And I need a minute to process what just happened.
I just met twenty-five men. Not only am I supposed to remember their names, I also have to choose the first three to send home by the end of the night.
“So?” Grayson asks.
I manage to give him a grin. “This is going to be fun.”
7
Spencer
I
don’tgotoAbigail’sthat night because there is no longer any Abigail to go to. No more Abigail to hang out with, spend time with. To make up the fun foursome with Bo and Hettie.
What am I supposed to tell Bo? And Hettie. She’ll hate me for breaking Abigail’s heart.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be like this. If I can get my head straight, I can fix this. Get this question answered, the one that’s been stuck in my head since I was a kid, and make it right with Abigail.
Only, as amazing and incredible as she is, it will never be right with Abigail.
Because of that one silly question: will there ever be anything between Lyra and me? Like a future? A happily ever after, for all the romantic softies out there.
I am not a romantic softie. I never have been.
There have been women in my life: Coral, when I went to boarding school in London; a brief fling with Rachel when I was in Toronto at university.
Abigail.
Lyra.
They are the main ones, the ones that left a mark.
I wasn’t looking for a future with Coral or Rachel. I never planned on one with Abigail— we were friends who might have become more, but then she left.
And then she came back.
If she hadn’t left with Hettie, would that have become serious? Would I have had these thoughts eight years ago, trying to decide if I want to let go of my dream of a life with Lyra?
Because that’s what it is.
Deep down, I dream of a life with Princess Lyra of Laandia. That’s not unheard of. Lyra is gorgeous and smart, vivacious and daring and bold and funny. She speaks her mind, she does what she wants and asks for forgiveness later.
And there’s more to her than most people see.
I was three when my father brought me to Battle Harbour. My mother was British, Dad from a nearby town in Laandia, but they met in Barcelona at the final concert of Kräftig, the heavy metal band Dad and Magnus started when they were young. It had been a one-off concert to celebrate an anniversary of their first platinum record.
The two of them broke up the band. Magnus left when he took the throne, and then Dad put in the final nail after Magnus convinced him to return to Laandia to help him rule.
There was never any question of Dad not standing at Magnus’s side for whatever he needed.
My mother’s name was Siobhan, and she met my father at a party after the concert. And then Dad went back to Laandia while my mother returned to London, and they didn’t give that night another thought until Siobhan discovered she was pregnant.
She had the baby—obviously, because it was me—but she died in an accident when I was four months old. Her sister raised me, never telling my father what happened until I was almost two. It was another year before my aunt allowed him to be a part of my life, and six months later, after Duncan married Signe, mother of my half-sisters, he went to London to bring me back to Laandia.
I was a three-year-old boy, taken from the only home I’d ever known to travel to a new country with a man I knew nothing about, only that he was my father.
I didn’t even know his first name until we got here, or that he was best friends with a king.
