Page 97 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. “That’s a shame. I hate when Mum and Dad fight.”
“Catch yourself on.”
“No, seriously. I thought you were on the mend with him.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“No, you don’t, you have a dick—a literal fucking walking penis, that’s what you have. Not a boyfriend.”
“What a shame it’d be to throw this champagne all over your lovely new Versace shirt—which, by the way, is fucking disgusting.”
His mouth drops open, glances to the girl who I think might be his girlfriend(?). “Primrose picked this out for me.”
“I didn’t,” she adds in quickly, big smile on her face.
“Keep your fat nose out of my business,” I tell him, looking around the dimly lit, intimate restaurant.
“But it’s so much more entertaining than my business,” he groans. “All I have is absent parents and a lunatic brother.”
I look back at him. “And how is your lunatic brother?”
“He’s fitting in nicely at Darcy,” Primrose smiles. “I think.”
Connie lifts a shoulder carelessly. “He’s fine. He’s got me.”
We leave it at that because if there’s one area that makes him uncomfortable, it’s talking about his family.
As the dinner ticks on, the more I dread going home and when Connie and Primrose stand up to leave, the more I long to grab onto Connie’s leg and beg him to take me with him, home, to Arthur.
However, that night, while I’m laying in a bed next to a man I’ve realised I don’t love, I get a text.
A text from Connie.
A text from Connie telling me to pack my bags because he’s sending me on a retreat to Paris in the morning with Arthur so we can sort our shit out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Prince Arthur
I wait anxiously in the lobby of The Ritz Paris.
I start asking myself why I agreed to come or why I’m anxious. I mean, how many fucking nights have I spent with her in this very hotel?
I’m not sure what Connie is gaining from this—a free house because Primrose is there? Doubt it. Heard him through the walls so much that I actually can’t look him in the eye anymore. Dirty bastard, he is. Didn’t know Primrose was like that, though. Then again, the boys in our circle apparently have a tendency to corrupt the only girls who have ever loved them.
I’m picking at the skin around my nails as I wait for her. I’m not even banking on her showing up, truthfully. I wouldn’t blame her. After all that’s said and done, she does have a boyfriend.
As much as it sickenings me to admit, she isn’t mine anymore. Sure, in some way she always will be—to me, she will—but big picture shit, she’s not. Whether she ever will be again is a different question. I like to think she will, that we’re stronger than whatever the fuck is between us. We got through school, we can get through anything else, surely.
The door opens, I look up. Long legs, waist length brunette hair, best face in the world, dressed in blue—it’s her. Couldn’t be anyone else. No one else could walk in and gain the attention of everyone else waiting around the lobby.
Phoebe comes over to me, I stand up.
“You alright?”
She smiles, laughs a bit. “I’m okay.”
I nod, run a hand through my hair. Who fucking knew that after all these years, I’d still get nervous around her? Like speaking to your crush for the first time. That dip in your stomach that makes your voice all shaky and your hands sweaty.
