But it quickly fades. “Lyra doesn’t love me,” I mutter. I can only hope she might be able to love in sometime in the future, but now? I don't think so.
“How do you know? Has she ever been in love with you before?” Jon asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Haveyouever been in love before?” Every head turns to Ashton. He chats, he jokes, he’s an ass most of the time, but I’ve never heard him even mention the word love.
“I don’t know. I thought I was, but it felt different from this.”
“Different people, different love,” Boone says, and I’m not the only one who looks athimwith surprise. I’m not sure if he’s the bad boy, or the grump because he seems like a combination of both. “I’ve never been in love before.”
“Me neither,” Dylan confesses.
“I’m in love with Lyra,” Charlie announces.
“I think I am, too,” Luc decides.
I chuckle. “No, you’re not.”
“Just becauseyou’re—”
“You’ve known her for two weeks,” I interrupt. “That won’t even get you past the first layer of Lyra. There is so much to her that it would take you a lifetime to really get to know her. And how can you be in love with her if you don’t know her?”
“But they want us to fall in love with her,” Derrick argues.
“How do you fall in love with a person in two weeks?” Jon wants to know. “You fall in lust. You take all of that attraction and you tell yourself that it’s love.”
“But it’s really not,” Rand agrees. “Not yet, anyway.”
“The process works, though,” Leo points out. “Look at Grayson and his wife. Esme found someone in her season too.”
“Maybe they got lucky,” Ashton sniffs and helps himself to my bourbon. “I’m not lucky.”
A few of the men laugh at that. “You’re a billionaire,” Phillippe says rudely. “I’d say you’re the luckiest of us all.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” I pull the bottle back. “Money doesn’t equate happiness.”
“Says the guy who lives in a castle,” Derrick says under his breath.
I ignore that comment and make myself another fajita.
I have nothing in common with these men, other than Lyra, and that makes it strange.
Also, strangely comfortable.
I don’t have conversations like this with the princes. We rarely talk about women, never talk about love. Maybe no one has ever asked me because they thought that I’ve been in love with Lyra, and being her brothers makes it too weird.
I’ll have to ask Odin.
The others have always had a love interest in the back of their mind—Gunnar might have been in love with Stella for years without admitting it to me. I’m friends with Edie, so Kalle might not want to talk to me about her. I really don’t know Rand and Jon or Ashton, so it’s easier to open up to them.
Strange. Usually, I’m reserved with people. I keep to myself. Even with my friends other than the princes…
I don’t have a lot of friends.
I work. I socialize with Kalle some, and Bo, now that he’s back in town. Odin and I had a regularly scheduled squash game once a week, and I would spar with him whenever I had the chance.
I have many acquaintances since I know most of Battle Harbour by name, but not many close friends. It’s my own fault, and while it’s never really bothered me, I get the feeling that this might be the time to work on changing that.
