"A little." I clenched my jaw. It was something I'd been doing a lot. "My father is still worsening. Mother is hopeful, but if he doesn’t start improving, I'll have to leave soon or risk missing my chance to say goodbye."
"And then what?"
"And then..." I took a deep breath. "I guess and then I'm the king. Unless there's somebody else more fitting for the role, but I think we both know Juris isn't ready. And no one even knows how to find Arris. Not that he would be any better of a choice."
Veronika nodded grimly. "I see why you're upset. If you leave, it’s forever."
"Not forever," I objected. "I'll still be able to visit."
"But not as the Matthias you are now. You'll be King Matthias II. Every visit would be official. No more dancing with no clothing."
I chuckled at the thought. Caspierre’s first stripper king. Hell, maybe the world's first stripper king. I'd always thought Peter the Great had probably put on a show or two in his time. Of course, we both knew that my past here would always have to remain confidential. Caspierre was small enough that I had little chance of ever running into anyone back home that I had stripped for here, but if I started making headline visits back to America too often, someone might notice.
Maybe I really couldn’t come back after all. Either way, it all amounted to one thing, and was the main worry I’d been plagued with most of the night.
"I'm going to lose Ally."
"I think you should tell her," Veronika suggested.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do, she just won’t see me. It’s not something I want to do over text message.”
If I left without telling her, I knew I would spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been. I was likely to lose her either way, but if I left without telling her the truth then it was virtually certain.
The only chance I had at all was finding a way to talk to her. To come out to Ally as the future king of Caspierre."
30
Ally
I was startled from my sleep by the sound of the door slamming. It was quickly followed by a high pitched "Sorry!"
Candace was home.
She barged into my room a moment later, arms laden with grocery bags, which she deposited at the end of my bed.
"What are those?" I curled my legs up closer to my chest, then straightened them out as soon as another wave of nausea passed over me.
Candace grinned, sweeping her hands over her wares. "The Pepto-Bismol didn't work, so we’re going to try something a little more holistic. I got my grandmother's recipe for tummy soothing tea, plus some vitamins, tissues, and more white bread."
I hadn't eaten much but toast in the past few days. And I'd gone through a lot of tissues.
"You really don't have to do this, Candace. I'll get better eventually."
"Eventually isn't soon enough," she said. "I'm free for the weekend, so I get to spend the next two days taking care of you so you can get back to work."
Ugh. Work. I hated missing work. I knew being sick was a legitimate excuse for not going, but I still felt irresponsible.
Especially since all I had was a touch of nausea. A heavy-handed touch, mind you, but there was still nothing else. No fever, no aches, and definitely no rashes or mumps of any kind. I had a pretty solid headache, but I suspected that was more to do with stress.
"I was thinking about going to the doctor, actually."
Candace was halfway through gathering the bags from my bed. She nodded thoughtfully. "Not a bad idea. If you give me a few minutes to put these groceries away, I can drive you over."
"You don't have to do that."
Candace raised a brow. "Wouldn’t you do the same for me?"
"Well, yes... But—"
"—No buts. Get some proper clothes on." She wrinkled her nose at my sweats. "If you want to leave the house like that, you can walk."
I laughed for the first time in what felt like years. What would I do without Candace?
After putting on something more "suitable" and throwing my hair up in a top knot, Candace and I headed down to her car. We drove in silence at my request, since music was no friend to a throbbing forehead.
Thankfully, the fresh air helped alleviate some of my headache. I was beginning to feel a bit better, but I couldn't trust it. I'd thought I was better the day after the dinner party before almost throwing up on a stack of books.
The sickness came in waves. It was frustrating.
"So… are you still avoiding Matthias?" Candace dropped the question casually, as if she were asking about the weather.
I turned and gazed deliberately out the window. "A little."
"A little?"
"I texted him back this morning, but haven't answered any messages since then."
Candace made a grumbling noise in her throat. "I'm not sure this is a good idea. Why don't you just tell him what's upsetting you?"
"Because I feel like crap, Candace!" I didn't mean for it to come out that angrily. The sickness had me feeling high strung and overly emotional. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap."
When I looked back over, she was smiling at me. "I kind of like you like this," she said. "You're a bit sassy. It's cool."
"Oh yeah, nothing cooler than barfing up your guts every few hours while you cling to the toilet bowl like a life preserver."
She chuckled. "At least your sense of humor is still intact."
"It's about the only thing that is. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that my organs were playing a game of musical chairs."
Candace was quick to get back on topic. She was a difficult one to distract.
"You're going to lose him if you keep pushing him away like this," she said. "Is that what you want?"
I frowned, but remained silent.
What did I want?
Maybe driving him away was for the best. I’d already come to the realization the other day that this could never work long term, but that hadn’t stopped me from thinking about him any time my head wasn’t buried in the toilet. I wanted him to come over and stroke my back and tell me everything would be okay. I feared I wasn’t strong enough to walk away from him on my own, even knowing how wrong for me he was.
