CHAPTER 25
RAHUL
A single text had never caused him so much gut-churning, face-melting, teeth-grinding anxiety.
Meet me at Lake Rosetta tonight, 7 p.m.?
That was it. That was all she wrote. So he was just standing here at the lake, an hour early, waiting. Because what else was he going to do? Pace his room until he wore his carpet down to the bare floor? Talk Grey’s and Leo’s ears off even more than he already had? Take DE’s advice to go skinny-dipping at the school pool after hours (apparently, it helped her whenever she was stressed, which… okay, great for her, but Rahul would be way too freaked about breaking the rules to do something like that)?
No, none of those were options. The only reasonable thing to do had been to walk out to the lake. He wished more than anything that he had some hair gel to use, to just wear RC as armor this one time. But standing there, looking out onto the nearly frozen surface of the lake in the near dark, Rahul shook his head. He was done with all that now. He’d made his peace with it.
He stuck his hands into the pockets of his coat and tipped his head back to look at the ancient pines surrounding him. A chilly wind blew his hair across his glasses, nipped at the tops of his ears and his nose. There were ripples on the lake’s dark surface, like ruffles in silk.
There was nothing to do but wait. And if Caterina told him they were done, that he’d ruined things, he would have to accept it. He’d come so close to grasping the dream, but he had to face the facts: it might just escape his grasp, slipping through the gaps between his fingers like smoke.
CATERINA
She emerged from between two towering pines into the clearing that held Lake Rosetta in its cupped hand. It was only seven p.m., but the sky was already the color of an angry bruise, stars embedded in it like jewels. There was a close-to-full moon out, casting silver light on everything.
It took her a moment to notice him. Rahul stood with his back to her, his hands in his jacket pockets. What was most startling of all was the way he was standing—his shoulders back, his spine straight. He was standing tall, like… like RC. But then he turned sideways and the moonlight glinted off his glasses… and he looked like Rahul.
What would he say? How would he receive what she had to say? There was no way to predict whether RC or Rahul would be with her tonight.
Caterina stood there for a moment longer, watching him. Then, taking a deep breath, she said his name.
RAHUL
Rahul turned at the sound of his name, and his breath caught for a moment. Caterina was walking toward him, dressed in jeans and a deep green wool jacket she’d belted around her waist. Her hair was done in a ponytail—a stylish one, but still, a simple ponytail. And she was wearing a lot less makeup than she usually did. She looked younger, somehow, and so much more vulnerable. Rahul had to tamp down a powerful urge to put his arms around her, to shelter her from the world.
You don’t have the privilege of that job, he told himself. You might never have that privilege again. The thought was like an arrow piercing his heart.
“Hi.” He watched her face as she drew closer, slipping his hands out of his pockets.
“Hi.” She didn’t smile. Her boots crunched lightly on the frost-hard dirt. She came to a stop a few feet away from him. “Thanks for coming to see me.”
This was a goodbye conversation. He could feel it in the air, its scent mingling with the musty lake water smell. It was a let-you-down-gently, this-is-never-going-to-work talk. Rahul steeled himself. He would take it well, as well as he possibly could. She’d already given him so much, and he was truly grateful. “Of course. How are you? How are things with Mia?”
Caterina dug the toe of her boot into the ground. “Mia’s… good. All things considering. She’s going to stick around, I think, and I’m glad.”
Rahul frowned. That he couldn’t understand. Picking up a cold rock, he tossed it from hand to hand. “Really? After what she did?”
Caterina shrugged, sticking her hands into her coat pockets. “Well, it’s complicated.” She walked forward so she was beside him, facing the near-frozen lake, a glittering piece of black stone in the night.
“Still.” Rahul shook his head, skipping his rock across the surface of Lake Rosetta. Thin ice dotted its surface like lace flowers, and his rock broke them apart as it went. “I can’t believe the lengths she went to. It seems really messed up.”
