Bridget
Don’t look at him.
If I looked at him, I would lose it, and I was already half out of my mind. The stress, guilt, and exhaustion of the past four days had seeped into my bones, turning me into a walking zombie.
But I couldn’t help myself. I looked.
And my heart promptly splintered into even more pieces than it already had.
Rhys stared at me, so still he could’ve passed for a statue had it not been for the pain flickering in his eyes.
“Had?” That calm, even tone never boded well.
“It was fun while it lasted.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue, like poison pills of lies I fed myself to get through the next hour and possibly the rest of my life. “But people know. Everyone’s watching us. We can’t continue whatever…this is.”
“Fun.” Still in that dangerously calm voice.
“Rhys.” I wrapped my arms tighter around myself. The hospital staff had set the temperature to a comfortable seventy-three degrees, but my skin felt like ice beneath my palms. “Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
Please let my heart break in peace.
“The hell I won’t.” His gray eyes had darkened to a near black, and a vein throbbed in his temple. “Tell me something, princess. Are you doing this because you want to, or because you feel like you have to?”
“I don’t feel like I have to. I do have to!” Frustration seared through me, sharp and hot. Didn’t he get it? “It’s only a matter of time before the press confirms the allegations. Elin and Markus and my family already know. What do you think is going to happen once it’s all out in the open?”
“Your Majesty!”
“Grandfather!”
Nikolai, Markus, and Elin rushed to Edvard’s side while I stood there, unable to move.
I should join them. Make sure he was okay.
But of course he wasn’t okay. He’d just collapsed…because of me and what I said. Because I thought, for one second, I could have a semblance of control over my life.
If he died, the last conversation we had would have been an argument.
“You will end the relationship and never see Mr. Larsen again.”
“No.”
Something inside me shriveled into a husk.
“Bridget…”
The sound of my name, deep and raw, scraped against my willpower, leaving dents in something that had never been strong to begin with. Not when it came to him.
I closed my eyes, trying to find the cool, unshakable version of myself I presented to the public. The one who’d smiled through hours of standing and waving while my feet bled through my heels. The one who’d walked behind my father’s casket and held back tears until I crumpled into a ball in the bathroom during the wake.
But I couldn’t. I’d never been able to hide who I truly was from Rhys.
I heard him walk toward me. Smelled that clean, masculine scent that had become my comfort scent over the years because it meant he was near and I was safe. Felt him rub away a tear I hadn’t even noticed had escaped with his thumb.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
“Princess, look at me.”
I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut tighter. My emotions formed a tight knot in my throat, making it near impossible to breathe.
“Bridget.” Firmer this time, more commanding. “Look at me.”
I resisted for another minute, but the need to save myself from further heartache paled compared to my need to soak in every last bit of Rhys Larsen I could.
I looked at him.
Gray thunderstorms stared back at me, crackling with turmoil.
“The mess with the pictures, we’ll figure it out.” He grasped my chin and rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip, his expression fierce. “I told you, you’re mine, and I’m not letting you go. I don’t care if the entire Eldorran military tries to drag me away.”
I wished it were that easy and I could sink into his faith, letting it sweep me away.
But our problems went way beyond the pictures now.
“You don’t get it. There is no happily ever after for us.” We weren’t a fairytale. We were a forbidden love letter, tucked into the back of a drawer and retrieved only in the darkness of night. We were the chapter of bliss before the climax hit and everything crumbled into ash. We were a story that was always meant to end. “This is it.”
My mother died giving birth to me.
My father died on his way back from buying something I’d asked him to get.
My grandfather almost died because I’d refused to give up the one thing that ever made me happy.
That was what I got for being selfish, for wanting something for me. Future queens didn’t live for themselves, they lived for their country. That was the price of power.
No matter how much I tried to change reality, it remained the truth, and it was time I grew up and faced it.
Rhys’s grip on my chin tightened. “I don’t need a happily ever after. I need to be by your side. I need you happy and healthy and safe. Goddammit Bridget, I need you. In any way I can have you.” His voice broke for the first time in all my years with him, and my heart cracked in response. “If you think I’m leaving you to deal with this bullshit alone, you don’t know me at all.”
Trouble was, I did know him, and I knew the one thing that would make him snap, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it right now.
One last selfish thing.