The Royal's Pet

by Adora Crooks

  Queen Selena doesn’t deign to sit. Instead, she stands and waits, arms folded. Her dress hugs to her like rubber, and I wonder if it would even allow her to sit and stand back up.

  “A dead man was found in the River Thames today,” she says, abruptly breaking the agreed-upon silence between us. “Would you know anything about that?”

  “No, ma’am,” I lie. Dripping wet. Holding my broken rib.

  “Hm,” she huffs. And that’s the extent of our conversation.

  I’m staring at the door. I’m trying hard not to overanalyze this situation, but it doesn’t escape my notice. Barely a couple hours back in England, and Roland and Rory are an item and I’m… left holding the door. I try reasoning with myself. I knew my place. I knew this was how it would be. I knew we would revert back to our old ways once we got here. What’s the saying?

  Two’s a company; three’s a crowd.

  Still. It kills me to have either of them out of my sight, even for a moment.

  Three hundred seconds tick by before the hospital door opens again. I stand quickly, even though the effort sends bursts of pain through my chest. The queen stiffens her spine.

  Roland looks weary. I see it in his eyes. White-hot panic bubbles in my blood. But then he gives the two of us one of his charming smiles. “She’s doing okay,” he says. “Knackered. They’ve got her on painkillers. But she’s fine.”

  “Thank God,” I sigh with relief before I can stop myself. The queen shoots me a queer look from the edge of her vision.

  Roland waves her away. “Mother, give us a moment, please.”

  “I’ll wait in the car,” she announces as though it was her own idea. She sniffs. “I hate hospitals anyway.”

  Ah. The last time she was here was probably—right.

  With her dying husband.

  I feel a wave of empathy for her, a twinge of regret that I didn’t say anything to make her feel a little more at ease… but what do you say to warm the heart of an ice queen anyway? I let the moment pass, and the queen vanishes, the click of her heels growing quieter as she makes her way down the hall.

  Roland crumples into his seat once more with a hefty sigh, so I take my place beside him.

  “You’re off,” I tell him. It’s a statement, not a question. He can tell me what’s wrong with him or not, but now he knows that I know.

  I expect him to come back with some snide comment or cutting quip. Instead, Roland is abnormally quiet. He sits with his thoughts for a moment, not even looking at me. Finally, he murmurs, “I broke it off with Rory.”

  There’s a second after you’ve been slapped, when the pain vibrates through your face with a prickly tingling. I feel that now as I stare at him. “What? Why?”

  “She could have died, Ben.” Roland’s voice is hard and polished. That stone-cold Pennington denial.

  “You’re right.” Sarcasm drips on my tongue. “What better way to protect her than to release her onto the London streets on her own?”

  “I can’t lose another person I love.” The sharpness in Roland’s voice makes me hold my tongue. “I can’t.”

  “You had no right,” I growl.

  Roland turns to me finally and blinks with surprise. “Pardon?”

  “She was ours,” I snap. “You don’t get to make that call.”

  “Watch your tongue,” Roland hisses.

  “Should I bow to you now?” I stand. I need to stand over him. “After everything I’ve done for you… the years I’ve spent going above and beyond my station to make you happy. Everything I’ve done has been for you. And you can’t do this one thing for me.”

  “Ben.” Roland stands now, as patient as a parent. “You’re not listening to me.”

  “I am listening to you. For six years, I’ve done nothing but listen—”

  “Ben, you’re fired.”

  My words dry up on my tongue. My heartbeat pulses in my ears, feverish, and I must look like a fucking idiot, staring at him with not a damn thing to say.

  “I meant what I said,” he continues, coaxingly. For once, he’s the calm and collected, and I’m spinning out of control. “I can’t lose another person I love. That includes you. You put yourself in front of the line of fire for me, time and again… and I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.”

  “You couldn’t bear it,” I repeat.

  “No,” he shakes his head. “I couldn’t.”

  “And it’s all about you, isn’t it?”

  Roland’s shoulders sag. “I’m just trying to protect you.”