“I don’t think Mia wanted to seriously hurt me. I think she just wanted me to feel all alone and rejected, like she has all these years.” Caterina huddled into her coat as a brisk wind picked up, shaking the trees around them, whipping exposed skin. Rahul resisted the urge to put his arm around her. Instead, he picked up more rocks and skipped another one across the lake. “And it worked,” Caterina continued. “For a few brief moments in that apartment, I felt my heart ice over again. I felt utterly, utterly alone.”
Rahul let the rocks drop and walked closer to her. “But you’re not,” he said softly, gazing into her deep brown eyes that looked almost black under the night sky. No matter what happened, he would always be there for her if she wanted him to be. As a friend, as someone she could call on if she ever needed something.
Caterina smiled faintly. “When you came in, followed by the others, I realized something: Being vulnerable and open hadn’t made me alone. It hadn’t trapped me in a room with someone who hated me. Being vulnerable had brought me all of you. You were all there because I’d reached out and opened myself up a little bit in the last few months.” She glanced away, the long line of her throat pale as marble in the starlight. “I didn’t always know how to be a friend. With Ava and Heather… our friendship was the way it was—shallow and weak—because that’s the kind of friendship I nurtured. I wouldn’t ever let them get too close to me. I hoarded what I thought was power by keeping them at arm’s length. But it turns out it’s not power at all. It’s loneliness. It’s desolation. And I don’t want to live like that anymore.”
Rahul swallowed. He’d never heard her talk like this before. She sounded like a different person, almost. “At Harper’s party,” he began, wanting to explain, to tell her that he was just trying his best, “I thought it was what you’d want. I thought you had some news about your father or his business and that if I brought the media in, I’d show you I could be like that Trevor guy. Or like Alaric. That I could become a part of your world.”
Caterina looked at him sharply, her small hoop earrings swinging with the movement. “Why would you want to be like Trevor or Alaric, Rahul?”
He shrugged and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets again. “They’re so comfortable in their own skin. They have that easy confidence I’ve coveted my entire life. Everyone wants to be part of their orbit. I felt that for the first time with RC.” He took a breath, wondering if he should say the next thing he was thinking or if it would scare her. He decided to say it anyway. “I felt, for the first time, like I was deserving of Caterina LaValle.”
Caterina pulled her coat closer around her, her pale hands clamped around the edges. She looked down at her boots briefly before looking up at Rahul again. “Do you know what I was going to tell you at the party?” she asked quietly, taking a big step closer to him so they were barely apart at all.
Rahul shook his head. Her tone, and their sudden closeness, gave him butterflies in his stomach, a chaotic, writhing, teeming tornado of them. He wasn’t sure he could speak.
A crisp wind blew, taking strands of Caterina’s hair and brushing them against his cheeks, smelling of soft, sweet honey. “I wanted to tell you that the day you broke up with me, at the art museum, I was going to break up with you.”
“Oh.” The butterflies evaporated. Rahul felt small and foolish again. What had he thought she was going to say? “That makes sense. Because it was all payback. You didn’t want to—”
“Rahul,” Caterina said, looking into his eyes. A simple chain glittered at her throat. “Shut up for a moment, please.”
“
Yeah, okay.”
“I was going to break up with you because I knew I was hurting you. The reason you’d become RC in the first place was because of me. Because I didn’t believe that you, Rahul, were enough to parade around to reporters and the other people at the gala. The reason you wanted so violently to leave behind Rahul, the sweet, guileless, innocent, kind Rahul I knew”—here she caressed his cheek gently and his heart leaped—“was my doing. I’d shown you what RC could be, and that made Rahul unbearable to you.” Her voice bent a little, as if she were overcome with emotion. Rallying, she continued. “And I couldn’t take that anymore. I couldn’t watch you self-destruct. I thought maybe with some distance from me and my world… you’d return to yourself. And maybe you’d return to me.”
He couldn’t speak. He could hardly trust himself to breathe. What was she trying to say?
Oblivious to his internal turmoil, Caterina went on. “When I saw you at Harper’s party, you were still RC. You still hadn’t returned. And then I thought maybe the way to get to you, to Rahul, was to be completely honest with you. After all, RC was me being dishonest, me trying to hide the truth. And the opposite of that was…” She paused, taking a deep breath of the lake-scented air. “To tell you how I feel. To lay my soul bare. To know that doing so might mean rejection and doing it anyway.”
