Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)

by Abigail Graham

  Across the hall, I find an empty bedroom. The dresser drawers are all on the floor, emptied of their contents, upturned or laying on their sides. The bed is bare.

  Except for the guy sitting on it. It's one of Ana's guards, the big bearded one, the older of the two that always followed her from place to place.

  He doesn't seem to see me at all as I walk inside the room. I stop when I notice something lying on the floor.

  I gather the pieces of a ripped-up Burger King paper crown in my hands and let out a sound like my soul is being yanked out through my nose.

  Only then does Big Guy notice me. He stands up and takes a long pull from a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  "You," he growls.

  Eep.

  He comes at me faster than an old man should, more nimble than he has any right to be, and it's all I can do to grab his wrists and keep his ham hands from my throat. He's fucking strong; I can barely stop him.

  Akele steps into the room and pulls the old man back, hooking his arms under his shoulders to lift him bodily from the ground and away from me.

  "Let go," he roars, "Look at what he did! You pig! I will kill you!"

  "It's not what it looks like," I tell him. "I didn't do this, it's fake—"

  "That picture is not fake!"

  "Listen to me," I beg him. "I was set up. Grandolf followed me into the locker room, but nothing happened. I would never cheat on Ana. Grandolf has had it out for her since this started, and she's got a crazy thing about me.”

  My phone rings.

  Everyone in the room freezes.

  I answer it. "Um?"

  It's Coach. "Where in the fuck are you? The game is starting in fifteen minutes—"

  "I don't care," I tell him and stick it back in my pocket.

  "Talk to me," I tell the old man. "I want to help somehow. Where is she now? What did they do to her?"

  "They took her back."

  "Can you help us follow her?"

  He shakes his head. "Even if I would let you near my little princess, you handful of garbage, I cannot. I have been exiled by the queen herself."

  "What? Why?"

  "For helping you," he snarls. "For helping the princess sneak away when she wished to see you. For helping you hook your fingers in her chest and rip out her heart. You destroyed her, you monster. I! Will! Kill! You!"

  He tries to shake loose of Akele, but it's like watching a toddler try to get away from an angry dad.

  "Calm down," Akele roars, his voice echoing off the ceiling. "I know this man. Jason Powell is the finest man I have ever known. He is a true warrior poet. He would never hurt his princess. This is all a setup. You must see that."

  "Let him go," I say.

  Akele blinks.

  "Do it."

  He releases the old man, who glares at me, still holding his whiskey bottle like a weapon.

  He stares at me.

  "Do it," I say again.

  "Do what?" he growls.

  "Kill me. If I can't get her back, you should kill me. I don't have anything left to live for."

  He blinks a few times.

  "I love her. That's it. That's all there is. I love her. I'd never do this. I didn't want this to happen. I just wanted her to be happy. If I'd know Grandolf was planning something, I'd have told Ana about it. I never imagined she'd do something like this. It has to be her. She got the security camera video and took stills. Had to be. She called the tabloid. It's all her."

  "Why should I believe you?" the old man growls. "Why? You boys are all the same."

  "Don't believe me. Smash that bottle over my head and get it over with. There's nothing left for me. Everything I touch turns to dust. Everyone I love is torn away. Everything turns to ash in my mouth. What's the point?"

  I sink to my knees, and gather up the pieces of crown I dropped.

  Anguish clenches my heart like a stony fist. I can't breathe. I can't live. A great frozen hole has been ripped in my chest.

  My heart is already gone. If the old man doesn't finish me off, I'll just sit here on my knees until I die.

  "Thorlief," the old man says. "My name is Thorlief. I've guarded Princess Ana since she was nine years old."

  I look up. "So you're like her dad."

  "If you say so."

  "I guess this kinda had to happen, then."

  He doesn't seem to appreciate the joke.

  Akele picks me up. He lift me by the armpits and pulls me to my feet.

  "We're going to the Deerhead," he announces.

  "You can still make the game," I say, my voice tinny and distant in my own ears.

  "Fuck the game," Akele says.