  “Stop protecting us,” I tell him. “I’m your bodyguard. That’s my bloody job.”

  “You were my bodyguard,” he corrects.

  I put my hand on the door to Rory’s room. “May I be dismissed, Your Highness?”

  “Ben. Don’t hate me.”

  “Is that a royal decree or a request?”

  He looks gutted. “A prayer.”

  My eyes flicker over him. I’m a python, venom swollen and ready to strike. “Then you should probably get on your knees next time you want something from me.” With that, I push through the door and into Rory’s room.

  There’s a blast of cold from her room. Machines beep and whir around Rory’s bed. She looks very, very small in the billowing blankets and pillows. Or maybe it’s that she’s been crying that makes her look small. When I step in, she wipes her face and sniffles. She tries to smile, even though there’s no hiding the red blotches around her eyes. “Hey.”

  “How are you?” I ask.

  She shrugs meekly. “I’ve had better days.”

  I step around her bed and take a seat in a circular chair beside her. “Roland told me that he broke up with you.”

  “He’s trying to protect me,” she sniffs. “I get it, but—”

  “He’s a bloody idiot.”

  She chuckles politely.

  “He broke it off with me, too,” I inform her. “Fired me, actually.”

  Rory’s big eyes widen at that. “Oh no… Ben. I’m so sorry.”

  Leave it to Rory to feel bad for me when she’s the one in the hospital bed. She reaches out and catches my hand in her own. I shiver. She’s made a crack in my hardened composure.

  “Now I’m out a boyfriend,” I say. “Out a job. And out a place to live.” I look at her and add, “I hope I’m not out you, too.”

  A tear goes unchecked and slips down the slide of her face as she nearly loses it again. “No,” she says, her voice shaky. “You’re never out me.”

  I reach over and brush her tear from her cheek. “You’re never out me, either. I promise.”

  That draws a single, relieved sob from deep in her chest. “Thank you,” she sniffs and clutches my hand. “I really needed to hear that.”

  “It’s what I’m here for.”

  I hand her a tissue, and she blows her nose. “I have an idea about a place we can stay,” she says as she dabs her eyes. “Local. Under the radar. But you’re not going to like it.”

  37

  Roland

  They hate me.

  Good.

  Hate me. Loathe me. Make me the villain. The devil. The spoiled boy prince in his castle.

  Hate me, but stay alive.

  They think I’m selfish. Proud. They’re wrong. Selfish would have been keeping them to me. Selfish would have been taking them to bed, night after night, and forcing them to give up their lives to live in mine. Selfish would have been putting them in danger every day simply because my heart ran away with me.

  This is the least selfish thing I’ve done in my whole life. I want them with me so badly I can taste it. But my life isn’t normal. I’m the prince of England. Even the prince of England, it turns out, can’t always get what he wants.

  I leave the hospital in a numb daze. There’s a long black car waiting for me right outside. The driver nods to me. I step into it and close the door behind me. My mother barely gives me a glance.

  “Are we waiting on anyone else?” she asks.

  I stare o
ut the window. “No.”

  “James, take us home,” she says. The car coughs as it starts up and pulls out into the street. “I know that was hard for you, darling.” My mum turns her attention to me now. “But you did the right thing.”

  “You were right,” I tell her. “All this time, I thought you were protecting me from the outside world. I didn’t realize you were protecting them from me.”

  Mum doesn’t say anything for a moment. When she does, it’s simply, “I’ll make you a pot of tea when we get home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? And some blueberry scones. Just how you like them.”

  Tea and scones aren’t going to fill this emptiness in my chest. As the hospital gets smaller in the distance, I want to scream for the driver to stop the car. I want to run back to the hospital. I want to take Rory and Ben in my arms. I want to kiss them. I want to tell them I love them, over and over, so they never forget it.

  The car turns the corner, and King Edward VII's Hospital vanishes from sight completely.

  I’ve been alone for ten years. I can do it again.

