Chapter Nineteen

PRESTIDIGITATION JONES!” ASTRID cried. “Please tell me you are not watching that wedding again!”

“Nope,” I shouted, far too loudly and defensively to be believed.

Astrid prowled into the room, rounded the armchair, and glared at the television screen. The one with a frozen image of Prince James at his brother’s wedding, all dressed up and looking more spectacular than any man had a right to.

“So, you’ve sunk to lying to me now? I never would have thought this of you.”

Putting a little something extra into my sigh, I looked at my best friend. “It’s just easier. Saves me from one of your lectures.”

Astrid perched on the coffee table, blocking my view of frozen James. “I lecture because I care, Pres. It’s been six months. No, almost seven now since he departed our shores.”

“I know.”

“And he hasn’t come back,” she added sadly.

“I know.”

“He uninvited you as his plus-one.” Astrid, unlike me, had fumed over James rescinding his invitation. I’d been angry for a millisecond but understood James’s reasonings.

Astrid’s anger had eased. Mostly.

“I hate seeing you like this.”

“I am perfectly well, Astrid,” I lied. While James and I were in a penpalship, I missed his actual presence. I missed feeling his warm skin or watching a crooked smile play over his features. I missed how he’d nibble on his lip when thinking or the crinkle around his eyes when he smiled. He’d only stayed here a week but changed everything for me.

Our correspondence, though a lifeline to my sanity, was not enough. I was a walking, talking example of not knowing what you had until you lost it. And I’d lost James. He wasn’t ready to come out, and I would never pressure him. But was I going to wait for him to be ready? Would he even want me to wait? There was a greater-than-average probability that I meant nowhere near as much to him as he did to me.

“Do you not think he looks quite forlorn here?” I asked, my gaze shifting back to the screen and the frozen image of James. He’d smiled plenty on the day. So much that I doubt anybody else noticed, but I’d also caught glimpses of melancholy in James’s handsome features that day. Was I imagining I knew him so well after such a short period of time? Astrid and Larry practically finished each other’s sentences after they’d been together only three weeks. Now, they indulged in silent conversations, reading each other so well they didn’t need to speak. I wanted that. I wanted to feel that connection with another. I wanted to look at somebody and know what they were thinking. I wanted to be somebody’s world.

James and I might have had that in an alternate universe, but his regality seemed insurmountable.

“Presti, please.” Astrid had tried her best to distract me from my obsession with James. She liked him well enough, but…well, I guess she was more of a realist than I was. I was still hoping for some dramatic and romantic gesture from James. Perhaps something with him publicly announcing his undying love for me to the world. Something involving rose petals and, for some obscure reason, fairy floss. Ridiculous. I could be a complete fopdoodle at times.

The truth was that while James liked me well enough, there was nothing more to it than that. I wasn’t worth him coming out for. He’d been a dream, a fantasy that I could hold onto for the rest of my life, nothing more. I could bury myself away in that fantasy forever.

Or I could put myself out there and try to find something real with someone who wasn’t freaking royalty.

“Astrid, I… I think I should put myself on the Grindr.”

“ The Grindr? Oh boy.” Astrid pinched the bridge of her nose, her signs of frustration well known to me. “First of all, it’s just Grindr. Second, I thought we had agreed we would not participate in such…social absurdities.”

“Well, I can’t see myself finding a date any other way. I will not rub produce at the supermarket.”

“What?” Astrid asked, a furrow on her brow.

“Silkie’s Guide to Picking Up 101.”

“Oh.”

“Mm. And I need to find a date, Astrid. I must erase the spectre of James from my mind.”

“The spectre? He is not a poltergeist. If he were not a prince…things would have been different. You and he… You worked, Presti.” Astrid reached and tucked a wayward lock of hair behind my ear.

“Not well enough,” I muttered.

“Are you angry with him?”

Was I? “No. Not really. And I understand him not being ready to come out, but… One day, I will have to watch him with another man. I will have to sit and watch him walk down the aisle with someone else. Photos of them will be plastered over every magazine cover. They’ll be on every news channel. James and his lover will be shoved down my throat.”

“Oh, dear. Quite the imagery.” Astrid sighed and leaned closer. “You could wait for him.”

“No. No. What if I wait and he still doesn’t choose me? I think it best I get out there and sow my oats.”