  Aheahe nods.

  Dee takes it all in, in shock.

  "Are you just going to fucking give up?"

  I look at her. "I don't even have a passport. What am I supposed to do?"

  "Fight for her," she says.

  "How? I can't punch a country in the face."

  Her eyes remain locked on me as she starts texting on her phone. She looks at Akele and Aheahe.

  "Get. Everybody," she says.

  "For what?"

  "Deerhead, like you said," Dee announces. "Come on."

  I trudge down the stairs and up deserted Main Street. Everyone is at the game. The Deerhead stands open, big doors ready to let the air in and invite in revelers for a post-game drink. The bartender looks up when he sees us walk in.

  "Ah, Christ," he says.

  Thorlief finishes his bottle of sour mash like it's a bottle of fucking iced tea and tosses it in a wastebasket. He looms over the bartender.

  "Barkeep, liquor."

  "What kind?"

  "All of it."

  I sit down next to Thorlief. "I want what he's having, but more of it."

  "Please don't trash my bar again," he sighs.

  Akele, Aheahe, and Dee crowd in behind us.

  The bartender pushes me a tumbler of brown something, and I drink half of it in one go, hoping the poison will kill the pain and the rest of me with it.

  "There's nothing we can do?" Dee asks.

  Thorlief shakes his head. "My travel privileges have been revoked. I can never set foot on the island again. The queen informed me personally before the other guards dragged Ana to the airport."

  "Why are we sitting here? We could still catch her," Dee shouts.

  Thorlief shakes his head. "She is already in the air. She was gone hours ago. It is over. I have nothing left."

  "Join the club," I groan.

  "You're both fucking pathetic," Dee says. "Come on, Jason. I know you want to do something!"

  "What, Dee? Fly to Jyvaslka and do what? Maybe I should charter a boat?"

  "Perhaps I can help?"

  The five of us whirl. Thorlief barely keeps himself on his stool. I have to steady him with one hand on his boulder-like shoulder.

  Standing in the door is a tall, young man with blond hair, maybe seventeen at the most, in a sea-green polo shirt and slacks. He wears his ashen hair in a ponytail and carries himself with a straight-backed grace that commands the attention of the few drunks who are getting primed for tonight, and our sad little band.

  "Who are you?" I demand.

  Thorlief gets up and falls into a drunken bow that almost face-plants him on the floor.

  "Your Grace," he mumbles.

  "I'm Prince Konstantin. Princess Ana's brother."

  "Seriously?" Akele says.

  "Hi, Prince," Aheahe says.

  "Are you going to trash my bar?" the bartender says.

  I stand up. "Why are you here?"

  He puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I am here because I love, how are you saying, big sister? Yes, I love big sister and I want to help her. She is very sad. Unless you are why she is sad, then I must cut your dick off."

  "It's not my fault," I choke out.

  "Let me translate for you," Thorlief says, rising.

  They go back and forth in their native tongue. I have no idea what they're saying
, but the prince turns redder and redder with every word.

  "This whore did this thing to my sister?" he says to me.

  "Uh, yeah."

  "Then she must pay," he says, slamming his fist into his hand. "But first we must be stopping the wedding."

  I blink. "Wait, what wedding?"

  "The wedding of Ana to Mortimer."

  "Hold up," Dee says. "Wedding to—?"

  "Why am I in repeating? Are you having sawdust in your ears? Princess Ana must marry. The queen has decreed it."

  "Okay," I sigh, "so if I want to get Ana back, I have to somehow get to a foreign country thousands of miles away with no transportation and no passport and somehow get into a closely guarded wedding and break it up without getting executed by my girlfriend's mother?"

  "Yes!"

  "Oh fuck me, more booze."

  Just then, more people to start to pile in.

  Izzy comes first, with Chester Caulfield on his heels, and the rest of the team files in behind him, most of them still in their pads. Half the cheerleading squad packs into the bar, and finally the De La Warr Knight in his giant foam costume ducks under the lintel and tromps into the bar carrying his seven-foot foam lance.

