by Lucy Lennox
As hard as it was to pull away from his touch, I forced myself to do it. I was keenly aware of the fact that just down the hall were all sorts of governmental officials and most likely even the king himself.
“It’s been a long day, and I know my grandfathers are probably wondering what the hell happened to me. So I’m going to go back to my room.” I stood up, intending to make my way back to the guest suite Hen had so graciously arranged for my family.
Lio let out a choking sound. “No, wait. Wait. Just… just wait, okay? Will you please stay for the coronation and the ball?”
“Well, I told Hen I would but... I don’t think it’s a good—”
“Please. I need you there, Felix. Please.”
There was silence in the room while his panicked plea echoed around us.
How could I say no to him when he asked me with so much emotion in his voice and looked into my fucking soul with those cobalt eyes?
“If Hen can still hook me up with a tux, I will come as a friend,” I said reluctantly.
Lio cleared his throat and seemed to gather his composure.
“Friends. Yes,” he murmured, and then his eyes brightened with an idea. “Doc and Grandpa are here? I’d love to meet them. Can we go grab them for a beer or something? I have some in my apartment. Arthur can help us if not.”
I was tempted to introduce him to my beloved grandfathers. I wanted them to know what a good man Lio was, and I wanted Lio to see what wonderful parents I had. But I knew I’d make an idiot out of myself and accidentally touch him or gush over him or look at him like a lovesick fool in front of my grandfathers. That was not the action of a friend.
“Ah, no. No, thank you. I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lio. They don’t know who you are to me, and if they see us together, they’ll figure out the truth. Plus, you have a big day coming up, and apparently your sister has signed me up for some kind of comportment lessons tomorrow. If I want to be at the coronation events, I must know how to properly address royalty, dance a waltz, and…anyway. Goodnight.” I clenched my teeth to stop myself from babbling even more and stood up, carefully avoiding touching Lio before making my way toward the exit of his office suite.
I could sense him shifting as if to call me back or grab me or follow me, but I kept walking.
When he didn’t come after me, I sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Had he tried to stop me, I would have folded like a cheap house of cards. I wanted him desperately, but that was the problem.
If he got near me just then, I’d throw myself at him again. And this situation was no joking matter. I couldn’t be the one to put his coronation at risk. One hint of impropriety on his part could bring the entire thing tumbling down into more of a hot scandal than his family already had brewing. I would not be the person to put any of that in jeopardy.
When I reached the private sanctuary of our suite of rooms, I was trembling with the effort of keeping myself together. I knew that I just needed a hot shower and sleep to gather my mental fortitude for the following day. Just forty-eight more hours and I’d be on my way home for good. I simply had to make it through the ceremony and ball. The coronation.
When Lio would become the king of Liorland.
I could do this. I could be Lio’s friend for as long as it took to get him through the upcoming festivities. According to Hen, the coronation was heavy shit—a ceremony in full regalia followed by a massive ball at the palace. Her hope had been for me to be there in case he needed some moral support behind the scenes. Hen had sworn she was just looking out for her brother’s mental health.
It was bullshit, of course. Her real hope was for him to see me and decide to throw up a big middle finger to the world and announce me as his boyfriend. But that was never going to happen. Now that I was here, in Monaco, I could understand. Everything was so formal and traditional. Monarchies were practically defined by their conservative histories. I couldn’t even imagine walking through the impressive portrait gallery and seeing a royal portrait of a king and his male consort. The idea of it was laughable.
When Doc and Grandpa realized I was back, I could tell from their faces they knew something was wrong. I tried playing the exhaustion card, but they didn’t buy it.
“We didn’t just come here for your new friend, Hen, did we?” Doc asked gently.
I shook my head and tried blinking back tears. “No, sir.”
“The man you told us about is here too, isn’t he?” Grandpa’s eyes sought the truth in mine and must have found it there.
I nodded.
Grandpa pulled me into a tight hug. “It’s okay, Fee. You don’t have to tell us about it now, but just know we’re here for you. We love you.”
I could tell it was hard for them to let me go without a more detailed debrief, but they must have known I really needed time to myself.
When I crawled into bed still damp from the shower, the memory of Lio’s hands and lips on my skin earlier that night carried me off to sleep.
Chapter 33
Lio
Friends.
He was right. I couldn’t ask more of him, especially if I wasn’t willing to follow through. He’d set clear boundaries with me, and I had to respect them.
But good god, they hurt.
I couldn’t sleep at all that night and was embarrassed to find myself trolling the corridors of the palace near the guest wing in the middle of the night on the off chance I ran into an equally insomnia-riddled Felix. No luck, but I did run into an older gentleman I’d never met before and quickly realized he was either Felix’s Doc or Grandpa.
“Mr. Wilde?” I asked hesitantly. “I’m Lio. Can I help you find something?”
We were standing near one of the exits leading to the palace courtyard, and I had the sense he’d just returned from a midnight stroll.
When he learned who I was, his face lifted in recognition of my name.
“Prince Lio, heir to the throne of Liorland?”
Fuck.
