Page 89 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
She pressed both hands against her stomach, as if trying to hold in her feelings there, and looked down at the floor. “No,” she replied, her gaze distant.
I stood up, walking close enough to touch her. I didn’t. Even without what happened at Jenny’s funeral, we weren’t exactly the kind of siblings who lavished affection on each other. “You did hurt him, Morgan. Congratulations. He’s miserable and grieving and now he gets to know that once upon a time he fucked his sister on top of all that. He gets to know for sure that his mother is dead and his father never wanted him. The Carpathians couldn’t do it, Jenny’s death couldn’t do it, but you did it. You broke Maxen Colchester. Exactly what you wanted, right?”
She shook her head again, still not looking at me. “I don’t know what I want when it comes to him.”
Fuck, who did when it came to Maxen Colchester? All those years since he proposed to Jenny, and yet I couldn’t make myself move on. I couldn’t stop hungering for the accidental brushes of our fingers and shoulders, those nights when we’d get drunk together and he’d begin running curious fingers along the length of my neck, the stubble-rough lines of my jaw. No amount of fucking or drinking or war drove it out of me, and it never would. I’d be dead before I stopped loving Ash.
But that didn’t make it right, especially now that Jenny was dead. What kind of awful man would I be if I hoped her death made him free to love me back?
You’d be the awful man you already are.
I focused on Morgan again, on the here and now, walking toward the door as I said, “You better figure out what you want, Sissy. Because you’re responsible for it either way.”
“It’s done,” she whispered. “It can’t be taken back.”
“Maybe. But I think if you saw him now, you’d hate yourself for it.”
“You have no idea the things I hate myself for,” she said hollowly. “You have no idea all the things I’ve done.”
“And I don’t care,” I said honestly. “But I do care about Ash. And if you ever loved him, if you ever loved me, then you would care too.”
She didn’t answer. I left her standing in the middle of her sitting room, hands flat against her stomach, her eyes vacant as she stared out of the window and at the empty street outside.
Rap.
Rap rap rap.
Rap.
I’d been drinking since four in the afternoon, and the resulting nap was so liquid and thick that it was impossible for me to find my way to the surface. There were sounds…sounds at the door…knocking… Someone’s here.
I managed to open my eyes and roll off my couch with a groan and a wince. I’d had at least four martinis, maybe five, but honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed myself for having six or seven. Today was the first day back on the campaign trail since Jenny’s death, and I’d gone with Ash to Norfolk for a speech he was supposed to give.
It had not gone well.
There had been a moment during the speech, as Ash’s hands were shaking as he struggled to find the right page in his notes to speak from, as he’d trailed off, unable to focus on what he’d been saying, when Merlin and I had shared a look so filled with mutual panic that I almost felt a kinship with the man, despite how much I disliked him. In many ways, this entire venture was more Merlin’s than Ash’s and mine. He had been the one to spend years building up the New Party at the state level, pulling together coalitions and winning support from disaffected Democrats and Republicans. He’d been the one to groom Ash for the role, to gradually convince him that it wasn’t hubris to run for office—or that it was forgivable hubris, at least. It seemed like his entire life had been about getting Ash to this point…I wondered wha
t would happen to Merlin if it all fell apart now.
The speech had been a wreck, but that’s not why I went home to polish off half a bottle of gin. The pity and sympathy on the faces of the people at the speech assured me that for the moment, the campaign was safe enough. In fact, Ash’s shaken delivery had probably helped the message, which was driving home the importance of the sacrifices servicemen and women made in the course of performing their duties. I half suspected that if we’d been able to put voting booths outside the venue, they would have voted for the handsomely grieving Maxen down to a person.
No, it wasn’t the speech. It was Ash himself. It was those haunted eyes, his faint voice, his hands trembling too much to shuffle the pages of his speech. The slump of his shoulders, the blank purposelessness in his face. Watching him like that, so emptied of himself, felt like drowning.
Was this really the same man who’d calmly and charmingly won his first two debates? The same man who’d fought off a building full of rebels to get me to safety? The same man who looked unflinchingly at the muddy, fog-wisped plain of Badon and urged his frightened men forward?
It couldn’t be. It wasn’t.
I drove back to my too-expensive Capitol Hill condo thinking two things:
One, my king was broken.
And two, I didn’t know how to fix him.
Those two things made me miserable, and thus the gin. Which I regretted now as I forced myself to my feet and over to the door. The large clock Morgan’s decorator had picked out told me that it was almost midnight. Fuck. How long had I been asleep?
The rapping was insistent now, like the visitor was trying to break their way through my door with their fist.
“Hold on,” I muttered, fumbling with the locks and chains. Jesus Christ. Didn’t people have any respect for politicians trying to sleep off a bad day?