  Only alone never felt quite this lonely. Before I knew what it was like to love with my whole heart and feel their love in return.

  My throat is tight, and my lungs vibrate with effort to keep from screaming out. I twist my signet ring around and around on my finger, battling my surging emotions, until I feel…

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  38

  Rory

  Brekson sits behind the desk at Free People Hostel, sipping his coffee and reading the local paper. The safety pins clipped to his earlobes wiggle when he jerks his head over the paper to look at us.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” he says, folding up the paper and tossing it aside. “Long time no see, kiddo.”

  “Do you have room for two?” I ask. I approach the desk, Ben stepping quietly behind me.

  Brekson’s eyes flicker between me and Ben, then back to me, back to Ben. He sniffs, seems to decide not to ask, and says, “Sure do, pumpkin.”

  He takes two keys from underneath the desk and tosses them to me. They each have little tags on them with a three-digit number. “Those’ll get you into your lockers; you’ll need a $50 deposit each. How long did you say you were staying?”

  Ben takes out his wallet, produces four fifty-pound notes, and sets them on the desk. “Keep the change,” he says.

  Brekson’s eyebrows lift up his forehead. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he says. He pockets the money and doesn’t ask about our duration again.

  Ben takes his time up the stairs, favoring one leg. Each room in the hostel has its own cute name. Ironically, we’ve landed in the Hufflepuff Room, the same room I was in before. Ben touches my side as I put the key in the door. “Do you think they’ll let a Ravenclaw in here?” he asks.

  He’s trying to make me smile. It works. I shrug. “They let a Gryffindor in, so… just try not to outsmart everyone else in the room.”

  I unlock the door, and we push inside. There are a couple bunks with clothes and personal items splayed over the beds, but it’s mostly empty. Everyone is out and about, sightseeing. There’s a quiet Korean girl in the back of the room, but she has headphones plugged in. She glances at us when we enter and nods once in acknowledgment before turning back to her iPhone.

  Our bunk is by the door. “Top or bottom?” I ask.

  “Bottom,” Ben says. He tosses his duffle bag on the floor.

  Fair enough. He probably shouldn’t be climbing up and down the ladder anyway. We made a brief pit stop at the palace, where a doorman handed us our personal belongings. Talk about a royal send-off. But I have my bag now—that’s the good thing—and I shove it on the top.

  As I do, I notice Ben crouch down. He’s untying his shoes, and as he does, he discreetly slips something underneath his mattress. I see the black muzzle of his gun vanish, and it makes me shiver.

  His dark eyes meet mine. He’s caught me staring. “Precautionary,” he explains.

  “I know.” You can take the bodyguard off the payroll, but you can’t get him to stop guarding.

  I leap off my ladder, and my feet hit the floor. “Okay.” I motion to the bed. “Sit.”

  Ben obliges. I kneel between his legs and roll the soft cotton of his shirt up. Stacked abdomen, slim waist… Out of the corner of my vision, I see the Korean girl sneak a peek, and honestly, I can’t blame her. I keep lifting his shirt until… there. A huge, ugly, black-and-blue bruise covers the right side of his rib cage and draws spidery lines up his chest.

  “It looks worse than it feels,” he tries, but I doubt it.

  “Stay here.” I drop his shirt back down. “I’m going to get some ice.”

  I get up and leave the room. I know these hallways by heart by now, and my feet lead the way. I put a couple of coins in the bathroom dispensary, and it spits out a hand towel. Then I pop down the winding staircase to the kitchen, where I crack the ice tray and dump the cubes into the towel. My hands and feet move on their own, mechanically. I like having a task, something to keep my idle hands busy.

  I know if I stop moving, I’ll start thinking about Roland again. And I can’t seem to keep myself from crying when I think about him anymore.

  It feels so strange to be back here. The last time I was in the hostel, I was full of boundless energy, ready for the next adventure around the corner. Now, I feel like I’ll shatter apart if someone so much as looks me in the eyes for too long. I don’t like this. I don’t like feeling weak.