So maybe if I pushed him away, it would solve the problem for me.
But it would also make me miserable.
My mind was constantly at odds, even when I found myself imagining us together. There’s me, working in a top charity and making decisions that would influence millions of lives for the better and him and then him... doing… what? Even in my dreams I couldn’t imagine what we would be doing together because I had no idea what his plan was and if it would even mesh with mine.
We waited in the doctor's office for just under an hour. In that time, I had two close calls where I thought I'd end up establishing myself as the pariah of the waiting room by vomiting all over the place.
Luckily I held back.
While I was waiting, the triage nurse asked me a few questions and collected a urine sample. I always hated peeing in a cup, but at least it gave me something to do while we waited.
Candace offered to come in with me when the nurse finally came to get me, but I told her I would be fine. I was sure it was nothing, although I hadn’t been sick enough to visit a doctor in years.
Doctor Phillips was a short, steely looking woman. She eyed me with cold calculation the moment she stepped into the room.
"Ms. Dylan," she said. "I understand you've been experiencing some nausea."
I nodded. "Intermittently."
Dr. Phillips looked from me to her chart, then back to me. "Standard procedure would be for me to conduct a quick exam on you, but I've got a backed-up waiting room and I already know the cause, although we’ll still need to do some bloodwork to confirm."
I perked up. "Really? What is it."
For a moment, Dr. Phillips' gaze softened. "Well, dear... you're pregnant."
31
Matthias
It had been a week. A whole fucking week.
<
br /> With previous girls, a week of distance was nothing. Most of them I never saw again after just one night. Or if I did, it was more of a casual thing with other women in between.
But a week of being away from Ally sucked. And not just because my balls ached.
I missed her like crazy. And the fact that she was mad at me meant I also had a healthy dose of guilt to go along with all the other unexpected emotions that were pounding into me like golf-ball sized hail.
I'd already decided to tell her the truth, but the issue was finding a way to do it. She was still keeping her distance, now not even answering any of my attempts to talk to her other than to briefly text me that she was okay but just wanted some space.
Well, that got old pretty quick.
I knew she didn’t appreciate being surprised at work, and telling her I was a prince wasn’t exactly something I wanted an audience for anyway. But the invite to the dinner party came with her address, so I didn’t need to go that route anyway.
The dinner party.
That’s what started this whole thing. Was she really so upset because I’d cancelled? Perhaps using a stripping gig as an excuse was a poor choice, but still, her reaction seemed fairly extreme. Did she see through my lie? Has she grown to completely mistrust me?
It was more important than ever that I be honest with her.
"We're going out," I called toward Veronika's door.
She cracked it open. "Where?"
By that one word she meant, What level of covertness do you want me to assume?
I sighed. "You don't have to hide. We're going to see Ally, and I'm going to tell her everything."
Veronika was at the front door in less time than it took me to put my shoes on and grab a coat. She'd been itching to leave the apartment, but felt uncomfortable about leaving me alone for too long.
I should have gone out sooner, for both of our sanities, but my mind had been completely wrapped up with everything that had been going on.
Maybe once I told Ally the truth, I could finally get some rest.
"Have you got your phone?" Veronika asked.
I patted the bulge in my jeans pocket.
It wasn't Veronika's job to make sure I left the house without forgetting anything, but it was more important than ever that I remain accessible now that my dad was sick. On the plus side, he'd gotten a little better over the past few days, which made me hopeful.
"Do you want me to drive?" she asked.
I smiled at her grimly. "Do you think me too emotionally unstable to trust behind the wheel, ma petite chou-fleur?"
"I was just trying to be polite."
I laughed and followed her down the hallway. I liked that she was trying to be nicer now. I needed all the friends I could get.
Ally had originally been hesitant to give me her address. She was a pretty private person by nature, and it took her a while to trust me. Of course, she couldn’t very well not tell me where she lived after inviting me over for dinner.
Showing up out of the blue like this, when she had made it clear she wanted to be left alone, was exactly why she had hesitated in the first place.
Still, I felt that this case was justified. It wasn’t like I was going to break down her door or anything.
Her apartment building was much nicer than mine. Veronika's mouth flattened into a line as we walked in, so I knew that fact hadn’t escaped her notice, either
"I know that you probably thought going to America to be my bodyguard would entail slightly nicer digs."
She shrugged and pressed the elevator button. The foyer had a gigantic mirror on the far wall, and I checked out my hair from the back.
"I know you have reasons for not wanting a nicer place."
"I do. Or I did, anyway."
When I first got to this country, my thinking had been that a crappy apartment would make it far easier to fade into the background of the city. But I'd never found it very easy to fade into the background of anything.
After a while, it just became home. Just another stripper's apartment. It fit the personality of the person I was trying to make people believe I was.
We rode the elevator in silence. Veronika was tense. I'd never revealed myself to anyone in America before, and I knew she was running different scenarios in her head.
