Page 60 of Royal Reluctance

“I would never do that,” I vow.

“Yeah, well, you tell yourself lots of stupid things when you’re missing someone.”

“Hettie.” I fight the urge to pull her into my arms, to show her how wrong she was. “I told you before, there has never been a day go by where I didn’t want you.”

“Then why didn’t you come andget me?”

21

Hettie

Bo steps away fromme. “I…”

“I thought…” I hesitate because I’ve never told anyone this, not even Abigail. “I thought if I left, you’d come after me. I thought you’d come find me, that we’d be okay.”

I don’t realize I’m crying until my cheeks start to get very cold.

“But you didn’t,” I manage. “Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” I’m here, standing in front of Bo after so long and there’s no room for secrets. “I didn’twantto go. It was the last, the very last thing I wanted, but you shut down after the queen died. You weren’t my Bo anymore, and I didn’t know what to do to get you back. It hurt too much to watch you collapse on yourself. That might make me selfish—”

“No, you’re right,” Bo admits. He swallows, his gaze fixed on a point over my head. “I wasn’t… me. I couldn’t… I wouldn’t have been able to come and bring you home, even if I’d thought you wanted me to.”

“I did.” Bo shuts his eyes at my whispered admission. “But I thought…”

“And I thought…” He shakes his head, his blue eyes focused on me again. “We made a mess of this, didn’t we?”

I nod sadly. “Maybe. But we were young.”

“Stupid?”

“Do you think it was stupid to get married?”

“No,” Bo says quickly. “Marrying you was my dream and those two days together were the happiest of my life.”

My heart does one of those squeezes again. “And then it went wrong. Losing your mother…”

Bo closes up. I can see it happen—his face tightens and his entire body stiffens like he’s put up a wall between us. And that was why I left in the first place. After the funeral, he barely spoke. Wouldn’t look at me. Spent all of his time in the forest.

His family let him go because they were grieving on their own, everyone concerned with how Lyra was handling it because she had been in the car with her mother.

No one knew about Bo’s guilt, how he blamed himself.

My heart breaks for him, but I’m not letting this wall stand. “Talk to me,” I say, trying for gentle and stern. “It wasn’t your fault. You need to believe that.”

“Haven’t been able to yet. And look what happened.”

“Things can change.”

He shrugs and turns back to the castle. “But I’ve already lost you.”

The desolation in his voice stops me from following him. I let him go because I can’t tell him I still love him, that maybe I never stopped.

I don’t know what to do.

The specter of Timothy hovers to the side, reminding me I gave a promise to a good man, and I will only hurt Bo if I give him false hope.

Even if I tell him I still have feelings for him, what good will that do? What would it change? My life has moved to Victoria—far away from my family.

That was the reason we got married without telling anyone. I had two brothers in prison, and a third who was a constant fixture in the town bars until they would throw him out for fighting. On paper, Hank looked legitimate, but Mabel had long ago relayed the rumours—that his garage was both a chop shop for stolen cars and a front for drug dealing.

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