by Ashlyn Kane
“Flip?”
“That’s his name. I mean, his name is His Royal Highness Prince Antoine-Philippe, but that’s a mouthful.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You are the worst brother ever.”
“Hey!”
“Details,” Lina persisted. “This is the guy who’s got you dating again after ten years of slutty denial. And you lied to me about it. I demand compensation. What’s he like?”
Sighing, Brayden crawled farther back on the bed and stared up at the hammered tin ceiling. The problem, he suspected, with telling Lina that Flip was kind and compassionate and warm and funny and generous and charming was that Brayden would have to acknowledge, at least to himself, that the primary problem with their relationship was that it was fake. “Handsome. Charming. Good dancer. Good with kids.” He remembered how Clara looked at him like he hung the moon, and how obviously he adored her. “He loves his family, and he’d do anything for his people.”
Yep. There they were—feelings. The worst.
“God, you have it bad, huh?”
Brayden swallowed. He recognized the truth, even if he didn’t know what to do about it. “Would I be here if I didn’t?”
“Bro.” Lina’s voice broke. Oh no, she was going to cry. “I know… I know things weren’t easy for you after Thomas died. I know we don’t talk about what he meant to you. And we don’t have to. But I just… I’m so glad that you want to stop punishing yourself for something that wasn’t your fault.”
Shit, now Brayden wanted to cry—partly because Lina was right, and partly because she wasn’t. He wasn’t really dating Flip, and he hadn’t stopped punishing himself, even though he desperately wanted to. He didn’t know how. “I, ah… thanks,” he said, voice thick.
“Uh-huh.” She sniffled and then inhaled audibly in an obvious attempt to rally. “So, what’s he like in bed?”
Brayden laughed in spite of himself, swiping at the single tear that had escaped. “A perfect gentleman,” he said, which was true. Flip had let him have the entire bedroom to himself. “And that’s all I’m saying.”
“I hope he gets over that if he wants to keep you around.”
She knew him way too well, but if he said anything else, she’d figure out they hadn’t slept together at all, and then she’d really get suspicious. “I have to go. Twenty bucks says Grandma sent me a ten-page critique on our dance via text message, and I should probably call Mom and Dad. And have lunch. Seriously, I am starving.”
Lina let him go, and he took a few deep breaths before thumbing open his texts.
Grandma had restrained herself to only four texts. His mother had sent seven.
Brayden went easy on himself and opened Grandma’s first.
Brayden, sweetheart, what a handsome dance partner you found. That one wasn’t so bad. Then, You need to watch that footwork on the change steps, young man. Fine, he probably deserved that; he was surprised she hadn’t sent one admonishing him for not practicing enough. Next, Did I read right that your partner is really your boyfriend? And he’s the prince of Lyngria?
Brayden scrolled down to the final message.
Tell His Royal Highness to let you lead next time.
He snorted in spite of himself. He loved his grandmother.
Mom, though—well, he loved her too, but she could be a little overbearing sometimes. Probably that had to do with her only son’s heart being tragically broken at sixteen. With great trepidation, he opened her texts.
Grandma says you’re dating the crown prince of a European country. At first I thought maybe dementia was setting in, like it did with your grandfather.
Brayden winced. His mother knew how to make that guilt trip hurt.
I know you’re not interested in dating. You tell me so often enough. And where would you even meet a prince? But then I watched the video. When I saw the way you looked at him…. Oh, sweetie, I’m so happy. You seemed so determined to be alone, and I didn’t want to push—
Brayden’s throat closed up.
—but you’ve needed a friend these past ten years, if nothing else. I’m so glad you found that, even if I’m hurt you didn’t tell me.
Fuck. He closed his eyes and bit his lip. How could he tell her the truth? Her heart would break for him all over again.
I’ll let you be, since I bet you have lots to talk about with your partner this morning. Call me when you can, though, okay? I love you.
Brayden sniffed once, wiped his eyes on the sleeve of Flip’s bathrobe, and then texted, Thanks, Mom. Love you too.