It was unlikely Ally would attack me, but if she did sell me out to the press, it would only be a matter of time before I became some sort of target. And then, of course, there would be the inevitable scandal of the stripper prince. My parents would be horrified. Maybe they’d decide Juris was the right one for the throne after all. Surely he couldn’t be doing anything more disgraceful back home.
We stepped from the elevator and headed down the long hallway. I stopped in front of apartment 405. "This is it."
Veronika gave me the briefest of nods, then I knocked on the door.
Nobody answered.
"Ally?" I pressed my ear to the door to listen for movement, but heard nothing. "Ally, it's Matt. I know you don't want to talk right now, but I've got some stuff to tell you."
A few seconds later, a metallic scraping rattled through the wood. Then the door opened.
Ally looked pale and drawn. Perhaps she hadn’t been lying about being sick after all, but I figured either way she would have been better by now. The sight jarred me. I wanted to rush forward, pull her into my arms, and tell her everything would be okay.
But I couldn't. Not yet.
"Hey," she said. Her voice was so small, fluttering through the stuffy air like a thin piece of paper.
"Hey." I glanced over at Veronika. "Can we come in?"
Ally, noticing Veronika for the first time, wrinkled her brow in confusion. She only paused for a moment before nodding and stepping aside.
The inside of her apartment was cleaner than my own, with a lemony twang hanging in the air.
"Stress cleaning?"
Ally nodded weakly. She gestured for Veronika and I to take a seat on the sofa. I sat down, but Veronika continued to stand by the door, always taking her job as my bodyguard seriously.
"Is this where you tell me you’re married?" Ally asked, frowning over at Veronika. The blond at the door let out a surprised guffaw and I coughed away my own laugh.
"No, definitely not, although I understand your suspicions. I haven’t been completely open with you, but not for the reasons you think."
Her eyes flashed with suspicion. "So what is it, then?"
I sighed. There was no reason to drag this out any longer. "You know the country I'm from, Caspierre?"
"Yes."
"Well… I'm part of the royal family. A prince, in fact."
I had never had to reveal this to anyone before. They either already knew or would never know. And for a fact that I had openly known for most of my life, it was somehow difficult to say. Which is probably why I’d dropped it on her so abruptly. I wasn’t sure how else to say it.
But she was clearly in shock. For a few moments she just stared at me. Then her eyes narrowed and she turned to Veronika, whether to verify my story or to get confirmation about my insanity, I wasn’t sure.
But Veronika nodded. "It's true. I’m his personal guard."
I pulled out my phone and brought up a picture of my family and I, dressed formally with my father sitting on his throne. I passed it across the couch to her. “There are other images in there if you want to flip through it.”
Ally took the phone and stared at it, eyes growing wider with each flick of her thumb across my screen.
"I'm not lying, chérie. Not anymore."
When she looked back up to me, she seemed horrified.
I hadn't expected that reaction.
"I never intended to be dishonest with you. Please believe that. I was doing what I had to do to keep my cover while I was here."
"I don't understand..." Her hands were shaking as she passed my phone back.
God, I wanted to reach for her so badly. Electricity stung at my fingers where they touched he
rs. But she wasn't reacting the way I'd thought.
"Why would you want to come to America to be a stripper?"
Ah, the golden question.
I inched a little closer to her on the sofa. "I didn't come with the intent of being a stripper," I explained. "That was more something I fell into, fairly recently, actually. I’d tried other things first, but nothing seemed as much fun."
"What did you come for, then?"
I took a deep breath. I was being honest now. Completely, totally honest.
"The life of a prince isn’t exactly all Disney movies. When you grow up as a royal, your life is never your own. Especially as the eldest child, as I am. From the time I was born, I was told I was destined to rule and almost from the moment I hit puberty I began to feel the pressure to find a wife so that I could start a family and ensure the line of succession. Marriage and babies, that was all anyone seemed focused on for me, and they didn’t seem to care that those things didn’t interest me.
“Eventually, though, I did meet someone that I became serious about. Of course, this only made those pressures around me intensify. But even as they did, Sonia became my rock and I really did think that I was in love. She seemed to thrive under that pressure, and I came to believe that the life that had been cut out for me wouldn’t be so bad after all.”
"What happened?"
I smiled bitterly. "I found out the hard way that she was only with me because of my title, not because of who I really was. She was desperate to marry me, to have a child, to become queen to a future king. If I'd been thinking straight, if I wasn’t being pressured from all sides to make it work, then I wouldn’t have missed the signs that were always there. But once I finally did see her for who she truly was, the reality hit me harder than I care to admit. That was when I realized I had to get away."
I paused, remembering how the stress of that discovery had driven me nearly mad.
How would I have fared if Ally had been my rock instead? I knew she genuinely cared for me. She wanted what was best for me. And she didn't give a shit whether I was a rich prince or a poor stripper.
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