“Well, we can get your oats sown without resorting to Grindr. Perhaps Larry—”

“Presti! My god, Presti, are you home?” The front door slammed open and closed so hard the house shook as my mother barrelled in, shouting for me.

“In here,” I yelled back. “Goodness, Mum, what on earth?”

Mum ran into the room, comically skidded to a stop, then bent with her hands on her knees, gasping for breath. “It’s…James.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Well, no, not James. His father and brother.”

Blood froze in my veins. The tone of my mother’s voice, the look of dread in her eyes. What had happened? “Mother?”

“Turn the TV on. It’ll be all over the news,” she replied, still dragging in large gulps of air and flailing her arms about.

Panic at my mother’s distress curdled my insides as I fumbled for the remote. As soon as I pressed Stop, the video of the royal wedding switched off, live television taking its place. A news ticker scrolled along the bottom of the screen. I read the words with a growing sense of dread and disbelief.

Prince Arthur Dead! The ticker screamed. Prince George Believed to be in Critical Condition!

Oh my god. “What happened?” I screamed, my hands flying to cover my mouth. Why did humans do that in times of trauma? Perhaps it was a vain effort to hold a scream in or swallow it down. And what a stupid thought to be having at such a time.

“Helicopter crash,” my mother exclaimed, still quite breathless. “They were on their way to some engagement and…” She flailed her hands about again.

“James,” I gasped.

“No. He wasn’t there.”

Relief flooded through me like a tidal wave—my icy blood thawing. James was safe, but his family. Oh, he’d lost his father and might lose his brother. I ached to be there with him, to hold him in my arms, as weak as they were. Nothing I could do for James would be of any help, and I must be the last thing on his mind right now, yet I felt this overwhelming sense that I needed to be there for him. That he needed me.

“What should I do? What can I do?” I half screamed, panicked and desperate to be with James, to help him heal.

“I’m not certain you can do anything, Presti. I can only imagine the ranks closing around the royal family right now.” My mother kissed the top of my head and gently squeezed my hand. “Poor, poor James.”

Despite losing my grandfather and friends I’d made at the Home Strait, I’d never lost a parent. Of course, I’d only ever had one—my mother—and I could not even begin to fathom the trauma of losing her. From my understanding, James wasn’t as close with his father as I was with her, but still…

My stomach lurched uncomfortably as I pondered James’s suffering, my reaction to his tragic news quite visceral. I’d give everything I owned to be there with him now. Not that I owned much, but even if I owned the world, I’d give it all up for him.

“Presti? Are you okay?” Astrid asked softly.

“Huh?”

“Silly question, I know, but needed to be asked.”

“I don’t think I’m okay at all. I feel… Remember when Mr Eustace told us his dying wish was one last dance with Mrs Eustace?”

“Quite. Poor chap had quite forgotten Mrs Eustace had passed three months previous.”

“Exactly. Multiply our feeling of helplessness that day by about three quadrillion, and that’s how I feel.”

“Oh, Presti,” Mum murmured.

“And sad, Mum. I feel so desperately sad for James, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to help him. How can I fix this?”

“This isn’t something you can fix, Presti. All you can do is be there for him. Call him.”

“Do you think he’ll want me to disturb him at a time like this?”

“Presti, honey,” my mum whispered, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “I don’t know everything that happened between you and James, but I saw you together the day he left, so I know, if nothing else, that the two of you are friends. If now is not a time to prove your friendship, then I don’t know when is.”

“Perhaps I should—”

“Presti, your mother is right. Call James. Make sure he knows he has at least one true friend to count on during this terrible time.”

They were right—both of them. I had to put aside any doubt or fear of rejection. This wasn’t about me. This was everything about James. My poor, soft-hearted James. Now I just had to decide what to say to him.

If he even answered the phone.

Ugh. The angst threatened to overwhelm me. But the memory of my time with James, the gentle touches, the soft-spoken words. He had to know I was here for him, whatever he needed at this awful time. I had to ensure he knew I was thinking of him and was there for him even from ten thousand kilometres away.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it. Give me the phone.” Mum and Astrid stared at me until I realised my phone was in the back pocket of my jeans. “Oh, right.”

As I punched a finger at my phone, I paced the room, my entire body vibrating with nervous energy and bone-deep sorrow. James. Oh, James .

“Presti,” a soft, shaken voice answered.

“James?” I asked, somewhat unsure. The voice sounded like James’s, but it was a broken version of the happy voice I remembered.

