Margot makes a soft sound, a littlemmm. I don’t know what it means. I’m not willing to ask. I’m definitely not going to look over at her to see her expression.
It’s better this way. I probably shouldn’t have even told her all of that. I don’t know why I let it slip.
Not only that, but I find myself irritable now. Margot has a way of making me open up, but I don’t want to.
I have exactly zero interest in being vulnerable around her ever again.
Leaning forward, I press the button to lower the partition. When the driver looks back at me in the rearview mirror, I catch his eye. “Could you fucking hurry it up? I have places to be.”
He bows his head. “Selvfølgelig, deres højhed.”
Despite what I said, he doesn’t drive any faster. The palace drivers never do. They always drive five kilometers under the speed limit. It’s in their training. After all, they are moving precious cargo.
Sighing to myself, I lean my head back and close my eyes.
Chapter Ten
Stellan
Ipause for a moment, making sure my weight is centered, making sure I have the right grip on the basketball. Then I jump, shooting the ball toward the hoop. It sails into the basket, runs around the rim, and then falls off the side.
“Rend mig i røven!” I shout, feeling sweat slide down my back.
Erik gives a bark of laughter. “You are terrible at this game, Stel.”
He runs to catch the ball, dribbling it as he returns. I wipe my brow on my shirt, turning to look at Margot as I do. She sits on a set of bleachers on the other side of the gym, with her notepad open and her pen in her mouth. Her head is down, her hair spilling everywhere as she scrawls something to herself.
I can see that she’s shed that terrible black blazer she usually wears, obviously feeling warm in the stifling gym. It sits beside her, thrown carelessly on one of the lower bleacher steps like a piece of driftwood leftby the sea. She has on a short black dress and leggings, the neckline of her dress tantalizingly low.
As a matter of fact, when she sits in just this position, I can almost see her nipples.
Almost.
I stare for a second too long and she looks up, catching me. Her cheeks immediately turn pink and she sits up, adjusting her dress. I lift a brow at her, just in time to get a basketball right in the stomach.
The breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh. I catch the ball and glare at Erik.
“Quit that,” I command. My order is met with an eye roll.
Erik has always been my closest friend and biggest rival, all at once. He’s also the only person who is completely unafraid of telling me to go fuck myself.
“Stop staring at the pretty reporter,” he says, grinning. “We’re supposed to be playing a game here.”
I roll my eyes and forcefully chuck the basketball back at him. He catches it, dribbles, and then makes a shot. The shot goes in the basket without even touching the rim. He does a celebratory dance.
Shaking my head, I run to catch the ball. “I’m a thousand percent certain that you aren’t supposed to do a dance every single time you make a basket.”
His grin only widens. “Says the guy that can’t dunk. Do I detect a note of jealous bullshit?”
He’s right, of course. It irks me beyond measure that I’m the future king of Denmark and the soon to be ruler of everything I see… and yet I just can’t manage to master basketball.
I casually stride around the court, trying not to let my ego get the better of me. We could play some sport that I actually have a chance at scoring goals, like football orhandball. But Erik likes to mix up our shared workouts to allay boredom.
So today, I’m playing basketball.
I line up another shot and jump, throwing the ball. This time the ball bounces off the backboard and then bounds away from me. My eyes tighten; I hate being so intensely bad at something that should be so easy.
I swing my gaze over to Margot, who is watching my every little movement. She tucks her pink hair back behind her ear, looking at me with an unreadable expression. As she tilts her head to the side thoughtfully, she comes off as analytical.