“Yes, sir. I’m a friend of your grandson’s,” I said, as if I somehow had a kind of claim on Felix. I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Especially compared to one of the men who raised him. “Are you Doc or Grandpa?”
His face transformed into a mischievous smile. “Should I make you guess? What if I promised to answer one question? Could you figure out who I am that way? It just can’t be the obvious choice of what my name is.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Your name wouldn’t help. I still wouldn’t know which one you were. But I already know what question I would want to ask. Why does Felix love stained glass?”
His face fell. Clearly he’d assumed the question would be one to help me identify which grandfather he was, but I didn’t need to know that nearly as much as I needed to know Felix’s heart. And when I’d asked him several times at Gadleigh what had given him such a visceral connection to the art, he’d blown off the question. Who better to ask than one of the two closest people to him?
I could tell he didn’t want to answer.
“You promised to answer one question,” I said quietly.
“And so I shall, Lio. But first, what about showing an old man to the coffee maker? My husband won’t let me have any, so I have to sneak it when he’s not around.”
I hid my grin as I turned to lead him to a nearby lounge where breakfast would be served in a few hours for any guests of the palace. There was always coffee, water, tea, and simple snacks available.
Once we were settled with coffee at a small table, Mr. Wilde studied me.
“Do you know about his mother? Our daughter, Jackie, wasn’t the best parent to Felix…”
“I know. He told me. You were lucky to raise him,” I said.
His eyes snapped up to mine in surprise, and his mouth widened into a bright smile. “You’re the first person who’s gotten it right in all these years, son. We were the lucky ones. Everyone tells Felix he was lucky to have us, but they have it upside down and backwards.”
I nodded. “So, wh
at happened?”
“When he was eight, his mother dropped him off at the Mountain View Mausoleum and told him to go inside until she returned to get him. She didn’t return.”
I sucked in a breath and felt my heart trip over itself. “A child left in a mausoleum? Why in the hell did she do that?”
He sighed. “She swore later she’d thought it was a church. She’d had an important rehearsal. Mind you, all auditions and rehearsals were important to her back then. According to Jackie, it was ‘a once in a lifetime’ role. She didn’t have childcare for Felix, so she decided to have him sit quietly in the church building until she returned. Well, by the time the cemetery closed for the day, she still hadn’t returned. The authorities were called. They tried reaching Jackie, but she didn’t answer, so they called me. Luckily, I was on the emergency contact form at the school. You can’t even imagine how it felt to be so far away from him when I got that call.”
Even after twenty years, I could see the toll the memory took on him. I reached out to squeeze his hand.
“What did he do all day? He didn’t find an adult and ask for help?”
“She’d told him to be quiet and try not to be seen. I guess she pictured him reading a book quietly in a back pew of a nice church. But when he went inside, it was all marble internment boxes and stained glass. Thank god Felix didn’t know what the place was. He just thought it was a strange kind of church with the most exquisite stained glass windows he’d ever seen. After he finished the library book he’d brought, there was absolutely nothing else for him to do but study the windows all day, so he sat and sketched in his notebook and thought up ideas for his own designs.”
He took a deep breath before continuing. “Unfortunately, in the process of trying to find the boy’s mother, the police discovered she had a record for public indecency. Once they figured that out, they booked her on child neglect and held Felix until we arrived to take him. Of course, someone in central booking recognized her from an adult film and leaked it to the press. The media swarmed the station and screamed questions at us while we tried getting Felix out of there. It was awful, and he always associated the press with fear and anger after that.”
“Rightly so.” I seethed. “I can’t believe they didn’t have the decency to give a child more privacy than that.”
Mr. Wilde blew out a breath. “It was clear they were trying to get a salacious story about a porn star who was in the process of making it onto the big screen. At that point she’d already landed a role in her first feature-length film, so it was bigger news than it would have been if it had happened six months before.”
“What happened with Felix after that?”
“We told her we were taking him. She had to choose Felix or her acting career because it was obvious she couldn’t manage both.”
I let out a heartbroken sigh. “She chose the career.” I wanted to say more, but I remembered we were talking about this man’s daughter.
“Yes. Poor Felix. He was so loving and innocent. The kid hadn’t even realized what a mausoleum was, thank god. He discovered later that the mausoleum’s architect had been interred in there and insisted we go back before leaving Los Angeles for good so he could say thanks to the man for designing such a beautiful, peaceful place.”
I didn’t even know what to think. The idea of Felix, a knock-kneed quiet nerdy boy of only eight, alone and afraid in a cold marble death chamber made me want to run at top speed upstairs to where he slept and gather him up to keep him safe. So he knew he’d always be warm and never be alone again.
“That sounds like him,” I murmured, toying with the flimsy wooden stir stick left over from my coffee. “Thinking of the positive, the peace and beauty rather than the death and loneliness.”
“He’s an amazing man,” Grandpa Wilde said. “The biggest heart of anyone I know, but the one most fragile too.”
He looked at me then with an assessing, almost accusatory glance. I didn’t blame him. His goal was to look out for the ones he loved, and I’d set Felix up for a fall.
“I really care about him, Grandpa Wilde,” I said quietly. “When I left him at Gadleigh, it was like I left one of my lungs there too. I can hardly breathe.”
