“Thank you for not being more upset at the shit I put you through.”
I shrugged. “It was going to come out sooner or later. At least now I have an easy segue. Just call Mom up: ‘Hey, sent you a link.’”
Not that I was even remotely considering that. Nance would freak.
“Even though there’s a picture of us kissing, you can still explain what it means about you as a person, which is a whole other thing. Hell, my brother’s only ever seen me with girls, so just by seeing a picture of me kissing a man, he won’t know what the hell he’s looking at.”
“Only with girls? So…”
“I think it’s safe to say, after everything that happened today, I’m bi. I’ve never done anything with a man before. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve messed around with girls and other guys have been involved, but typically, contact has been avoided. It was the first time I’ve kissed a man in a bar, that’s for sure.”
I laughed. “Oh, so I’m kind of special?”
“Yes, you are.”
Those steel-blue eyes zeroed in on me.
Now that the truth had come out and made all that crazy-ass shit make sense, it reminded me that, despite being trapped in a dungeon at the moment, I was going to be okay.
I was safe.
6
Owen
Iwaited in the garden of the North Library courtyard, looking out over the pond, a fountain in the middle arcing water all around it. I heard the French doors behind me open and a set of footsteps stomping toward me.
I took a breath, awaiting Lucas’s wrath.
As his footsteps neared on the stone patio, I turned to see him still dressed in the Han Solo costume he’d worn for his speech at the conclusion of the parade.
“What is this bullshit?” he asked, practically spitting the words through his teeth. With his crown on his head and the hot fury on his face, he approached as though he expected me to take a step back out of intimidation or reverence for his royal position.
I refused to give him the satisfaction.
I didn’t so much as flinch.
“What bullshit might you be referring to?” was all I said.
“Prince Watch? Really? Won’t be the first or last time to see your face on there, will it? And what ideas have you been putting into Cassie’s head? Clearly the only reason she ran off was to support the very cause you seem so insistent on making a mockery of this family with.”
“Cassie’s actions were her own, done on the royal guard’s watch, not while she was with me at the parade, and I no more encouraged her to join a protest than I kissed a man to send some message to our family.”
I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of.
I’d wanted to kiss Keegan, and it had felt good.
Damn good.
He huffed, assessing my face as if trying to figure out how to reprimand his rogue brother.
“Do not stand there and act like I am too stupid to know what this is really about.”
“Then perhaps you will enlighten me and share with me what you believe it is about.”
Of course, I knew, but I wanted to hear him vocalize it, to hear what an asshole he sounded like when he spoke the words.
“You deliberately kissed that man in public, for attention, to take a stand against the very thing Mère and I explicitly stated this family would remain silent about, in the name of our own mother.”
