Page 96 of Fallen Crown

There’s a bottle of tequila sitting between me and Nick on the armrest, but I’m ignoring it. The last thing I need is to show up at Tucker’s door plastered. Liquid courage just led to liquid stupidity last time.

Nick shifts in his chair to check something on his phone, and the way he does it makes me think he’s trying to hide something from me. Without asking, I flip to his favorite social media platform on my device, and it doesn’t take me long to see what he was trying to conceal. Some assholes have already tagged me in the photos.

Enzo arriving at Maren’s apartment with two oversized suitcases. Maren and Enzo holding hands as they exit her apartment building.

What. The. Fuck.

“Are you kidding me right now?” I say to no one in particular. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe. “I totally understand now why I always thought the other person should love me more. Being the one who loves them more fucking sucks.”

“Yeah, it does,” Nick agrees. “Been there. Done that. Would not recommend. You saw the photos?”

“Was very helpfully tagged in the photos by the people posting them. So kind.” My voice drips with sarcasm.

“We both know one photo or even two photos don’t tell the whole story. Look at what the press built about you and Freja, and that was very far from the truth.”

Part of me wonders whether the Freja thing is to blame for Maren giving Enzo a look in. If so, that’s my fault for not breaking my NDA to tell her everything. But the other part of me knows that if Enzo is getting another shot, it’s got far more to do with me suggesting she bear my children. For someone who was already skittish about any sort of commitment, I dropped the motherload on her. Literally.

“I have this intense desire to fly to Vegas,” I say. My instinct is to flee from these emotions, and I turn off my phone so I don’t stare at the photos obsessively, dissecting hand placements, body language, and eye contact. If she chooses Enzo after the awful way he’s treated her this past year, I don’t know what to think. She deserves better, and for her not to realize that is truly baffling. “If she’s getting back together with him, I can’t be there.”

“You want my advice?” Nick asks.

“Will it be helpful?”

“Hard-won experience tells me that if you regret anything in this situation, it’ll be avoiding the tough conversation. If she loves him more, then she loves him more. Trust me when I say that assuming she loves him more and then finding out years later she didn’t love him more is its own particular brand of heartbreak. Years wasted for nothing.”

I snap off the cap on the tequila, and I pour myself a shot. While I’ve got no intention of getting drunk, there’s a certain comfort in doing something familiar when I’m so out of sorts. Five minutes ago, I was headed back to Bellerive, and I was determined to do anything to make up my mistake in Fiji. Now the calls sent to voicemail and the unread text messages make more sense. Maybe she said no to me because she already knew she was going back to Enzo. Maybe the vibe I thought I was getting off her was just me, so into her I couldn’t see that she wasn’t there with me.

“If you go talk to her, and she picks him,” Nick says, “I’ll catch the first flight to Vegas with you. Might even force Alex and Brent to tag along.”

He makes heartbreak sound slightly more appealing, but I’m still not sure I can stand in front of Maren and have her admit she would rather be with Enzo. For her to pick him over me is unthinkable, and yet there’s a part of me that realizes it’s possible she will. Maybe even likely. She married him, and they’ve been together for years. She hates failure, and I have no doubt she’d see divorce as the biggest one.

There’s also her stubbornness, and I need to account for that. Whatever way she decides to go, her heels will dig in deep.

“What sort of man do you want to be?” Nick asks. “The one who runs from hard things or the one who faces them?”

It’s the type of question our father would have asked me, and it pulls the situation into tight focus. Nick spent years running from important and necessary conversations with Jules, and so I know he’s coming from a place of experience. On top of that, Enzo ran when Maren needed him the most. To be worthy of her, to make myself worthy of her, I can’t shrink away from a straightforward conversation. This one just might be the most important one we’ll ever have.

“I’ll talk to her.” I tip back the shot of tequila, and then I screw on the top. One shot for courage.

We’ve just passed through the royal customs protocol when I remember I switched off my phone earlier.

“Julia just texted me,” Nick says as a series of texts pop up on my phone. “I’m not sure how to tell you this…”

There are three missed calls, and I’ve got half a dozen text messages. “Tucker’s in the hospital,” I whisper as I scan the messages from Posey, Wren, Riker, Paxton, Sawyer, and Nathaniel. The thump of my heart is so loud I’m not sure I can hear anything else. “I need to get to the hospital.” My stomach has dropped to my feet, and my body is as cold as ice. Something is wrong with Maren, and I haven’t been here. She didn’t go to the doctor when she got back, and now she’s got an infection. If I hadn’t gone to Denmark, had told Alex earlier that I was done with the deal he made, I’d have been here, seen the signs she would have hidden from everyone else.

Jag is there waiting with our car, and I climb into the back seat, numb. He catches my gaze in the mirror.

“You’ve heard?” he says.

“What do you know?” I ask as Nick climbs into the car beside me.

“Leptospirosis is what I heard through the grapevine. The cut on her leg combined with the flood waters.” He holds my gaze. “A fluke.”

Exactly one year after Tucker’s last accident, she’s back in the hospital, and this time, it’s my fault. I must not have cleaned the wound well enough in the cabin or in the days after. While Jag navigates the streets to the hospital, I spend the time reading about leptospirosis. The common symptoms sound like a million other illnesses, and knowing Tucker, she likely tried to tough it out longer than she should have. Untreated, though, it’s a nasty bacterial disease. How long was she sick before she collapsed in the restaurant bathroom? Days?

At the hospital, Nick gets out of the car with me and Jag. “I’ll be fine,” I say to Nick in the elevator. “You can call Kane or Jules or someone to come get you.”

“Enzo is going to be there. You realize that, right? None of us needs a brawl in the hallway or her hospital room on top of everything else.”