Rahul swallowed, his mouth suddenly feeling like a piece of desiccated wood. An owl hooted loudly in the trees above them, but he barely noticed. “And… and how do you feel?”
Caterina didn’t hesitate. “Looking at you is like looking at the rising sun after the longest, darkest night. You bring me so much pure joy. I don’t think I knew what happiness was until I was laughing with you about Carter’s beard and its unerring resemblance to the Juniper-Hawthorn Rust fungus. Or learning about bacterial immunology while we were at that club in Denver.
“But it’s not just about the things you say—it’s the way you are in the world. The softness, the thoughtfulness, the sweetness you have about you, that balances out my own hard edges. If I’m the Ice Queen, Rahul, you’re the warm waters I want to melt into. Saying I’ve never felt this way about anyone before is an understatement, but when I look at you… I see the future. And if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
He gazed at her for a full minute, not saying anything. He couldn’t; there were literally no words in his brain.
CATERINA
Caterina studied him in the near dark while he stared at her, speechless. There was a gentle splash in the lake as some creature dove into its murky depths.
“I’ve scared you,” she said finally, looking away. It was what she’d been afraid of. It was all too much—her feelings, her honesty. But at least she’d been brave. At least she’d been vulnerable, even if it came with rejection. She’d said what was in her heart, and she knew she’d never regret that.
“Yes,” Rahul said at last. “You’ve scared me.” She began to nod and tell him she understood, but he continued speaking, his voice clear and strong. “You’ve scared me because I just realized, for the first time in my life, that I have so much to lose. You’ve scared me because you told me you love Rahul, that you see a future with him, and I was so close to destroying that Rahul forever.” He shook his head, a look of wonder on his face. “What’s crazy is, I never realized before Saturday night that RC’s a part of me. Maybe a part that’s been hidden all these years, but he’s already in there. When I came to get you at Mia’s apartment? Kicking open that door? That was such an RC move, but I didn’t even think twice about it.”
Caterina smiled. “Yeah. I’m guessing you were pretty RC to have influenced your friends and Pietro to come with you too. Seeing you standing here, tall and proud and sure? That’s RC.”
Rahul considered this, a slight frown on his face. “But the makeup and the clothes and the gel made me so much more handsome. And that handsomeness definitely opened some doors, especially with your crowd.” He looked at her and shrugged.
“You let me be the judge of who’s more handsome, Rahul. Believe me, I’ve dated some classically gorgeous guys who seemed troll-ugly to me by the end of our relationship. I think you’re fucking beautiful. Besides,” Caterina continued with fire in her voice, “I don’t want someone who’ll slot in with my crowd. I want someone who challenges me. Someone who makes me want to be the best version of me I can be. And that’s not RC. That’s Rahul.”
A slow smile began to spread across his face, like sunshine seeping into the morning sky. “And I’m the one you love.”
“Yes,” Caterina said hotly. She wasn’t done telling him how she felt about people who didn’t accept Rahul. “And everyone who’s ever said or implied you should be someone besides exactly who you are is wrong. That includes me. And Everett McCabe. And your parents. Your parents have no right to use your cousin’s picture in place of yours. Or to hide you here. If they were here now—”
But she didn’t finish her thought because Rahul put one hand at her waist while the other cupped the back of her head. He pulled her to him, a little roughly, his mouth on hers in the next minute. His teeth gently teased apart her lips and his tongue found hers. Caterina let herself sink and sink and sink into that kiss that felt like the universe speaking to her. Her arms cinched around his waist, her hands traveling up his back, feeling the firm muscles there. She gasped a little as he dipped his head down and nipped at her earlobe and kissed her neck, murmuring her name against her skin. Caterina’s mouth turned up in an ecstatic smile. This was real. This was all happening.
