"Intimate encounters?"She was shouting now."God, you make me sound like some kind of..."
"Some kind of what?"
"You know what, forget it.Think whatever you want to think.Believe whatever makes you feel better about this whole situation."
"What I think is that you've been less than honest about your romantic past, and now it's blowing up in both our faces."
"What I think is that you're looking for an excuse to be angry at me because it's easier than admitting you screwed up too."
"I screwed up?I'm not the one with compromising photos splashed across international media."
"No, you're just the one who's too much of a coward to have an honest conversation without hiding behind a fake identity first!"
"At least I wasn't rolling around half-naked with other people."
"At least I wasn't pretending to be someone else while judging everything the other person said and did!"
"You think I was judging you?"
"I think you were evaluating me like a horse you might buy.Checking my temperament, testing my responses, making sure I was suitable for your precious royal bloodline."
"That's not what I was doing."
"No?Then what were you doing?Because it sure as hell wasn't getting to know me as an equal."
I stopped, took a breath, tried to find some calm in the storm of jealousy and hurt."I was trying to see if there was a chance we could actually make this work.If there was something real between us instead of just political necessity."
"And now?"
The question hung between us, loaded with everything that had happened in the past twelve hours.Last night, she'd been in my arms, soft and vulnerable and mine.This morning, I was looking at photos of her with another man and wondering if I'd ever really known her at all.
"Now I'm wondering if the woman I thought I was falling for even exists, or if she was just as much of an act as you're accusing me of putting on."
The hurt in her eyes was immediate and visceral."An act.Right.Because only someone putting on an act would be stupid enough to develop actual feelings for a man who was lying to her."
"Is that what happened?You developed actual feelings?"
"Does it matter?Those feelings were based on a lie anyway."
"They weren't based on a lie.Everything I told you about myself was true."
"Except for the part where you're actually a prince judging whether I'm worthy to marry him."
"I wasn't judging whether you were worthy.I was trying to figure out if we could be happy together."
"And your conclusion?"
I looked at her, at this woman who'd turned my carefully ordered world upside down, who'd made me laugh and made me want and made me feel things I'd spent years trying to avoid.This woman who was now standing in front of me with tears in her eyes and accusation in her voice, defending herself against charges that I knew, deep down, were unfair.
But the jealousy was a living thing in my chest, and I couldn't seem to get past the image of her with someone else.
"My conclusion is that we're both too damaged by other people's lies to trust each other enough to find out."
The finality in my tone made something break in her expression."So that's it?One tabloid story and we're done?"
"It's not just the tabloid story, Betty.It's everything.The deception, the accusations, the fact that we can't seem to have a conversation without it turning into a fight."
"Maybe because you keep treating me like I'm some kind of criminal instead of someone who got blindsided by media attention!"
