Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(77)

"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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.