AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shoving those thoughts to the side, I do my best to focus on what Paul is saying. Our first stop for the day is the Farcliff Learning Center, where apparently Penelope agreed to go public with the help I provided for them. So much for keeping my good deeds quiet.
I’d much prefer to keep that work private. To do good in the background without needing to shout about it—but I know I’ve messed up often and in spectacular fashion, and this is the best way to make up for it. Now that Jazz is gone, I see no reason to act up.
In a weird way, I want to make her proud.
So, I go to the Farcliff Learning Center. I make a speech in front of a few members of the press, and for once I don’t go off-script. It’s easy to talk about something I believe in, and the words on the paper seem clearer than they usually do. I spend longer than I need to meeting the kids, talking to the administrators, and reviewing the new curriculum they’ve implemented this year.
When I leave the Farcliff Learning Center, for the first time all tour I feel like I’ve accomplished something, like my contributions are worthwhile and I’m not just a waste of space sucking on the royal teat.
Still, I think of Jazz. I wonder what she’s doing, and what she’d think of all this. Would she see me as some elitist asshole pretending to give back? Or would she understand that I care?
Instead of going back to my hotel room, I ask to be taken to a bar. I have the afternoon off, and I just can’t face a quiet hotel room where I know all I’ll be thinking about is Jazz. I still haven’t heard from her, and I can’t face the loneliness of my room. At least if I’m in a bar—relatively anonymous in another country—there will be background noise to distract me from my thoughts.
But as I sit down in a back booth and sip a drink, my thoughts are still caught up in Jazz. What she’s doing, how her mother is, what she’s feeling. If she’s thinking about me, too.
This royal tour will be exhausting without her. I have eleven more weeks of this, and if Jazz doesn’t come back on tour, I have nothing to look forward to. It’ll be nearly three months of drudgery while I wonder if she’d still want to see me at the end of it all.
I take a sip of my drink—an Old Fashioned—and I realize it’s mostly habit. I have no desire to be here drinking. No desire to get drunk. I don’t want to end up on some tabloid, and no part of me wants to bring a woman home unless that woman is Jazz. If I’m honest, the thing I want most is to jump on a plane and head back to Nord so I can be with her.
Someone slides into the booth across from me, pulling me from my thoughts. I can hardly hide my grimace when I see Liam Birchal’s smirking face across from mine. “Well, if it isn’t the reborn philanthropist,” he says, a challenge threaded through his words. “Needed a drink after doing all that good, did you?”
Disgust turns down my lips as I look at the man I used to call my friend. I still don’t know exactly what happened between him and Jazz, but the more I get to know her, the more I think Liam treated her badly. The urge to punch him is strong. “How did you know I was here?”
“Is that how you treat an old friend?” He leans back, bringing a pint of beer to his lips. White foam sticks to his upper lip, and I watch his tongue slither out to lick it off. I’m surprised it isn’t forked. He sighs in satisfaction, then places the beer down on the table, lifting his eyes up to mine. Danger dances in his irises. “So, you and Jacinthe Crawley, huh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Silas. You ran after her at the gala. You left right after she did. I’m not an idiot.”
“What happened between the two of you?” My voice is cold. Harsh. If I find out he hurt her…
Liam waves a hand. “We were young. Teenage love.”
Even hearing the word love from Liam’s mouth makes me see red. I’ve known the guy since I was a kid, and he doesn’t have a loving bone in his body. I can only imagine how he treated her. How he made her feel. How deeply he hurt her for her to still have that reaction to him, all these years later.
Liam just grins at me. “There are plenty of women in the world, Silas. There’s a new club downtown which is supposed to be full of hot chicks. We should head there tonight. Monday is the new Friday.”
“I’m not going.” I put my glass down and cast an eye around the bar, noticing a few people glancing our way. I may have been recognized.
“Come on, Silas,” Liam whines. “You can bring Jazz if you want. I promise not to make a scene.” His eyes glimmer. “Unless she’s not around…”
How would he know she’s gone? I whirl on him. “Speak her name again and I’ll rip your tongue out.”
Liam looks shocked for half a second, then lets out a cruel laugh. His shoulders bounce up and down, and he shakes his head at me. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Fuck off, Liam. I’m not in the mood.”
“You think it’s an added challenge that she hates everything about the monarchy? Are you trying to prove something?”
“You can leave now.” More people glance over at us. I see someone pointing a cell phone at us and I turn my head away, not wanting photos of me surfacing on the internet. Especially not with Liam Birchal sitting across from me.
“You think that if you get in bed with her, it’ll change what she thinks about you? She hates everything about your family, Silas. Everything about mine, too. And she’s smart enough to get bored of you.” His eyes narrow as he says the words, and I wonder why I ever considered Liam a friend.
He’s just like the bullies in school who called me illiterate. Just like all those people who made me feel like less. Was I really so intent on getting fucked up, pursuing women and booze and drugs, that I didn’t see what a complete asshole this guy is?
I stand up, leaving my drink on the table. “Goodbye, Liam.”
Liam just laughs, finishes his drink, and stands up next to me. He slings his arm over my shoulder, and everyone in the bar stares at us. Phones are pointed our way as Liam leans into my ear. “You should stay away from her, Silas. She’ll snap you in half and write about it in her little newspaper. No pussy is worth that kind of backlash.”