His smile was old and knowing. “How did you know which one I was?”
I gestured to his mug. “Doc doesn’t let you have coffee. He worries about your health. He and Felix strategize behind your back ways to keep you alive as long as possible.”
“They think I don’t know they’ve swapped out all the good stuff at the ranch with crappy knockoffs. Who the hell wants light butter? Or fat-free sour cream? Jesus. It’s like I might as well already be dead.” He stood up to pour himself a second cup of coffee, and I thought about what Felix would say if he knew.
“No way to the second cup. Not under my roof. If Felix wants to keep you alive, then that’s what I want too,” I said. “I’ll get you a bottle of water instead. You should try and get some more sleep anyway.”
He lifted his eyebrow at me. “Tell you what. I’ll let you boss me around about the coffee if you tell me about Felix.”
Well, shit. That’s what I get for interfering.
I retrieved two bottles from the small glass-fronted refrigerator in the corner of the room and sat back down, passing one to Grandpa Wilde.
“You already know everything there is to know about him,” I tried.
“Pfft. Horseshit. I clearly didn’t know that the man he’d fallen in… something… with was the future goddamned king of wherever.”
“Well, Felix didn’t either. At first. When I realized he didn’t recognize me, I felt like for once in my life I could be someone other than William Triannon Frederik Harald Christien Grimaldi of Liorland—Duke, Marquis, Count, Baron, and Seigneur of all kinds of shit. But with Felix, I was just Lio—the guy he met on vacation. It was fun and free. We talked and laughed and touched. It was so damned right, you know? It was everything.”
“How did he find out who you were?”
I cracked open my water and took a deep draw. “There was a security alert of some kind in the middle of the night at Gadleigh. My guards came into the bedroom like a SWAT team and scared the living hell out of the poor man. Felix thought they were kidnapping me. Before I had a chance to explain to him what was going on, I’d been removed and secured without him. The guards took him to a separate room where he met my sister. After that, of course, the jig was up.”
“He must have been angry.”
I felt my heart grip in my chest. “No. Mostly sad. I think he understood where I was coming from. At least that’s the way he made it sound. Because of his mom. He gets the pressure from the media and the reason I didn’t want to risk him knowing. I explained that once I had feelings for him, I wanted to tell him. But that’s when he wound up telling me about Jackie. After that… well, I knew I would be ten times worse in terms of bringing the heat down on him. So I couldn’t do it.”
He seemed to study me again, causing me to feel like a restless bug under glass. When he finally spoke, I felt like I was talking to the stern father of my prom date.
“You departed Gadleigh as friends.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And? What are your intentions now?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “I didn’t know he was coming here. My sister convinced him to come.”
He nodded. “She told him you needed him. Is that true?”
I blew out a breath. “God yes. More than you could ever know.”
“Why him? If the world knew you were attracted to men, you could have any gay or bi man on earth. Why Felix Wilde?”
I felt my cheeks pull wide as the feeling of happiness spread through my chest. “God, that’s an easy question. He’s gorgeous, inside and out. The man would carry a dying elephant up a mountain if that’s where the elephant’s favorite pillow was. He knows all the lyrics to ‘Manic Monday’ but won’t sing them any other day of the week because he’s afraid it will lessen his enjoy
ment of belting it out on Monday mornings. He’ll drink unlimited cups of hot tea even though he hates it because he thinks it would hurt my feelings if he admitted to not liking it. He calls himself a scientist or a professor because he’s afraid he’s not good enough to call himself an artist. He… he once realized I’d left the castle building without protection, and he ran inside to tattle on me to the guards because he cares more about my safety than wounding my pride. When my sister and her boyfriend were outed in the press, he put on his rattiest sweats before snuggling Hen on the sofa and watching Jane Austen movies with her all afternoon so she wouldn’t feel so alone. Where was I? On the phone freaking out about the fallout in the media. But Felix? Felix was freaking out about the fallout in my sister’s heart.”
I stopped ranting long enough to catch my breath. Why hadn’t he stopped me before I turned into a raving lunatic?
“He’s such a good fucking human being, you know?” I added in a rough voice. “So beautiful. His heart is so pure. He deserves so much.”
I looked down and realized I was gripping Grandpa Wilde’s hand.
“You should tell him all those things,” he said lightly.
“I can’t. I can’t be what he needs. What he deserves.”
He gave me a look like I was a simpleton who needed the Cliff Notes version of life’s lessons.
“You already are what he needs and what he deserves, and from that little outburst I can tell he’s what you need and deserve too. What’s stopping you?”
“Are you kidding?” I gestured around me at the ornate furniture and the palace beyond the lounge doors. “The entire fucking universe and their goddamned expectations. A thousand years of history and tradition.”
Grandpa Wilde’s eyes brightened. “Felix told me the guy he met at Gadleigh shared his love of artichokes.”
I stared at him. Felix hadn’t mentioned his grandfather suffering from dementia, but now I wondered.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m surprised. It would seem from your attitude about Felix that you’d walk right past a good-looking artichoke for fear you’d get pricked.”
