Red, White & Royal Blue(78)

“Bullshit,” Alex bites out. “I need to see Henry.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. The prince does not wish to be disturbed.”

“Goddammit—Henry!” He sidesteps Shaan and starts shouting up at Henry’s bedroom windows, where there’s a light on. Fat raindrops are pelting his eyeballs. “Henry, you motherfucker!”

“Alex—” says Cash’s nervous voice behind him.

“Henry, you piece of shit, get your ass down here!”

“You are making a scene,” Shaan says placidly.

“Yeah?” Alex says, still yelling. “How ’bout I just keep yelling and we see which of the papers show up first!” He turns back to the window and starts flailing his arms too. “Henry! Your Royal fucking Highness!”

Shaan touches a finger to his earpiece. “Team Bravo, we’ve got a situa—”

“For Christ’s sake, Alex, what are you doing?”

Alex freezes, his mouth open around another shout, and there’s Henry standing behind Shaan in the doorway, barefoot in worn-in sweats. Alex’s heart is going to fall out of his ass. Henry looks unimpressed.

He drops his arms. “Tell him to let me in.”

Henry sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine. He can come in.”

“Thank you,” he says, pointedly looking at Shaan, who does not seem to care at all if he dies of hypothermia. He sloshes into the palace, ditching his soaked shoes as Cash and Shaan disappear behind the door.

Henry, who led the way in, hasn’t even stopped to speak to him, and all Alex can do is follow him up the grand staircase toward his rooms.

“Really nice,” Alex yells after him, dripping as aggressively as he can manage along the way. He hopes he ruins a rug. “Fuckin’ ghost me for a week, make me stand in the rain like a brown John Cusack, and now you won’t even talk to me. I’m really just having a great time here. I can see why all y’all had to marry your fucking cousins.”

“I’d rather not do this where we might be overheard,” Henry says, taking a left on the landing.

Alex stomps up after him, following him into his bedroom. “Do what?” he says as Henry shuts the door behind them. “What are you gonna do, Henry?”

Henry turns to face him at last, and now that Alex’s eyes aren’t full of rainwater, he can see the skin under his eyes is papery and purple, rimmed pink at his eyelashes. There’s a tense set to his shoulders Alex hasn’t seen in months, not directed at him at least.

“I’m going to let you say what you need to say,” Henry says flatly, “so you can leave.”

Alex stares. “What, and then we’re over?”

Henry doesn’t answer him.

Something rises in Alex’s throat—anger, confusion, hurt, bile. Unforgivably, he feels like he might cry.

“Seriously?” he says, helpless and indignant. He’s still dripping. “What the fuck is going on? A week ago it was emails about how much you missed me and meeting my fucking dad, and that’s it? You thought you could fucking ghost me? I can’t shut this off like you do, Henry.”

Henry paces over to the elaborately carved fireplace across the room and leans on the mantelpiece. “You think I don’t care as much as you?”

“You’re sure as hell acting like it.”

“I honestly haven’t got the time to explain to you all the ways you’re wrong—”

“Jesus, could you stop being an obtuse fucking asshole for, like, twenty seconds?”

“So glad you flew here to insult me—”

“I fucking love you, okay?” Alex half yells, finally, irreversibly. Henry goes very still against the mantelpiece. Alex watches him swallow, watches the muscle that keeps twitching in his jaw, and feels like he might shake out of his skin. “Fuck, I swear. You don’t make it fucking easy. But I’m in love with you.”

A small click cuts the silence: Henry has taken his signet ring off and set it down on the mantel. He holds his naked hand to his chest, kneading the palm, the flickering light from the fire painting his face in dramatic shadows. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

“Of course I do—”

“Alex, please,” Henry says, and when he finally turns to look at him, he looks wretched, miserable. “Don’t. This is the entire goddamned reason. I can’t do this, and you know why I can’t do this, so please don’t make me say it.”

Alex swallows hard. “You’re not even gonna try to be happy?”

“For Christ’s sake,” Henry says, “I’ve been trying to be happy my entire idiot life. My birthright is a country, not happiness.”

Alex yanks the soggy note out of his pocket, I wish there wasn’t a wall, and throws it at Henry viciously, watches him pick it up. “Then what is that supposed to mean, if you don’t want this?”

Henry stares down at his words from months ago. “Alex, Thisbe and Pyramus both die at the end.”

“Oh my God,” Alex groans. “So, what, was this all never going to be anything real to you?”

And Henry snaps.

“You really are a complete idiot if you believe that,” Henry hisses, the note balled in his fist. “When have I ever, since the first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you? Are you so fucking self-absorbed as to think this is about you and whether or not I love you, rather than the fact I’m an heir to the fucking throne? You at least have the option to not choose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family, so don’t you dare come to me and question if I love you when it’s the thing that could bloody well ruin everything.”