He dressed by rote—underwear, socks, jeans, T-shirt, sweater. Not knowing what else to do with them, he folded the pajamas and left them on the bed. Then he hung the bathrobe behind the door. The slippers he kept.
Now he just had to go out there and tell Flip—
What, exactly?
A quiet knock on the door. “Brayden?” Pause. Brayden imagined Flip saying Are you decent? and almost giggled. “May I come in?”
Time to face the music. He cleared his throat. “Sure.”
Flip did, quietly, and closed the door behind him. He kept his voice low. “My parents are in the sitting room. I didn’t want you to be unprepared.”
“Oh. Right. Thanks, I guess.” He ran a hand through his hair, the skin all down his back prickling. “I mean, we should probably decide what we’re going to tell them.”
Flip managed to imbue even a grimace with a sort of upper-class eloquence. “I want to apologize again. I shouldn’t have let them think we were dating in the first place, and now I’ve dragged you and your whole family into a lie.”
Brayden smiled weakly. “You’re not the only one who had a hand in this. I could’ve said no.” He blew out a long breath.
“I should have known better.” He shook his head. “On top of it all, you’ve lost any anonymity you might have had. Anywhere you go in this country, people will know you. You’ll be hounded.”
Brayden swallowed hard and grasped for words. “I can change my vacation plans, go back to Paris, maybe try Copenhagen. I mean, my family will be pissed—they’re already super invested in this fake relationship, but—”
Flip’s head came up. “You didn’t tell them the truth?”
Brayden fought the urge to squirm. “I didn’t exactly lie either. But no, I let them think…. Past trauma, remember? They haven’t even met you, and they already love you for healing my tragic broken heart.” Whoops, a little bitterness spilled out in that last sentence.
At that, Flip’s eyebrow and lip twitched. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, enunciating each syllable, “Perhaps… I might suggest a solution.”
Brayden flopped back onto the perfect mattress. “I’m all ears.”
“I propose that we continue the charade.”
And he sat up again. That sounded dangerous… and dangerously tempting. “Oh?”
Flip shrugged, looking only half as sheepish as Brayden felt listening to his explanation. “It’s too late to undo what we’ve done. But if we continue seeing each other, you’ll still be able to do some sightseeing unmolested—with royal security, but better than nothing. Our families will be none the wiser and can go on believing we’ve found happiness a little while longer. After your holiday is over, we can pretend to have a long-distance relationship that ends in an amicable breakup, which should satisfy everyone.”
Everyone but me. “You’re talking about me staying here with you for two and a half weeks… including Christmas.”
Flip twitched again. “If you’d be more comfortable in your own rooms, I can arrange that. And I’ll make your excuses for you at Christmas. No one will bother you if you wish to be left alone.”
Damn it. He really was a prince. “It would look a little weird if we shared a bed one night and then just stopped. I mean, where did you even sleep last night?”
For a second, he would have sworn Flip was blushing. “The couch is comfortable enough in a pinch.”
Shit, he really had kick
ed Flip out of bed. “Okay, no.” Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it. “If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it. I’m not going to kick you out of your own bed again. So either you let me take the couch, and if someone catches us we’ll just say I have insomnia”—Flip already looked mutinous at this idea, as though Brayden rejecting his hospitality offended him on a deeply personal level—“or we can share.”
Well. He did it.
“You… wouldn’t mind?”
Brayden gestured at the enormous bed he sat on. “I think there’s room for two. Maybe four if you’re friendly. We’re adults, we’re both gay, it’s not like there’s gonna be any surprises. You’ve already seen me mostly naked.”
Flip almost smiled. “True… but the reverse isn’t.”
“You’re right. I demand we share a bed so I can see you in a similar state of dishabille. Seems only fair.”
Now Flip did smile—that slightly rueful one Brayden was getting very attached to and seemed to inspire on a regular basis. “Then I suppose it’s settled.”
“Good. Great. Awesome.” Brayden’s stomach growled. “So about that lunch….”
