by Holly Rayner
“You don’t have a disease, right?” I ask Magnolia.
“Nothing you can catch from drinking after me.”
Freezing, I stare at her over the mug.
With a laugh, she swats my arm. “Kidding!”
“Good. I was about to ask if you shouldn’t be at the doctor’s right now. Tell me something. Anything. Distract me. What did you do during the, like, ten minutes we were apart?”
“I walked back to my apartment,” she says dramatically, “then I opened up the front door…”
“Uh-huh?”
“Then you called! And I drove over here.”
“Riveting,” I laugh.
“Yeah. The cats were super confused. They didn’t get why I was only home for two seconds.”
The sound of a car door slamming makes me sit up straight.
Magnolia’s eyebrows rise.
“Was that…” I choke on the rest of the question.
She goes to the window near the fridge. “Yeah. It’s him.”
Quick as a whip, I join her at the window. Maya’s walking for the front door, dressed in a bathing suit and shorts with her hair damp and a towel in her arms. Kal takes a second to lock the car, then follows behind. I stand still, creeping on them until they both disappear into the house.
“I’m going over there,” I say, committing to the action before I can chicken out.
“You go, girl. I’ll be here as backup.”
“In case of what?”
“Anything at all,” she answers with an absolutely serious face.
“Good to know. Sorry we don’t have walkie-talkies.”
I watch Kal’s side door. The curtains are drawn, no sign of activity within.
“You going?” Magnolia asks.
“Yeah. Yep.”
Letter in hand, I take off at a brisk walk, collecting grass clippings on my sneakers as I bridge the divide between mine and Kal’s yard. My stomach churns, screaming at me to turn back, to follow through with my idea of heading back to New York early and forgetting all about the man who stole my heart before he broke it without a second thought.
I’m committed, though. I’ve been through worse than a difficult conversation, and I’m stronger than I look, or even think I am sometimes.
With a shaking fist, I knock on the front door. Silence follows.
I’m about to knock again when I hear footsteps coming my way. The door opens, and Kal stands there. He blinks, clearly surprised to see me.
I guess after the way he treated me the other night he figured I wouldn’t come back ever again.
The thought makes me nauseous. Both because he’s an adult and should never be that callous with someone and because yeah, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the letter.
“Julia,” he says.
The way he says my name, it’s like he can’t decide how to feel. His face is a mask of coolness, either because he’s working to keep it that way or because he’s that shocked to see me.
“How are you?” he asks slowly.
I open my mouth, but where are the words?
Kal’s eyebrows knit together. “Is everything all right?”
Finally, I get myself together enough to speak. “No. It’s not. You’ve been keeping a big secret haven’t you? And I don’t mean Kal has been. Nikos has.”
It comes out sharper than I meant it to. The surprise in his eyes is bright as lightning.
“What are you talking about?” he asks.
I hold the letter up. It’s in reach. He could take it.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he looks between it and me like I’m nothing more than a door-to-door salesman hawking goods he couldn’t care less about.
“This came to Shay’s house,” I say. “I opened it by accident, and I’m sorry about that. I was flipping through the mail and opening everything without her name on it without paying attention. I was… distracted.”
By obsessive thoughts about you.
“And?”
“It was addressed to you. Not you. I mean, yes, you.”
Lord, could I lose my cool any harder? If I really did have walkie-talkies, I’d be on the channel now, requesting emergency backup from Magnolia. She’s definitely watching this all play out from the kitchen window, anyway.
“It was for Nikos Galanis.”
Finally, he takes the letter. He doesn’t read it, or even really look at it. His gaze is glued to my face.
“All this time,” I say, “I knew you were hiding something, that you had a secret. What I got wrong was that it was Kal who had a closet of skeletons, and that’s not the case. It’s Nikos who needs to unburden himself, isn’t it?”
“You are making no sense.” His jaw flexes.
“Are you kidding me?” Hands planted on my hips, I gawk at him. “It’s right there in the letter!”
His eyes cut over my shoulder. “Please, keep your voice down.”
“Because you don’t want the neighbors to know?” I deliberately soften my tone. “What happened? Are you in trouble with the law?”
“What? Of course not.”
I nod at the letter in his hands. “It says your dad is ill. I understand, Kal. Nikos.”
There’s the crinkling of paper as his fingers tighten around the letter.
“Dad, my tablet won’t charge,” Maya says from in the house.
I suck in a sharp breath. Maya shouldn’t hear this conversation.
Also, as much as I want to see her, that’s not a good idea right now. I’m not in the most controlled state.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Kal calls over his shoulder. “Play with your toys until then.”
His face is steely when he turns back to me. Before he can say anything else, I speak up.
“I’m here to offer support,” I say. My pride and feelings are hurt, but I need to be bigger than them. There’s no telling what kind of pain Kal is going through.
“Support for what?” he asks through gritted teeth.
“I know what it’s like to have a sick parent. Whatever it is you need, I’m here.”
