Page 57 of Princess Bride Swap

And her sister and brother-in-law, and two infants, but they weren’t even royalty any longer. And the babies couldn’t speak. So.

“I do not know why you are so angry, Lyon. But I am not going back. We... We are ill-suited. I know that will be a problem for you, but so would be staying. I’m sure we can reach some sort of private agreement to maintain a public image. But I can’t—”

He couldn’t let her say another word. “You don’t know why I’m angry?” He had not thought he could be more incandescent with rage, and that she would be so...outrageously ridiculous. “I am angry at you lying to me. I am angry that you hid something so important from me. And I made a gesture out ofkindnessto allow you not to attend the dinner that Iwantedyou at, as my wife. As my partner. As...everything you are, and youran. Without so much as a word.”

“Kindness?” she all but shrieked. “A kindness? To want me not to attend your precious dinner because I’m such an embarrassment?”

“Embarrassment?” He yelled it right back. To hell with decorum and anything else. He was so angry he didn’t even notice the two people holding babies quietly leave the room. “Who said anything of the kind? Iloveyou. I would do anything for you. And instead of giving me the decency of a discussion, youran.”

“I will not be hidden away. Not again. I will not be your dirty secret. You will not drag me back to—” And then it was as if what he’d said caught up with her. She stopped short. Her breath came out in a loud, sharp gust. “What did you say?”

She looked so beautiful. So shocked by words he thought obvious. He thought it had been...a neon sign on his very face. That soft spot. That distraction his mother had accused him of.

And she seemed utterly and thoroughly shocked as if it had not occurred to her.

Because, clearly, it hadn’t. A mix of his own failures, and perhaps some of her own.

But that also gave him hope now, instead of fury. Something to hold on to that might...lead them to where they needed to be.

He moved to her, and when she didn’t back away, just stood there still staring at him as if he’d grown another head, he took her hands in his. He looked her in the eye. And he said the words this time—not yelling, not accusing, but with everything he felt inside of him.

“I love you, Beaugonia. My entire life I have been a tool. A payment to a debt. No one has ever cared what I might like or want. Not untilyou. You read what I asked you to. You enjoyed the chalet even though you hated the drive. You were honest with me—Ithoughtyou were honest with me. And then I discovered you had been hiding this...” He didn’t have the word for it.

“Failure? Blight? Weakness?”

He stared at her. At the anger on her face. She didn’t believe those things. Surely... Surely, she didn’t believe those things. His self-possessed princess. And then it dawned on him.

When she had looked at him as though she didn’t understand a word he was saying back at the chalet, he had been talking about his grandmother’s words. The things she had passed down to him, whether he’d really considered the truth of them or not.

So these words were notBeau’s. They were not even his. They had come before. They were her baggage. They were, no doubt, her father’s words. And she didn’t even realize it.

But they had likely been the words her father had used when he’d kept her hidden away, and it hadn’t been all that long ago when he had threatened the very same. Maybe for different reasons, but that was the problem. They both had a lot of reasons they did not fully understand, they had not fully dealt with.

But now they would.

Beau was certain she was shaking, but Lyon’s hands still held hers. He was looking at her like she’d suddenly started speaking in tongues.

“I have never once used those words to describe you, Beau,” he said, very calmly. Very carefully. “I understand now why you thought I might, but I do not care about panic attacks. I have been on anxiety medication since I was fifteen. The state of your brain chemistry is not what dismayed me. It was that you lied andhidyourself from me.”

She thought she had been floored when he claimed to love her, but this... He said it as if it was fine. As if...all his talk about stability and respectability had nothing to do with... He said he’d been on anxiety medication as if it wasnothing.

“You’ve been onwhat?”

“I would not call what I had panic attacks, but the consistent cycle of catastrophic thinking was interfering with my studies. My mother...” He frowned a little as if he was realizing something. “Looking back, I think she was afraid if she did not do something, my grandmother would be...very unhappy with me. So she found me a therapist. I was prescribed medication. It has helped, infinitely.”

“Helped,” she echoed. Stupidly. But... It had never occurred to her in a million years that he might have anxieties. Real ones, not just his obsessive worry about respectability. An actual condition that needed some kind of interference. “I need to sit.”

And he didn’t let her go. He just led her to the couch and sat next to her when she all but collapsed into the seat.

“Beau, I do not think your panic attacks are any of those words you said. Those areyourwords. Not mine.”

But as she sat there with the reality of all this...new information, she knew that wasn’t exactly true. Not her own words. Not really. “I never cared about my panic attacks. Not in that...way. I can’t help it, so I wasn’t about to beat myself up about it.”

“But your father did it for you.”

She looked up into his eyes. Even before she’d loved him, she had always thought they were more alike than different, but this was... How could it be true that he understood so well? That they werethis muchalike?

I love you.

---