Page 4 of Royal Crush

I took him in like a man dying of thirst finally kneeling before a well. His upper body was thick and gorgeous—long sleeves rolled up to reveal tattoos. I was inked in the same spots, but his tattoos had meaning. Mine were drunk or drugged attempts to cover inside pain with outside pain.

He and I shared the same short, dark brown waves—mine short now because I’d cut it to look like his. His eyes were deeper-set than mine and dark blue, though contacts would solve that problem. But our faces were nothing alike. He looked fucking royal with his cut jawline and perfectly shaped cupid’s bow and the way his lips set in a natural smirk.

He was pampered and prissy even with all his charity work and all the pain he’d been through.

I stared down at his legs. I knew a lot about them—how he couldn’t feel anything at all, not even temperature differences. I knew that they spasmed at night, and though he couldn’t really feel the pain, his brain still somehow understood and left him in the most bizarre agony he’d ever felt in his life. I knew that his muscles had atrophied, and he’d had six surgeries to repair pressure sores.

I knew that he still cried sometimes when he fell asleep and dreamed he could walk and that in spite of everything, he wasn’t angry at the paparazzi who caused the accident. But I had a feelingthatwas a lie made up for the media to keep up appearances.

“You like staring at people in wheelchairs?”

“I don’t know,” I answered him, entirely out of fucks. “Never had the chance until now.”

“You live in a bubble?”

I laughed and dropped the cigarette butt on the ground, crushing it with the heel of my shoe. “Something like that.”

“Want a picture? Easier to jerk off to than a memory,” he snapped.

I almost burst into another peal of laughter. I was not expecting that one. “Wow. Bold of you to assume I wanna dick you down, no matter how pretty you are.”

The tips of his ears turned pink. “I’ve met too many guys like you. I know how it goes. And you clearly know who I am.”

“Yep. And you clearly don’t know whoIam.” I stood up and thought about introducing myself, but in the end, it was easier to turn and walk away. My car was waiting, and in all honesty, the longer I stood there, the more risk I was taking not to mouth off.

But I knew his secret now. I knew that he wasn’t just prissy and perfect for the cameras. He was gritty and mean and…fuck. Yeah. He was all kinds of hot.

But that wasn’t allowed to matter. I had a job to do, and being attracted to Prince Camillo was not part of it.

Two

CAMILLO

“Six…five…four…”

“I hate you.”

Janae laughed. “No you don’t, but if it helps you get through this last set, then cuss me out all you want.”

“I didn’t…ah—I didn’t…” I was going to fall if I kept it up, so I clamped my jaw shut, closed my eyes, and let them finish counting.

“…two…one. Release.”

Releasing meant nothing more than collapsing onto my side, and over fifteen years later, it never got less strange to hit the floor and only feel it from the stomach up. In the first few years after the accident, I was addicted to watching videos of spinal cord injury survivors go from bedridden to crawling, then eventually walking.

But that would never be my reality. Even stumbling on spasming legs strapped to braces felt like it would be a miracle for me.

I was the exception to the rule. Or, at least, I was the smaller statistic. I was somewhere in the thirtieth percentile of people whose spine injuries were complete. I had nothing below the place my spine had been severed.

Well, I supposed notnothing. There was pain, and there were spasms that kept me up at night, and yearly infections in my bladder from being a full-time catheter user. But after this long, my muscles were entirely atrophied. Not even the heinous electrodes I was strapped to every night could save them. There would be no standing for me. No walking. No crawling.

Just this. Balancing on knees I couldn’t feel until my core gave up on me and I collapsed on the ground.

It was fine though. Really. I wasn’t bitter anymore. Part of it was likely pretending that I was a brave, joyous soul to protect the image of the crown because God forbid anything make my family—especially my brother—look bad.

I wasn’t allowed to be angry. I had to be the boy who was “just lucky to be alive.”

Those words still caused bile to rise up in the back of my throat, even though I actually kind of believed them now. But how many times did I vomit that phrase out in press interviews before it became a personality trait?

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