His eyes narrow—not the reaction I expected—and he holds up the letter.
“How can I ask for support from a person I cannot trust?”
A second later, the door is slammed in my face.
My jaw drops, the roaring of a train filling my ears.
I should walk away, but my legs seem to be cemented to the spot. Muffled voices sound from the other side of the door. Kal and Maya are going on about their days.
Their lives.
My heart and stomach won’t calm down. I feel like I’m about to deposit my breakfast in the bushes.
Somehow, I make it back to Shay’s house. Magnolia meets me in the living room.
“What did he say?” She’s found the pantry, and asks this question around mouthfuls of popcorn.
“You watched, right?”
“Yeah. Couldn’t hear anything, though.”
It should be funny that she watched mine and Kal’s exchange while eating popcorn, like it was all a movie, but it’s uncertain whether or not I’ll ever find anything funny again.
Taking a seat on the couch, I stare at the wall. “He denied everything.”
“Is there a chance his name’s not really… what was it?”
“Nikos. If you’d have seen the look on his face when I said it… it’s definitely him.”
Magnolia settles next to me. “I’m sorry, Julia.”
“I offered my help. Anything he needs. That’s the really upsetting part. I told him I understand what it’s like to… to be in his situation… and it didn’t matter. It’s like that’s what made him shut the door in my face.”
“Then forget about him. Obviously, he’s a brick wall. He doesn’t want to open up to anyone.”
“Yeah.”
I’ve agreed verbally, but with no heart. The letter and Kal’s behavior have only increased my desire to know more about what he’s hiding.
“You�
��re not letting this go, are you?” Magnolia says.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s written all over your face.”
I pop to standing. “Have you seen my laptop?”
Chapter 14
Julia
Computer in hand after a desperate, five-minute long search for it on both floors of the house, I settle back onto the couch. Magnolia has moved on from popcorn and is enjoying an orange popsicle.
“I love it,” she says. “First time internet searching a guy.”
Over the laptop, I cringe at her. “I already did it. I mean, I searched Kal Harris.”
“Yeah, but now you’re searching Nikos Galanis. He’s a whole different person.”
Is he? Our first evening comes back to me, the meal when we sat on a blanket on the floor with Maya and talked and laughed. Kal seemed happy and carefree. I never would have thought then that he had anything weighing his soul down, any secrets to hide.
Wasn’t that the real him? Kal or Nikos. It doesn’t matter. A name is nothing, but a spirit is everything.
“We might not even get any hits,” I mutter, typing the name into a search engine. “Or we could get so many it’ll be impossible to sort through them.”
“Right. Nikos Galanis could be a common name where he’s from. Like John Smith here.”
“Exactly.”
I’m expecting some social media pages to pop up first. Maybe a crime report, if he ever got into trouble.
Neither one of these things happen. It’s all articles. Doing a quick scroll of the first page of hits, I find they’re all related in some way to a royal family and a place called…
“Kalista,” I murmur.
“I’ve heard of that place.” Magnolia finishes up the last of her popsicle. “Isn’t it near Greece?”
There’s one thing Kal told me the truth about. He said he came from a small island near there.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s one of those places I always forget exists. I never hear much from it.”
“Is that where he’s from?”
“Maybe. I don’t see any other Nikos Galanis. Look.”
I turn the laptop around to show her the search results.
“What’s with the royal family stuff?” She clicks on something, and I take charge of the computer again.
“Maybe he worked for them.” I study the website she’s selected. “This is some kind of entertainment news site.”
“What’s it say?”
I read the article’s headline: “Kalista’s Royal Legacy.”
“Sounds dramatic. Let’s hear it.”
My tongue’s too thick. I scan the article, looking for key words like I’m cramming for a test two minutes before the teacher hands out the papers.
“Come on, come on,” Magnolia urges.
“Uh, yeah.” I swipe my palm across my face. “It’s basically like an overview of what’s happened with Kalista’s royal family over the last decade. It says that the country is run by a King Kostas, and he has three children. Darius… Thea… Oh my God.”
“Oh my God, what?”
“And Nikos.”
“You don’t think…” Magnolia trails off, her eyes wide as saucers.
“No. That’s crazy. Like you said, Nikos could be a common name in Kalista.”
“I was joking,” Magnolia whispers.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Is there more?”
“Uh… let’s see.” I use my finger to keep track of the lines I run down. “It’s stuff about the procedures and laws the king has implemented in the last few years. There’s nothing else about his kids.”
“Go back. There has to be more.”
I go back to the search page. It doesn’t take much effort to find something that looks full of juicy info.
“The Case of the Missing Prince,” I recite from the second article’s headline.
“Ooh. This will be good.”
“This says that Kostas’ youngest son, Nikos, used to be the country’s culture minister. Then one day, about eight years ago, he vanished, basically in the middle of the night.”
Magnolia leans forward, captivated. “Where did he go?”