“It’s me.”

“James.” I sighed. “I’m so very sorry.”

“Thank you.” His tone was stiff, lifeless. No doubt I wasn’t the first person to express my sympathy to him.

“What can I do?” I asked. Right then, I thought I might try to fly to the moon for him if that’s what he said he needed.

“I don’t know. God, Presti, I feel so lost. Mum… Well, she’s devastated, and poor Hannah… And Gran, well, she has to… We all must keep the stiff upper lip.” James sounded so ragged, so torn apart between the twin burden of grief and duty.

“Not with me, James. You don’t need to pretend with me.”

For a few short moments, I got nothing but silence and then came quiet sobbing. My heart tore clear in two as I listened to James’s wretched grief. “James,” I whispered over and over. The frustration of not being able to hold him in my arms felt fierce enough to kill me. Impotent rage at the distance between us, the unfairness of such a tragedy visiting someone as good as James burned through my veins. Life could be cruel. No more valid words were ever uttered.

“I’m sorry,” James hiccupped. “I didn’t mean to fall apart like that.”

“Is that the first time you’ve cried since…”

“Yes.”

Jesus. My heart shattered anew for this poor boy. At some point, Mum and Astrid had quietly slipped from the room. Though I appreciated the gesture of privacy, I wished they were still there with me. I didn’t know how to fix James.

“James,” I murmured. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to help you, and I’m so far away. I’d give anything to be able to hold you through this.”

“That helps, Presti. Those words help.”

“How is George? Is there any…news?” God, I wanted him to tell me George was awake, walking and talking. It wouldn’t make up for the loss of his father, but it’d be some relief.

“The best the doctors can give us is that he has a chance if he makes it through the night. And even if he does, they don’t know… There’s a good chance he’ll never be the same again.”

What does one say to that? I was so out of my depth. But there was no way in hell I’d turn my back on him.

“What can I do? Anything, James,” I begged, desperate for him to give me a task and tell me what to do to help him.

There was more silence for a moment, and I wondered if I’d overstepped. And then came James’s soft, heart-sore voice: “You, Presti. I only need you…this. Your voice, knowing you’re there for me. It helps.”

“I’ll be here no matter what. If you want me there, I’ll jump on a plane. If you just need to talk, I’ll listen. Whatever it is you need from me, it’s yours.”

A tiny, sad half laugh came before James said, “I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep. The doctor gave me something to help, but I didn’t want to take anything. I wish… The best sleep I ever had was in your bed, in your arms. I wish I were there now, Presti.”

“I wish you were, too, but for now, go and hop into bed. I’ll stay with you on the phone until you fall asleep, James.”

A lot of rustling sounded over the line as I listened to James shuffle around his room. By my reckoning, it was the early morning hours over there. Even if James slept now, I suspected it would be a broken sleep, and he’d be woken early to do his…princely duty at this terrible time.

“You know the worst thing?” James suddenly whispered.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine. “What?” I whispered back.

“When they called me in to tell me, Simon was there, and I overheard him talking about the line of succession, and now, well, I keep thinking that this—what happened to Dad and George—it might mean I’m king one day. How selfish is that? How can I even be thinking about that now?”

How could the people around him worry about the line of succession rather than be concerned about James? That’s what I wanted to know. That’s what I wanted to scream and rant about. How could they not be putting James’s welfare first?

“There is no right or wrong way to grieve, James. Everything you’re feeling is valid. It’s okay to be thinking about everything.”

“I never wanted this life,” James continued. “Being royal, rich…famous. I never wanted any of it. And I know that makes me sound like a spoiled little rich kid, but it’s true. I’ve only ever wanted a simple life. I can’t be king, Pres. I just can’t. I’m so tired. I…”

Jesus . “Shh now, James. Let’s worry about that later. Close your eyes. I’ll stay with you.”

“Tell me about Kincumber, Pres. Tell me about your garden and your mum. Tell me about Astrid, Paul, and Larry. Tell me about everyone at the Home Strait.”

And so, I did. I spoke for an hour or more. I kept talking even after I heard James’s soft snores. I told him how much I missed him. How much we all missed him. I told him about the fantasies I only allowed myself in the small hours of the night of him and me together. A real life. A happy life. I told him I’d do anything for him. I told him I’d burn the world down if it would take away his pain.

I told him I loved him.