Royally Not Ready(61)

Despite Theo’s words, though, my blood being different does make me different. And I’d do well to not ignore that. I’d do well to keep her at arm’s length, but she’s slowly pushing forward, taking up too much space in my head.





“This was delicious,” Lara says from the kitchen. “I think the best I’ve ever had.”

“Hey,” Brimar shouts from where he’s doing dishes, causing us to laugh.

“Yours is good too,” she shouts and then quietly says, “The filling was so much smoother than his.”

Chuckling, Lilly pulls her legs up to her chest as we sit next to the fireplace on a blanket she laid out for both of us. “What did you think of the cardamom cake?” I ask her.

“It was perfect.” She stares off at the flames. Since her revelation in the kitchen, she’s been very subdued. There’s been no pestering, no teasing, no pressing her luck with me. She’s been quiet, actually, with not much to say. Even through dinner, when she’s normally joking around with all of us, she rather focused on her etiquette that she’s mastered quite quickly and then retired to the fireplace after eating the cake.

I’m slightly concerned.

“Hey, are you okay?” I ask her.

She just nods as she stares into the flames.

“Are you sure? Because you seem . . . different.”

“Just thinking,” she says. And then a tear falls down her cheek that she quickly wipes away.

“Lilly . . .”

“It’s okay,” she says, wiping at her eye again. “I’m just . . . I’m sad, is all. I know we were supposed to play crazy cods, but I’m not in the mood, if that’s okay.”

“That’s okay. Do you want to talk about it?”

Her eyes flash to the kitchen and then back to me. “Do you think . . . do you think we could go up to my room to talk?”

“Of course.” I stand from the floor and lend my hand to her. She slips her hand into mine and I help her up. “You head up. I’m going to let Lara and Brimar know what we’re doing.”

“Okay.” She wraps her arms around herself and disappears toward the stairs.

After I pick up the blanket from the floor and fold it, I walk into the kitchen, where Brimar and Lara are washing and drying dishes together. “Hey, Lilly is feeling off, so I’m going to talk to her up in her room. I’m assuming she’ll go to bed from there.”

“Sounds good. We’ll lock up down here.”

“Hey, heavy winds tonight,” Lara says. “Make sure your windows are locked.”

“Oh, good call,” I say before grabbing two glasses of water just in case Lilly gets thirsty. When I reach her bedroom, the door is shut, so I give it a light knock and then let myself in. Lilly is standing in the middle of her room, wearing nothing but an oversized shirt now, what I’ve come to find is her favorite way to sleep. “I brought you water.”

“Thank you,” she says, walking over to her bed and taking a seat. She slips her legs under the covers and leans against the headboard. Once again, she brings her legs in close and rests her arms on the tops of her knees.

I set the glasses of water on the surface while taking a seat on the edge of her bed.

“What are you doing?” she asks as she flops down the covers. “Sit next to me.”

Normally, I wouldn’t do this, because it’s getting too fucking close to her, but then again, I cupped her breasts in a hot spring today and also rolled out dough with her, as if we were in the movie Ghost, sculpting pottery together. So . . . sitting next to her in bed shouldn’t be a problem.

“Scoot over,” I say as I slide into her bed, but she doesn’t scoot far. Once I’m settled, she presses up to my side and loops my arm around her back so I’m holding her tightly.

I give in . . . yet again, because I know she’s in search of warmth.

Like Theo said, give her the comfort she needs.

I scoop my other arm around her and rest her head on my chest as she curls into my side. After a few moments of silence, she finally says, “I’m sad, but also . . . mad. Mad because I wish my mom had told me more about her life. There’s so much she kept hidden, and now that I’m experiencing it without her, it makes me want to—to yell at her. To ask her why she needed to keep it all a secret.” She sniffs, and I hold her tighter. “There’s so much about this place that reminds me of her. And the more I think about it, the more it all comes into focus.”

“Like what?” I ask as I stroke my thumb over her bare thigh.

“Well, in my parents’ bedroom, there were three pictures over their bed, and they were all landscapes of this lush, green coastline. I never asked her much about it, I just assumed they were pictures she liked. But the more I think about it, the more I’m realizing they were photographs of Torskethorpe. And around Christmastime, there was always this one table runner she would use, it was very special to her. It had a KS stitched in the corner. I asked her once what the KS stood for and she said the initials of the person who made the beautiful runner. KS . . . that has to be Katla Strom.”

“Katla did make quite a few runners for her kids.”

“And there was a chest in our house, which Mom and Dad called their hope chest. It’s where they kept all their cherished possessions. It looks just like the chest at the foot of this bed. And we also had very similar rugs to the braided rugs that are in the bathrooms and in the kitchen. Everything is so similar. The writing was there, growing up, the heritage, but I never bothered to ask because I was too young to understand. And now . . . now I feel so dumb.”