“It’s a mystery. Hold on.” I shake my head and reread the part I rushed over. “There are multiple rumors regarding where he might have gone. One is that his older brother, jealous of Nikos’ good looks and popularity with the ladies, had him murdered.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Harsh. Wait. There’s more. Another rumor is that he left his home country for a life of piracy.”
Magnolia cocks an eyebrow. “He left being a prince and culture minister to rob fishing boats and go weeks without a shower?”
“Yeah, piracy isn’t what it was a few hundred years ago.”
She taps her popsicle stick on the top of my laptop. “Are there more theories about what happened?”
“There’s one more. Some say the prince left his family behind to follow his artist lover overseas. Then it just finishes by saying that whatever the reason, he hasn’t been seen or heard from in years.”
“That’s it?” Magnolia slumps. “That was short. It’s definitely him, though.”
“We don’t know for sure,” I say over the sound of my pounding heart.
“The letter…”
“Both Nikos and Thea could be common names there. Especially if the royal kids have them. People love naming their babies after royalty.”
“Do they?”
“Yeah,” I say, not fully sure about what I’m declaring.
I don’t know why I’m adamantly denying the possibility that the Nikos we’re reading about online is the man living next door. An explanation is right in front of me. I’ve been looking for it for days.
But now that it’s here I’m terrified.
Being in hiding as a normal person is one thing, but being in hiding as a prince is… I don’t know. Mind-blowing.
A person would need to have a really, really good reason to leave behind the kind of lush life I’m sure Prince Nikos had in Kalista.
“Julia?”
“Huh?” I blink Magnolia into focus.
“I said your name like, three or four times. What’s going on?”
“Sorry, I’m… why would the prince leave his home?”
“To be a pirate.”
“Seriously,” I say.
“I don’t know.” She lifts her palms up in question. “To be a space pirate?”
“What if it’s something bad?” I whisper. “What if we keep digging and find something out that we don’t want to?”
“Like that he’s a murderer?”
I press my fingers against my lips. I can’t see that man hurting anyone. Not unless you count the ways he’s hurt my feelings.
“If that’s the case, don’t you want to know it?” Magnolia asks. “So that you can be better prepared for whatever comes next? Say he is a murderer? You want to live next door to him?”
“I was moving anyway.” I bite the inside of my cheek. That’s beside the point right now.
“Anyway,” I continue, “if he did leave his country because he killed someone and the authorities haven’t caught on to it, do you really think two women browsing the internet in Ohio are going to bring the truth to light?”
Magnolia points at the keyboard. “Search.”
With anxiety gnawing at my stomach, I go for it. In the images section of the search, the first picture is a punch to the face.
It’s Kal. I mean Nikos. Kal-Nikos? Nikos-Kal?
He’s dressed in a suit, shaking another man’s hand at some kind of formal event. It’s an older photo. He doesn’t look like he could be far out of college, and he’s sporting some facial scruff he doesn’t have now.
Next to the photo are more pictures that are undeniably of him. One is a portrait, where he gazes stoically back at the camera. Another is a candid pic of him on a basketball court with friends.
All of the energy leaves my body and I slump back against the couch. There’s no more denying it. My neighbor is a missing Mediterranean prince.
Magnolia’s taken the computer from my lap. She squints at the basketball pic. “He looks happy in that one.”
“Yeah,” I say. “He does.”
“You okay?”
“You know what this means, right?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Magnolia starts giggling. “He’s a prince.”
I close my eyes. This is too crazy.
“Why didn’t he just tell me?” I ask.
Then again, what makes me think I’m special to him? We haven’t known each other that long.
“He didn’t tell anyone,” Magnolia says. “Clearly, he wants to live in hiding.”
“In hiding,” I repeat with a murmur. “He must be in some kind of trouble.”
“Yeah. Definitely.” She taps her fingers against pursed lips. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Packing up and leaving for New York no longer feels like an option. Not until I talk to Kal one last time. If I’m direct with him and let him know I’ve found out exactly who he is, maybe I’ll get an explanation.
Some resolution.
It’s that I’m really after.
“What would you do?” I ask Magnolia.
“Spy,” she answers right away. “If he has this one secret, who knows what else he’s hiding?”
I can’t tell if she’s joking or not. Either way, the answer at least makes me smile.
“Like hide in his bushes and peak into his windows?” I ask. “You know that’s a sure way to end up in jail.”
“It would be worth it.” She checks her phone. “I need to go to my closing shift. Want to come with?”
“Mm…”
“What else do you have to do?” Magnolia asks. “Are you just gonna sit around here and mope about this?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Good point. Okay, I’m coming with.”
She claps her hands. “Hey, you know we’re hiring for someone part-time.”
My heart aches. I’m busy enough with my own business, but a big part of me would love to work a few hours a week in downtown Sterling. Especially alongside Magnolia.
“New York,” I remind her.
“I’m still hoping you’ll change your mind.”