  "What is this?" the bartender demands. "Some kind of a joke?"

  Akele stands to his full height.

  "Brothers and sisters," he thunders, his voice rolling along the ceiling like a distant storm, shaking the rusty, old chandeliers. "We have been called together today on a holy quest. We have been bound in blood and pain on the field of battle, a bond that no one can understand who has not shared it."

  He walks around the room, arms up, preaching.

  "Our mission is a difficult one. An ocean and a castle stand between us and victory. I ask you this day to put everything on the line for Jason Powell and Ana De Vries, to risk everything. There may be difficulties. There may be casualties. We may not return, but if we fall, we will ride in Valhalla eternal as warriors of renown. What we do today will be legendary. We will be more than players, more than cheerleaders, more than a guy in a foam suit. We will be heroes. Who's with me!"

  "I am," Aheahe roars.

  Then the room goes completely silent. Everybody kind of shuffles around on their feet.

  Oh, okay then.

  "I am going," Thorlief says, rising to stand, shakily, next to Akele.

  The prince walks over and slaps the huge guard's shoulder.

  "I too am joining this, ah, quest."

  "You don't need to go, Akele," I sigh, walking to the middle of the room. "I can handle this myself."

  "How many times has he carried us?" Aheahe shouts. "Will we abandon him in his time of need? Is that how you will remember this day? When you let your friend face danger alone?"

  Izzy walks over. "In."

  Cheesy Caulfield is next. "In," he agrees.

  "Please leave," the bartender pleads.

  The Knight walks over and pumps his foam lance in the air.

  Suddenly I'm surrounded by hands slapping my shoulders and back.

  "Together we are stronger," Akele declares. "We need cars, boats, helicopters, whatever we need to get to… how are we doing this again?"

  "I am having a private airplane," Prince Konstantin says. "It will holding all the people. We must go now!"

  "All right!" Akele roars, "Everybody get in the van! We're breaking up a wedding!"

  I turn to Thorlief and Konstantin.

  "You can get us on the island?"

  Konstantin grins. "For Ana? I can move the world."

  That hole in my chest begins to fill with something swelling up inside, a fire that burns through my veins.

  "Let's go," I bellow. "We've got work to do!"

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ana

  I had not expected to set foot here for a long time. It no longer feels real. My bed is broad enough for me to lie across it with room to spare. My rooms are huge, as big as a house all by themselves. I am surrounded by opulence and history, ensconced in an ancient castle with all the modern creature comforts and luxuries that would make a rich man gasp.

  I was born in this room. Literally; my mother gave birth on this bed, surrounded by doctors and midwives and attendants. My entire childhood was spent here. This is my place, where I began. It should be a comfort to sit here again in this room I know so well, with the distant sea and its lush crashing sound echoing through my open window as the cool, damp air washes over me.

  I want to go home.

  Less than seven hours ago, I was standing in my room at my house in Newark, and I was screaming. When I saw The Royal Exposé, it was like a spear thrust through my heart, like a terrible iron fist smashed through my ribs, grabbed it, and ripped it free, still beating.

  Now there is only a dull, raw ache, like an open wound in my soul. Nothing feels real anymore. Nothing matters. I am wearing the same clothes I was, sitting here on this different bed so far from the place where I left my soul behind. I vaguely remember tearing the paper crown to pieces in my anguished rage.

  I gave him everything. All of me. How could he do this? Not only sleep with another woman, but sleep with her, that repulsive harridan that hounded me from when I first set foot on campus. The betrayal is crushing, but the insult is salt on the wounds, and these wounds run deep.

  They will never heal, only scab over. My skin is unbroken, but my soul is bleeding to death, and soon there will be nothing but a bitter shell, an echo of the person I always wished I was. I am my own grave.

  I hate him.

  That is what I repeat to myself, over and over and over. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. I try to make it true. Hate would be sweet now, like a bitter draught to cleanse the palate after a heavy meal that turned greasy and cold in my mouth.

