I stopped, rubbing my eyes. This wasn’t meant to be a pity party. But Adan needed to understand why I’d made the choices I had.
Hockey became my escape. My father found a coach who’d trained Olympic players, someone who didn’t care about titles. On the ice, I was another player to be pushed, challenged, corrected. When Coach Eriksson made me do suicides until I threw up because I’d been lazy on the ice, I knew it was because I’d genuinely fucked up, not because of who I was. I respected and loved him for it. He was the first one to treat me like anyone else.
Hockey was the only place where I could fail. Do you understand what a gift that is? To be allowed to not be perfect?
That’s why the injury hurt beyond the physical pain. When I tore my ACL at Rideau, I didn’t merely lose the ability to play competitively. I lost the one space where I could be a guy who loved the game.
I set down the pen to flex my cramping fingers. Outside my window, Buffalo slept, unaware of the prince writing letters at his IKEA desk like a lovesick teenager. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Rideau University was the closest I’d come to normal before Buffalo. Yes, they knew who I was, but my teammates made an art of forgetting. They bodychecked me like they would anyone else, and if I fucked up, they let me know in uncertain terms.
But even there, I was still the Swedish Prince who played hockey. They did call me Your Highness on occasion. To tease and make fun of me, yes, but it was still a painful reminder that I was normal-adjacent, never actually normal.
Then came Alexandra. Beautiful, intelligent, seemed to see past the title. She laughed at my jokes, debated philosophy with me, made me feel interesting. For eight months, I believed I’d found someone who wanted Nils, not Prince Nils.
The night I found out otherwise, I’d gone to surprise her at a diplomatic party. I arrived early, heard her talking to friends. She called me “sweet but bland”, said I had the personality of rice pudding, “boring and flavorless”. But the perks—the events, the connections, the potential future—made up for having to pretend I was interesting.
“He’s so desperate to be seen as normal. It’s almost endearing. Like a golden retriever who thinks he’s a person.” That’s what she said, and it cut me like a knife.
I had to stop writing for a moment, the memory still sharp enough to slice me deeply.
Shortly after, my friends—Tore, Floris, Greg (and yes, they’re all princes too)—and I made our pact. One year living as normal people in America. One year to find out who we were without titles, without expectations, without people looking at us and seeing crowns instead of faces.
I came to Buffalo to answer a question: was I worth knowing without the accident of my birth?
Then I met you.
The words got harder here, more important. How did I explain what Adan had meant without sounding desperate?
You looked at me like I was some annoying dude who might know something about hockey. You challenged me when you thought I was wrong. You were cocky and driven and absolutely unimpressed by anything except what happened on the ice. Do you know how intoxicating that was?
Every interaction, you treated me as an equal. When I struggled with the IKEA furniture, you laughed at me. Not mean-spirited, but the way you’d laugh at any friend being defeated by Swedish engineering. When I coached you, you pushed back if you disagreed, fought for your perspective. You made me earn your respect.
I fell for you so hard. The way you protected your teammates. Your fierce loyalty to your family. How you’d get this focused look during drills that made me forget what I was saying. The terrible jokes you made when you were nervous. The way you trusted me with your dreams.
And every day, the lie got heavier. Every time you shared something personal—your parents’ sacrifices, your fears about not making it, how much you wanted to make it—I wanted to tell you. But I was terrified.
Not of you knowing I was a prince. But of you looking at me the way everyone else does once they know. Of losing the person who saw just Nils.
My hand was cramping again, but I couldn’t stop now.
I know I was wrong. I was so afraid of losing what we had that I guaranteed its destruction. I took away your choice, decided for you what you could handle. That was unfair and insulting and I’m deeply, deeply sorry.
You deserved the truth from the beginning. You deserved to decide if a prince was worth your time, if the complications were worth navigating. Instead, I made you feel foolish for trusting me, and that’s unforgivable.
But I need you to know that what we built was real. Every moment, every laugh, every touch was real. That was Nils with Adan, not a coach with a player or a prince with someone else. My feelings were real. Are real.
I love your determination, the way you attack every challenge like it personally offended you. I love your loyalty, how you’d fight the world for the people you care about. I love your terrible taste in music and your excellent taste in late-night food. I love how you make everything a competition, even building furniture.
I love how you’ve never let me get away with anything. How you call me on my bullshit, make me better. I love that you saw me at my worst—sick, frustrated, failing at basic furniture assembly—and still wanted to be around me.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I love you. Not as a prince loving a commoner—God, how I hate that fairy-tale narrative. But as Nils loving Adan. Just that. Just us.
Now came the hardest part. The future I couldn’t promise would be simple.
In seven months, my season here ends. I don’t know if Millard will renew my contract, but if they don’t, I’ll be expected to return to Sweden and take up part-time royal duties. State dinners, charity work, representing Sweden internationally.
If I stay, it’ll be postponing the inevitable. My future is not in America. It can’t be. I can’t abandon my responsibilities. They’re part of who I am, whether I chose them or not.
