12. Christian

"It's giving Rapunzel,"Parrish said to me, reclining against a chaise lounge near the window. He mindlessly plucked at some fringe on a decorative pillow, mouth twisted into a disappointed frown.

I tugged at the end of my hair, barely long enough to graze the back of my neck.

"I think they're almost tired of the whole thing," I assured him.

"You're less fun here."

"I'm more of a prince here," I reminded him.

Parrish exhaled a heavy breath and spun toward me, dropping both of his loafer-clad feet onto the wood floor. Propping his elbows on his knees, he leveled a bored look at me, mouth still in that tight pucker of a frown.

"You're almost thirty," he said. "And you're not an heir. This is…"

"Too much," I supplied.

"It's overdone." Parrish stood and brushed his hands down the front of his gray tweed pants as if there were invisible wrinkles he was trying to press out with his fingertips. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

I stood, even though I didn't think I would make it anywhere. The cell phone he'd gotten for me was tucked safely under my pillow, a slew of messages between Kale and me the only real contents of the device. It had been three days since I emailed him the first time, and three days of near constant communication, save for when we were sleeping. Kale, it turned out, was quite an insomniac, which I appreciated on account of the time difference. He was also a workaholic when he didn't have anything better to do, like me. And since I was a globe away, he was available.

"This isn't like you," Parrish said with a weak gesture toward the window. "You're a climber, a little escape artist. You always have been, but you're locked up here and you're content about it."

"I'm hardly content," I protested.

"You're not fighting."

I swallowed, reaching under the pillow to make sure the phone was where I'd left it. "I think I went too far this last time. I've never been basically kidnapped off the street and sent back home before."

"What did your father say when you got back?"

"He hasn't seen me," I said, biting the tip of my tongue between my sharpest teeth.

Parrish let out a low whistle and sat back down. "That's bad."

I waved my hand flippantly around the room. "Hence the imprisonment. I'm not trying to make this worse on myself."

"What has Phillip said?"

"So much I've lost track."

My oldest brother had been the first person to come visit me besides Niko, who'd been standing like a sentry outside the door of my apartments since I stepped foot back over the threshold. He started with a lot of big and intelligent-sounding words, but it wasn't long before the curse words began to slip out and then he was red-faced with spit flying from the corners of his mouth. I was an embarrassment, a mockery of the crown. The list of my wrongdoings went on and on. I tried to tell myself he was being overdramatic. All I'd done was sneak out of a boring ballet and kiss a handsome stranger. In the list of offenses I'd committed over the course of my life, it was relatively minor.

"Summarize," Parrish said.

"I'm a letdown."

Even though I'd spent my entire life taking everything Phillip ever said to me with a handful of grains of salt, something about the tone of his latest accusations had settled very heavily in the pit of my stomach and not bothered to leave. The problem was, at least as I saw it, he'd never understand what it was like to not be the heir. He was so much like our father because that was how he'd been raised to be. And then my other older brother, Edward, a carbon copy of Phillip, and me, a copy of Edward. But the edges had worn down after every imprint, the younger showing a few more flaws than the rest.

I hadn't realized how much the years of comparison had gotten to me until I'd been in that hotel room with Kale. Until I'd met the first person in my whole life who didn't see me as a copy of Edward, who was a copy of Phillip, who was a copy of our father and his father and his father and so on up the line. There was no comparison in Kale's eyes when he looked at me, just desire. The singular focus made it easy to give him what he asked for. I'd have probably given him anything, all things considered. But he didn't ask for it. All he'd wanted was a night of orgasms for the both of us, which I'd give him a thousand times over if the situation allowed.

"I've had enough of this." Parrish pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned that lingering frown toward the screen. Had he always been as serious as all that? He hadn't cracked a smile since he showed up, which was unlike him. Though, he had encouraged me to climb out the window which was very much like him.

"Niko let me in, you know," he said, nodding at his phone before returning it to his pocket and marching over to my closet.

"I am still a prince. Not a prisoner."

Parrish pulled a small suitcase out of my closet and flung it open. He yanked shirts off of hangers, barely bothering to fold them before shoving them into the case. After he'd torn through my shirts and ties, he moved onto pants and underwear, and lastly socks. For good measure, I supposed, he shoved a pair of white sneakers on top of it all, and I found myself wondering if he'd ever packed a suitcase by himself in his entire life or if mine was the first.

"Then start acting like it."

He zipped the case closed and dragged it to the window he'd been sitting under.

"What are you doing?"

"Staging a jail break." Parris shoved the window open and pushed the suitcase out. It landed with a dull thump against the grass two floors down. I knew it would be behind a bush because, whenever I'd bothered to escape out the window, that was where I'd always ended up.

"Where exactly are we going to go?" I asked with a sigh. "Niko is right outside the door and my hips don't feel like crawling down a trellis."

Parrish went back into my closet and came back with another pair of sneakers, which he threw against my chest.

"Put these on," he demanded.

"I don't like when you're bossy."

I only liked when Kale was bossy, apparently.

"Then I need you to start thinking like my best friend again." He braced his hands against his hips, staring at me while I slid my feet into the shoes and tied up the laces.

"And how does your best friend act?" I pulled the phone out from under the pillow and slipped it into my pocket. There wasn't a message from Kale, I'd checked. The silence was a little out of character, but I wasn't ready to read into it yet.

