Page 33 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
“One day that joke is going to get old,” he warned me.
“Never.”
He considered me a moment and then asked, “Do you want to take a walk?”
My mouth went dry. “Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”
The spring chill hovered under the trees as we kicked our way up the narrow path away from the base, but the birds trilled and hopped around anyway, and tiny flowers pushed their way out of the soil wherever a patch of sunlight fell through the trees.
We didn’t go far—although we were both technically dismissed from duties that day, there’d been enough separatist activity in our valley to make being out of sight of the base a dicey prospect. Instead, we found a ridge that overlooked our compound and sat, feet dangling over the valley floor.
“So you’re leaving tomorrow,” Colchester said, looking down over the base. “Going home.”
“For as long as they’ll let me.”
“I wish I could’ve seen more of you,” he said, and my chest tightened.
I couldn’t bear him saying things like that, couldn’t bear it, and so I tried to redirect him, blunt the intensity. “And seen more of Morgan, I’m sure.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I really enjoyed the time I spent with Morgan—every moment of it—but I don’t need to see her again. And when you go…I’m going to feel very much like I need to see you again.”
And my chest tightened even more. “Colchester—”
He glanced at me, a flash of green framed by long black lashes. “My closest friends call me Ash.”
“I thought your first name was Maxen.”
“And so it is, but…” He chewed his lip for a moment, as if deciding how much to tell me. “I never knew my biological parents. There’s no father on record and my birth mother named me, but a name was all she was willing to give, I guess. And so Maxen—Max—was what I was called until Mama took me in when I was four. The day I moved into her house, she let me pick out my own name, a new name, one that I could use with my new life and my new family.” He smiled. “She was the kindest, sweetest person I’d ever met—there wasn’t a time that I could go to her that she wouldn’t pick me up and cuddle me. I told her I wanted to have the same name as her, and she laughed. She said she wouldn’t let a little boy be named Althea but that I could have her middle name. And when I was officially adopted a few years later, we made it official. No longer Maxen Smith, but Maxen Ashley Colchester. Ever since then, I’ve thought of Ash as my real name. The name given to me out of love and not—” he waved a hand at nothing in particular “—abandonment.”
I was fascinated by this glimpse into his history, this legacy of pain. “And you’ve never tried to find your birth parents?”
Bitterness clung to his mouth. “Why would I? They didn’t want me.”
I want you. “So I should call you Ash?”
He smiled at me, the dancing smile, the bruising smile, wide and dimpled with white teeth and lips that looked firm and soft all at once. “I’d like that,” he told me.
Hypnotized by that smile, I echoed, “I’d like that too.”
“Embry, have you been avoiding me?”
I tore my gaze away from his warm, handsome face. I sensed he’d know if I was lying, but I didn’t want to admit to it, couldn’t admit to it because then he’d ask why and I wouldn’t be able to refuse him the truth.
“Is it because I slept with your sister?” he pressed. “Or is it because I didn’t keep sleeping with her?”
“No, Colchester—”
“Ash,” he corrected.
“—Ash. That’s not why…or I don’t know, that’s not all of the why.”
“Because I missed you,” he said quietly. “I wanted to see you more.”
“I really did think you hated me.”
“You’re spoiled and self-destructive and relentlessly careless. The only thing I hate about you is that you’re not one of mine, so I can’t discipline you.”
And despite what Morgan told me, despite what I thought about myself, the moment he said the word discipline, the hairs rose up on my arms and the muscles tensed in my thighs. An unfamiliar part of me wanted to beg him to discipline me now. “And you wish I was one of your men.”
