has offered to smash his acoustic over his head.

  But even though I’ve been talking it out, I’m still not o
ver it. Not sure that I’ll ever be. And I’m feeling as lost and unmoored as ever.

  Maja thought maybe it was best that I pay my mother another visit.

  I figure it can’t hurt.

  I get up and give her an appreciative smile and step inside. My mother is in her bed now and she’s not looking at me. “Are you sure?” I ask Maja, looking at her over my shoulder.

  “She’s tired but she’s listening. Somewhere, her heart is listening,” she says before she almost closes the door, leaving it ajar a few inches.

  I gingerly walk over to her bedside and take a seat in the chair beside her. Maja put a poinsettia on her bedside table, since Christmas is coming up soon.

  My mother stirs a little, her head lolling on the pillow toward me but her eyes don’t open. Maybe it’s better that way.

  “Hey mama,” I say softly, gently placing my hand over hers. I know people say that their loved ones become strangers when they get Alzheimer’s but to me that’s never been the case. This hand here, this is my mother’s hand, the hand that fed me, the hand that used to braid my hair, the hand that wiped away tears when Anya was born. It will never stop being my mother’s hand.

  A wayward tear comes to my own eye and falls off onto my arm. I don’t bother to wipe it away. I’m sure more will come.

  “I know we haven’t talked in a while and I’m sorry for that. Things have been…things in my life have changed, things you need to know about. Things I need to tell you.”

  I take in a deep breath. “About a week ago I had my heart broken by a prince. I know it sounds like a fairy-tale, perhaps a Grimm’s fairy tale, but it’s true. Once upon a time I fell in love with a prince and he secretly held my heart, even though I knew he’d break it in the end. To make things more complicated, I’m pregnant.” I pause, thinking if she can hear me, this is the part where she’d take interest. But so far, nothing.

  “I’m pregnant with Prince Orlando’s baby,” I go on. “And nothing in my life will ever be the same. I just wanted to let you know because you were such a good grandmother to Anya. You really were. And I know I was hard on you when I was growing up but all of this is making me realize that I should have appreciated you when I had you. I shouldn’t have tried to change you. I should have accepted who you were and continued to love you. I always felt like…like I wasn’t deserving of your love and because of that, you weren’t deserving of mine. But that’s not how love works. You have to have a heart with faith in it, faith that the love will be there no matter what.”