FLIP probably should have come clean, to his parents if not the press. But they had never taken so quickly to one of his boyfriends, and if he were being perfectly honest with himself, he wanted to keep Brayden around for selfish reasons. Brayden made him laugh, made him consider life from new angles.
Brayden made him feel alive, woke something in him that had been dormant so long Flip had despaired that it existed. Maybe he would only get to experience it for another few weeks, but that seemed better than nothing.
Of course, in the immediate present, their deception meant his whole immediate family, plus Brayden, was reading tabloids aloud to each other at Flip’s dining table while they ate a tray of sandwiches and other finger foods. It was perhaps a tradition Brayden could have been introduced to more gently.
“The Brown Prince?” Brayden read from the pile of English ones. “Seriously?”
“Is it the racism or the bad wordplay?” Flip’s mother asked as she glanced up from a German scandal sheet.
“I mean, both? I get that you’re probably used to the racism part, which sucks.” Brayden gestured with a tiny crustless cucumber sandwich. “But ‘brown prince’ is really bad. Like, are all the right-wing bloggers in your country just super lazy?”
On second thought, perhaps Brayden didn’t need a gradual introduction to their peculiar brand of family therapy.
Flip’s dad raised his newspaper. “Most of the zanier ones are in German or French. This one speculates on how many goats I’ll demand for a dowry.” He turned his attention to Brayden, expression serious. “Does your family have goats?”
“My parents have a cat. She does eat everything, though, so maybe she’s part goat. Does that count?”
Irfan waved a hand. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
Flip groaned and let himself put his face in his hands for just a moment. He rested his elbows on the table. “I knew you’d be like this.”
Flip had originally planned to go into the Crown Mining Co. head office today and finish making inquiries about turning the company over to public interest. Instead he’d started the day getting Brayden’s luggage retrieved from his hotel and reading about his own escapades in the press.
Prince Flips for New Man.
He was tempted to track down the rest of that bottle of tequila.
Funny. He’d invented the harebrained idea of taking Brayden as his plus-one to keep the tabloids off his back, and instead he seemed to have invited a scandal. And while he didn’t enjoy being the focus of tabloid speculation, this felt different.
Maybe because his relationship with Brayden existed in print only.
On the one hand, he didn’t want to complain that Brayden and his father got along so well. On the other hand, maybe if Flip’s parents liked Brayden less, Flip could have just told them the truth.
“You’ll have to make a statement, of course.” Flip’s mother addressed this to him, but she flicked her gaze over Brayden when she said it as well, as though to let him know she expected him to be there.
Flip had anticipated that, though he didn’t look forward to it. “Of course.”
“And I expect you’ll want to rearrange your schedule to spend some time together.” Flip’s trips home always included a plethora of visits to schools and hospitals, charitable foundations, and so on.
“I don’t want to take you away from anything important,” Brayden protested. “I haven’t been on an official palace tour yet. There are probably tons of things I can do to keep busy.”
“I’m sure we can work out a compromise,” Flip said, and suddenly his parents were looking at him as though he’d grown a second head. “What?”
“What?” his mother echoed, putting aside her tabloid and reaching for a legal pad and pen. “No, nothing, never mind.” She shook her head and uncapped the pen. “Let’s talk about this statement, shall we?”
The drafting itself didn’t take long. The royal publicist—“That’s not a real thing!” Brayden attempted to protest and was wrong again—revised it in a handful of minutes, but he took one look at Brayden’s outfit and sent him away. “You can’t appear on national TV dressed like that, not when you’re representing the Royal House of Lyngria.”
“We’re hardly married. We’ve been dating for five minutes,” Flip protested on Brayden’s behalf. Who cared if Brayden looked like, well, a commoner? He was one. So were most people.
“Is he going to send me back to Bernadette?” Brayden stage-whispered.
“Perhaps I can lend him something appropriate,” Flip suggested. Custom-ordering a new wardrobe seemed extreme.