  I busy myself some more. I rummage around the kitchen and find a rubber band. I twist it around the towel and— voilà. A handmade ice pack.

  When I come back, Ben has stretched himself out on the cot. It’s comically small underneath his tall frame, and his feet hang off the foot of the bed. His eyes flick toward me when the door opens, and I hold up my palms. “Only me.”

  I sit down on the edge of the cot and roll his shirt up again. Ben helps, peeling it over his head and tossing it to the side.

  It looks bad, and I cringe just staring at the bruise. “Okay… tell me if it hurts,” I say and very gently lower the pack of ice onto his purpling bruise.

  Immediately, Ben sucks in a sharp breath and hisses through his teeth, “Ah… fucking… cunt.”

  I flinch and retract the ice pack immediately.

  “No,” he says quickly, “I wasn’t… calling you a cunt. It hurts, that’s all.”

  “Do you want to use a safe word?”

  He scoffs a pained a laugh. “Just put it back. Sorry. I won’t call you names again. Promise.”

  I twist my lips together dubiously, but I lower it to his ribs once more. He swallows so hard I can see his Adam’s apple bob and his fingers curl around the bedsheets, but he doesn’t swear at me again. Anxiety bounces around in my stomach. I don’t like hurting him, but I know it’s for his own good.

  “Okay,” Ben says after a second. He replaces my hand with his and cups the ice pack to himself. “It’s numbing out. I’ve got it now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nods. “Thank you.”

  I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He lifts his good arm, opening a spot in the bed for me. “You can get comfortable.”

  I lower myself into bed and press a kiss to his jaw. Ben holds his ice pack to his side with one hand and wraps the other arm around me. His fingers nudge under my shirt, and I wince when he brushes against my bandage.

  “Sorry,” he murmurs.

  “No, it’s okay. Just… higher.” He rests his hand on the small of my waist instead, and he draws little circles there. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

  “Definitely,” he says.

  “Would distraction help?” I ask.

  “Please.”

  I have a couple of shows I’ve downloaded to my phone for times of crisis. I’ve seen them all about ten million times, but they’re classics.

  “Are you a Friends fan?” I ask.

 
Ben shakes his head. “A what?”

  “Seriously? Friends? It’s like… American Harry Potter. I mean, they’re not wizards, but… popularity-wise.”

  “I’m dying with anticipation,” Ben says dryly.

  I reach into my bag. I pull out headphones and Otter Oscar and tuck him behind my iPhone. The otter angles my phone up, and I snuggle back against Ben. I plug in the headphones; one bud for me, the other bud for Ben.

  “Can you see?” I ask.

  “Yes.” His breath beats against my hair.

  I press Play.

  It only takes a couple of episodes for Ben to fall asleep behind me. I can tell because his body—normally wound so tight—relaxes against mine and his breathing becomes even, a slow patter on my neck. Ben’s ice pack melts a wet spot in the bed, so I move it from his side and drop it to the floor. People file in and out of the suite, mostly young travelers in their early twenties. They all have that fresh-from-the-club vibe, and most stumble unevenly to their bed and pass out.

  I’m wired. I can’t even think about sleep. The stab wound was numb from whatever painkillers they were giving me at the hospital, but now it feels hot and throbbing. They gave me some Vicodin when I left, so I check the time on my phone to see when I need to dose up again. It’s nearly three in the morning—time to take another pill.

  I carefully shimmy out of Ben’s embrace, leaving him asleep in bed. Then I rummage through my bag until I find the two little orange prescription bottles, one for antibiotics and the other for the pain. I tiptoe out of the room and down the hall. The hardwood floor stops abruptly at the bathroom and turns into square tiles, which feel cold under my feet.

  The communal bathroom is empty, but it is a bizarre time of night to be out and about. I stand in front of a sink and roll my shirt up my side. I let out a small hiss of pain when the fabric of my shirt catches on the dried blood at the edge of my bandage. Crap. This sucks. I take a paper towel out of the dispenser, run water over it, and dab it around the bandage to clean it up.