Majesty (American Royals, #2)(58)

She’d learned that Ethan and his mom used to go on a spontaneous road trip every summer. That he could trace all the constellations but didn’t know the stories behind them, which was where Nina and her love of mythology came in.

She’d learned that when he slept, he curled on his side, his arms tucked beneath his head as if he were trying to take up as little space as possible, his eyelashes twitching with the movement of his dreams.

The only thing they hadn’t discussed was how they planned on telling Jeff.

At first Nina had been confident that they were doing the right thing, keeping it from him. There was no reason to upset him if she and Ethan weren’t even going to last. Now, though…they needed to tell him. Nina was uncomfortably reminded of how it had felt when she was secretly dating Jeff, and hiding their relationship from Sam.

She headed through the front door of the palace—and there he was, Prince Jefferson himself, clattering down the staircase.

Somehow Nina was unsurprised. In her experience the palace had always worked that way, as if the building were under some perverse enchantment, flinging you directly into the path of the one person you’d hoped to avoid.

“Hey, Jeff.” She strove for a casual, friendly tone, more good to see you again than I’m secretly dating your best friend. “I was just heading up to see Sam.”

She started to edge past him, but Jeff’s next words made her fall still.

“Is it true? Are you really sleeping with Ethan?”

Nina felt his words like a punch to the gut. She glanced back and forth, then swallowed. This wasn’t at all how she’d hoped to have this conversation.

“We’re not—I mean—” she stammered. Ethan had been sleeping in her dorm room, yes, but they hadn’t actually…

“So it’s true.” Jeff took a step back, a hand braced on the stair railing. “When the reporter told me, I didn’t believe it. But now I do.”

“You talked to a reporter?”

Jeff’s jaw tensed. “Just this morning, I got a call from some editor at the Daily News—I have no clue how she found my number—asking if I’d like to comment on the fact that my ex-girlfriend and my best friend are the new ‘it couple’ of King’s College.”

“We’re not an ‘it couple,’?” Nina protested, and immediately winced.

“I told the reporter she was wrong. ‘I’ve known them both since kindergarten,’ I said; ‘if they were together, they would have told me.’ But she’d done her homework—she had a whole story ready to go, complete with quotes from classmates who said they always saw you together, holding hands.”

Nina’s stomach lurched. She and Ethan should have been more careful. Now that story would go to print, and it would be like last time all over again: her name the punch line of a trashy joke, her parents’ house swarmed with reporters—

Jeff sighed, clearly following her train of thought. “I got my lawyer involved, and he convinced the reporter not to run the story.”

“Thank you,” Nina said softly.

A trio of footmen walked past, carrying an enormous vase between them. They cast the prince and his ex-girlfriend a few looks, then quickly averted their eyes.

“Of course. I wasn’t about to let them drag you through the mud like they did last time.” There was a pained softness to Jeff’s eyes, a pinch at the corner of his mouth. “I just…I never thought it would be like this. I knew that you and I would date other people, but I assumed we were on good enough terms that we would give each other fair warning. At least, I was planning on giving you that courtesy.”

Nina blinked. “Are you and Daphne getting back together?”

“Maybe,” Jeff said bluntly. “If we did, I wasn’t going to let you find out from the tabloids. I thought we owed each other that much, at least.”

Nina squirmed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so small. “I’m sorry. You’re right; we should have told you.”

“How long has it been going on?” Jeff asked. “Since before the party?”

“Um. Not technically.”

He closed his eyes, and Nina knew he was thinking of all the times he’d seen Ethan since then, when Ethan could have brought this up and instead kept his mouth shut.

“I want you to be happy, I really do,” Jeff said hoarsely. “But does it have to be with my very best friend?”

In that moment, Nina realized the full extent of the hurt she’d caused.

She had always known that dating Ethan would make things awkward. But she hadn’t fully grasped that in dating Ethan, she was fracturing Jeff’s relationship with his best friend—one of the few people he really trusted, in a world where it was hard to trust anyone.

How would Jeff and Ethan move forward from this? What were they supposed to do, hang out and play video games as if Nina didn’t exist? As if she and Ethan hadn’t gotten together, knowing full well it would hurt Jeff, then purposefully hid it from him?

Jeff ran a hand wearily through his hair. “Nina,” he said, in a deflated voice that cut her to the quick. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“When you broke up with me, you said it was because you wanted out of this world. You told me that you couldn’t handle the royal life, with all its scrutiny and publicity. And now you’re dating my best friend.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “I just had to kill a tabloid story about your relationship. From where I’m sitting, you haven’t really gone that far from the spotlight.”