Cedric blanched. “Good God, no. Do you know what people will say when they realize he’s wearing your clothes? And they will notice.”
Brayden raised his eyebrows. “That I’m sleeping in his bed?” he guessed. “Which I’m also doing.”
Cedric appealed to Flip. “This man is not to speak into the microphone.”
Oh no. Flip valued Cedric’s expertise, but occasionally his snobbiness conflicted with his general good intentions. Flip didn’t like to pull rank, but the situation called for it. Narrowing his eyes, he said, “This man has a name, and he will be treated with respect whether or not I am present. That includes the same self-determination accorded to anyone else in this family. Is that understood?”
Cedric flushed guiltily and cut his gaze back to Brayden. “Of course, Your Highness. Mr. Wood, I apologize. That was rude of me.”
Naturally Brayden shrugged it off. “It’s fine, dude, I definitely do not want to speak into a microphone about my relationship with the prince. Like, at all.”
With that settled, Flip let his hackles lie flat again. “That said, perhaps an etiquette lesson or two wouldn’t be amiss. Cedric, if you could arrange that?”
Brayden said, “Hey!”
Cedric allowed the tiniest fraction of a smile.
They left following Cedric’s promise to have a selection of suitable clothing in Brayden’s size sent posthaste to Flip’s apartment in the palace. As they parted, Brayden leaned in, and his shoulder bumped Flip’s. “Guess we better not tell him you lent me your pajamas.”
Flip didn’t bother to stifle his grin.
He made the official announcement just after four, with his parents behind him to one side and Brayden to the other in a smart navy cashmere sweater and wool trousers. But of course the press couldn’t simply leave it at that.
“Your Highness, after your appearance at the Night of a Thousand Lights, many people are drawing parallels between your relationship with Mr. Wood and Queen Constance’s romance with Prince Irfan. Can you comment on that?”
Flip’s parents had gotten engaged three weeks after the ball and married a year later—hardly enough time, he remembered his grandmother complaining fondly, to plan a royal wedding. “As Brayden and I were well acquainted
long before the ball, I’m afraid those parallels are rather divergent.”
“Your Highness, you canceled an appearance at the Crown Mining Co. for later today. Can we expect more events to fall by the wayside as you spend more time with Mr. Wood?”
With the ease of years of practice, Flip bit back the oh sod off, I canceled one event that desperately wanted to slip out. “The mine appearance has been rescheduled to Monday to accommodate a necessary security check after Brayden’s privacy was compromised at his hotel. I don’t anticipate further emergencies.”
A handful of other members of the press asked questions of varying levels of impertinence, but the whole ordeal was over by four thirty. They spent a few hours socializing in the palace common area with his whole family—Brayden challenged Clara to a game of Sorry!—but when Brayden’s eyelids started to droop, they begged off a family dinner to eat at the table in Flip’s rooms.
“Are you going to make it through dinner?” Flip asked, only half joking, the third time Brayden yawned into his water glass.
Brayden made a sheepish face. “Sorry. I’m mostly over the jet lag, but today’s been all over the place, and I’m still not used to the whole ‘gets dark at two thirty’ thing.”
“To be honest, I’m tempted to retire early myself.”
Brayden raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? You don’t seem that tired.”
“I was raised not to show weakness,” Flip said with no small amount of sarcasm. It worked—Brayden flashed a tired grin.
“I don’t know, I think I’ve seen you fall asleep with your mouth open on the flight.”
Brat, Flip thought fondly. He could have been embarrassed, but if they were going to pretend to be a couple for the next two and a half weeks, it seemed prudent to get over that embarrassment now. Likely it wouldn’t be the last time Brayden found him catching flies. “Do I snore? I can send someone out for earplugs.”
“You’re good.” Brayden finished his water and set the empty glass on the cart that the palace staff would remove later on. “I don’t know about me, though. You might need them for yourself.”
“I’m sure I can make it through one night.” Most of the country’s shops would be closed tomorrow, but Flip would be able to find earplugs if absolutely necessary.