"Like he has control over his life."

"It's a fallacy," I huffed.

"I don't know if that American fucked the sense out of you or what, but I'm hoping that's not the case."

Parrish yanked open the door to my apartments and glared across the hall at Niko, leaning against the wall with a weary look on his face.

"We're leaving," Parrish told him, glancing over his shoulder at me. "Aren't we, Christian?"

I cleared my throat and did my best to straighten my posture. I was wearing old jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days long before it fell into my possession. I wasn't dressed to stage an escape, let alone step foot in public, but Parrish had called my bluff and I didn't have much of a choice. I could have stayed, but it was the twenty-first century and I could take that small connection to Kale if I left, so it wasn't like there was so much a need for me to stay.

Not if I didn't really want to.

"I have orders," Niko said, tired like he'd already had this conversation a hundred times before.

"And he's a prince," Parrish snapped. "Aren't you?"

"I am."

Niko swallowed, lips pursed.

"Are you following?" I asked him. "What are your orders?"

"I'm supposed to let them know if you try to leave. Let them know who comes to see you."

"They know Parrish is here?"

Niko scratched the side of his nose, cheeks turning pink.

"Come on, Christian," Parrish said, throwing a look at Niko that was so fleeting, I couldn't make sense of the meaning behind it. "Niko will give you a head start, won't he?"

The flush on Niko's cheeks darkened, and I took that to be a yes.

I followed Parrish through the long halls of the palace and around the side to collect my bag. He carried it for me, almost like he knew I would hesitate and ruin his whole harebrained plan if he gave over the case.

"How long do you think he'll give me?" I asked, climbing into the passenger seat of Parrish's sports car.

He threw the bag into the trunk and came around the driver's side, checking his phone again before dropping it into the cup holder between us.

"He isn't going to come after you," he said.

"How do you know?"

I didn't bother trying to slump down or cover my face as Parrish zipped around the fountain and down the long gravel drive toward the road.

"Who is my father?" Parrish asked instead of answering.

"My father's most trusted advisor," I said. "Head of state, head of?—"

He cut me off, "What do you think the most important skill is for that job?"

"Persuasion," I mumbled.

"I learned from the best."

Off the grounds, I unrolled the window and turned my face toward the breeze and the sunshine. I hadn't realized how cooped up I'd felt until the wind worked its way through my hair and the sun began to warm my cheeks. The air itself was chilly, but the combination was as invigorating as sex.

"Thank you," I said to him without opening my eyes. "Truly. I didn't realize…"

"It's easy to lose sight of life," he said. "But this has gone on long enough in every regard, Christian. You need to have a heart to heart with your father and redefine the expectations around your role and your life."

"I know," I grumbled, blinking my eyes open.

Parrish sped down side roads, navigating around the traffic in the city as best as the old and narrow streets would allow.

"You're too old for his," he chastised.

"I know."

"Too old to climb out windows and use employee exits to get out of functions."

"Phillip said the same thing," I muttered.

"I don't mean it the way he did and you know it." Parrish pulled into a parking spot and cut the engine, casting the car into a near-deafening silence. "You're twenty-eight and they treat you like a child."

"Phillip would tell you they treat me like one because I act like one."

"Cause and effect works both ways. Maybe if they treated you like an adult for once, you would act like one." He checked his phone again and nodded, throwing open the driver's side door and shoving the device into his pocket.

"Why are you so impassioned about my role within the family?" I followed him out of the car, checking my own stolen phone to find no new messages.

"Because I'm too old for this." He popped the trunk and pulled out my suitcase, which he finally pushed into my hands.

"Last I checked, you got as much of a thrill slipping my detail as I do."

"That's spontaneous." He fished his keys out of his pocket and twisted one of them off, then shook it at me like it was a cat toy. I wasn't certain what he was on about, but I held out my hand, palm up, and he dropped it into my waiting hand. "This is too logistical."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, closing my fist around the sharp teeth of the key. They cut into my palm, and I dropped the key into my pocket because I was still at a loss for what he was trying to tell me. I had a key and a suitcase, and an undetermined head start before Niko came after me. He knew Parrish had come to visit, even if no one else did, so it wouldn't take long for him to know where to find me.

"It's a good thing you're the spare for the spare," Parrish said, mumbling something less flattering than that under his breath before continuing on. "Logistically, being tracked down by an American with more money than common sense who wants to see you again, as a surprise—" He paused for effect and shook his hands in the air, "to return some dry cleaning? I don't know, Christian, but this man…"

"Dry cleaning?" I croaked, stare flickering up toward the series of windows on the top floor of the building that I knew contained Parrish's apartment.

"Dry cleaning," he repeated, "which I'm assured is somehow a matter of state security."

"Kale?"

"My second least favorite kind of lettuce," Parrish went on, his longstanding frown finally cracking toward a smile.

"He…"

"You're daft."

"How did he find you?" I managed to ask.

"The internet is a vast and terrifying place." He shrugged. "Either that, or I'm not treated like an infant and I'm allowed to have social media, so it was easier to find me than it was to find you."

"We've been emailing for days," I cut in.

"You can sort out the details with him if it matters." Parrish pointed at my pocket, pointed at the key. "You can also pay me back for the vacation I'm taking so you can have free use of my apartment. You're welcome. Now, please, fuck off upstairs, Christian. Your American is waiting."