  I cannot make myself hate him. I can think only of his love and tenderness and gentleness and joy in me and wonder, is all such love a lie? Can there be any truth to any of it anywhere? If something so sweet can be so false, what hope is there in happiness?

  Not for the first time since I arrived, I lean my hands on the worn rail of the parapet and think of vaulting over it to throw myself onto the jagged rocks below and let the sea lap up my broken body. How can I survive this, being alive and yet dead in my soul?

  I begin to weep, and my door opens.

  Jason

  Two weeks ago, if you told me I'd be standing on an airport tarmac surrounded by a football team, cheerleading squad, marching band, and a guy in a foam-rubber knight suit, I'd believe everything but the airport part.

  When Prince Konstantin said he had a plane, I sort of facetiously pictured the kind of little prop plane Reggie Macintosh flies as part of his skywriting business. This thing is a jet, big enough to hold all of us with room to spare.

  "How are we going to get into the country?"

  "I'm invited to the wedding," Konstantin says. "I'll get us in."

  He shifts on his feet and sighs. "Mother has commanded Anastasia to marry Mortimer Andrew Karl Victor de Kupp and take him as her prince consort when she ascends to the crown."

  I stare at him. Akele and Aheahe stare at him. Dee checks her phone.

  "Wow, Grandolf has her relationship status marked 'it's complicated' on Facebook."

  Everyone turns to her.

  "What?" I say.

  "Nothing. Guess she got in trouble for trying to step out on her hubby. Poor guy."

  "Really," I groan.

  "When we are arriving," Prince Konstantin says, sharply, "I will be doing the talking. We cannot all of you just walk into the castle."

  "Has anyone ever told you that you talk like the Swedish Chef?" Izzy says.

  Akele elbows him, which almost knocks him on his ass.

  Konstantin gives this all a blank look. "Moving on. We will be sneaking in."

  "Sneaking. Sneaking into a castle." I sigh, hard, and pinch my nose.

  "Yes. Am I saying the English wrong?"

  "No, I understand. You want to sneak all of these people
into a castle."

  He looks around. "Bringing them was not my idea."

  "It's a great idea," Akele says, clapping Konstantin on the shoulder. The slender prince's knees buckle from the impact.

  He looks at Akele's ham-hand and smiles awkwardly, then gently lifts it away. Or tries to, anyway.

  "Hurry," the prince orders. "Following me."

  He jogs up the stairs, and I follow. The plane is fueling up while everyone else gets on board. All of the seats are big, like first-class. After I sit down, the rest of the team clambers on board, filling up the seats. Aheahe and Akele wedge themselves into the set of seats behind mine, and Izzy drops in beside me.

  "Is there going to be a movie?" Aheahe says. "In-flight snack? I need a snack."

  Dee sits next to Konstantin.

  "This is actually happening," she says.

  "Yeah," I agree.

  The fuel truck disconnects and rolls away. The flight attendant closes the door, and I wonder if that's the right term, flight attendant.

  Thorlief steps up and looks at Izzy.

  "Switch seats."

  "Hey man—" Izzy starts.

  Thorlief folds his giant arms over his chest and flexes them. He's abandoned his usual suit coat and his massive muscles bulge in his dress shirt, bunching up the seams.

  "Now."

  "Okay," Izzy squeaks.

  After Izzy climbs over me, Thorlief grabs the overhead bins and levers himself into the seat.

  "Uh, hi."

  He glances at me and leans back in the seat. "The princess loves you."

  "Yeah," I say in a thick voice. "I know. She deserves better."

  He gives me a side-eyed glance but says nothing.

  "You're supposed to argue with me."

  "I'm not going to. She does, but she chose you."

  "Uh. Thanks."

  His huge shoulders shrug. "I believe you did not sleep with the woman professor."

  "Thanks again."

  "If you do ever hurt Princess Anastasia, I will rip your spine out and fuck you with it."

  "Okay, duly noted."

  "She is like a daughter to me."

  "Yeah, I gathered that."

  As the plane taxis along, Konstantin glances at us but says nothing.

  The air feels a little empty. I try to fill it. Inanely.