Then she struggled to push him away, trying to clear her foggy, love-saturated head. “Wait. I really mean it. Your parents are wrong, Rahul. Do you understand that? They’re wrong about you. You’re perfect as you are. You’re enough as you are. More than enough.” She was almost desperate for him to understand this. “And I’m sorry I was one of those people who told you that you weren’t enough, however implicitly. I was wrong. I was ridiculously, stupidly, horribly—”
He silenced her again with a kiss, this one deep and slow like a ballad. She put her hands on his solid chest and sighed, feeling her knees go weak as he kept on kissing her, his eyes closed, his mouth firm and sure.
Finally, he pulled back and smiled at her, his brown eyes shining. “I understand,” he said softly, one thumb caressing her bottom lip, featherlight. “And Caterina?”
“Hmm?” With Rahul kissing her, she was having trouble keeping her thoughts in the here and now when they very much wanted to be in the there and then.
“I love you.”
RAHUL
She gasped softly, the most beautiful sound he’d heard. Her eyes went wide, the stars reflected in those velvet irises. “Really?” she whispered, going still.
“Really.” His hand lingered on the regal column of her neck as he ran his thumb just under her jawline, thrilling as he saw her eyes drift to his lips.
She reached forward and bridged the gap between them, her hands going around his waist, pulling her to him, closer than close. Her voice was a song as she whispered, “I love you too, Rahul Chopra. I love you, I love you, I love you.”
EPILOGUE
One Week Later…
CATERINA
Caterina lay with her head on Rahul’s lap. Spring was edging its way into Rosetta, and the occasional sunny 55-degree weather day had students sprawling on picnic blankets out on the green. He was playing lazily with her hair as he spoke to Grey about a chess game, winding locks of it around his fingers. Beside her, Ava was talking to Zahira, Jaya, Heather, and Samantha about her latest YouTube curly hair tutorial. Caterina closed her eyes and smiled to herself, the sun warm on her face. The scent of pine drifted in wafts on a cool breeze. Life, in this moment, was pretty perfect.
“Who is that DE is talking to?” Leo asked, his voice brimming with curiosity.
Caterina cracked open an eye and turned her head to look. DE was by the dining hall in the distance, speaking to a tall, golden-skinned boy she’d never seen befo
re. “He’s handsome,” she found herself saying, and then laughed up at Rahul. “Not even close to you, naturally.”
Rahul grinned and kissed the tip of her nose, his tie brushing her forehead. “Thank you.”
Heather was spying on DE and the boy using the zoom on her phone’s camera. She whistled. “Wow. He’s really got a CW-TV-show-hero thing about him, doesn’t he?”
“No kidding,” Ava agreed, raising her perfectly groomed eyebrows. “I mean, I can appreciate that he’s aesthetically pleasing, even if he does nothing for me.”
Her girlfriend, Zahira, threaded her fingers through Ava’s and made a noise of agreement in her throat.
“I wonder if it’s that new guy,” Jaya said, frowning a little as she sat up straighter on the blanket. “Remember?”
“Oh, you mean the mobster,” Leo said, and Sam scoffed and hit him gently on the arm. “Or the spy.”
“Stop spreading rumors, Leo,” she chided him, laughing.
Grey put an arm around Jaya, pulling her snug against his chest. “Do you guys think he might be the one to help DE out of her romantic slump?”
Caterina propped herself up on one elbow and watched the two of them talking intently. “I don’t know… but I hope so.” She glanced at Rahul, smiled, and spoke quietly, just to him. “I want everyone to be as happy as us. Is that odd?”
His eyes softened behind his glasses, and he bent to place a gentle, sweet kiss on her lips. “No,” he said, stroking the back of her cheek with his fingers. “When you’re as happy as we are, it seems selfish not to want to share that with other people.”
Caterina’s smile grew. He’d read her mind. She lay back down and closed her eyes again, letting the sun warm her face and kiss the backs of her eyelids, reveling in the sheer beauty of the moment. As Rahul’s voice washed over her like a warm ocean wave, Caterina LaValle felt in her bones that there was so much beauty yet to come. She couldn’t wait.
Of Princes and Promises Page 26