Page 10 of The Harvest Homecoming

“Me. I want to get past it. I want to apologize. I want to tell you that I was an immature asshole who balked at the idea of love and raced off like the spoiled brat that I was, that I probably still am.”

“No probably. Are. Still are.” He lobbed the pumpkin across the field. I watched it arc overhead and then fall in front of the horses. One picked it up and began chewing on it. “Fuck!”

“That’s why you never made the Östermonian cricket team.”

“Fuck you,” he snarled like a rabid dog. “It takes some huge balls to ask me to forgive that kind of heartbreak, Harold.” I waggled a brow. “No, do not be bragging about your fucking balls to me right now. I don’t care if they’re huge. I’m not even speaking about your actual balls. I’m talking about the metaphorical ones required to say something so audacious.”

I wiped the stupid look off my face. He was right. This wasn’t the time to be the royal tosser of bon mots. To him, I was just a tosser.

“You’re right. I’m being a moron yet again. Acting like everything is a joke or tying things to sex is my default defense mechanism, I’ve discovered,” I confessed, making sure I did not look away. His dark eyes narrowed slightly. “I see that you don’t believe me.”

“No, no, I believe that you use sexual innuendo or witticisms to deflect any deeper emotions.” He stood there between two massive pumpkins, eyeing me as if I were a landmine amid the giant squashes. Squashes? Gourds?

I really needed to do some squash/gourd/pumpkin research before the pumpkin judging contest I was hosting.

“You would know that better than anyone else,” I admitted, wishing against wish that he would soften just a little, an inch or so to let me wiggle my foot in the mental door he was eager to slam closed. Again, totally justified. “I know this probably comes as a shock.”

“You could say that, yes,” he snapped back as a crow cawed off in the distance. “Since when do you want any kind of emotional relationship?”

I blew out a breath as I finally allowed my sight to lift. Above us flew a pair of crows—no, three—circling a scarecrow who was not doing his job well.

“It’s been a slow-growth sort of thing,” I said as my attention left the crows sitting on the slightly lopsided scarecrow’s shoulders to return to Rani. Still just as wary. “You may sit beside me if you wish?” I patted the bed of the wagon. He shook his head, curls bouncing back and forth. God above, he was so damn handsome. “I think most of it started when Anders came home for the holidays.” My fingers found the signet ring on my hand. I began twisting it as my gaze met and held his. “The baby of the family was the one to stand tall and fight the loudest for his rights to be who he was, love who he loved, and to hell with my father and this oppressive, outdated fucking island we call home.”

Much of the ire left Rani’s face. “Prince Anders is very brave.”

“He is, and I admired that. Still do. I got to see how happy Anders was in his relationship, and I came to realize I’ve only ever been that happy once, and that was when we were together. I also got to see how he was with Mitchell. How he refused to let my father treat their love as something to be ashamed of. I’ve done that in the past.”

“I’m aware.” His shoulders slid downward slightly, exposing that lovely neck of his.

“Yes, you would be. I hid us from the world because I knew it would cause a flail, and I was too damn cowardly to go toe-to-toe with Papa over us. Too much of a frightened boy to stand up and demand to be accepted as I was. Pity I wasted so many years allowing my father and the bloody church to repress me and my actions. I see now that I’ve been quite a dunce.”

“True. That pumpkin beside you has more sense, and it’s filled with seeds and pumpkin meat. Guts? Whatever, it’s a vegetable, and it’s got more in its head than you.”

That made me smile. “I think pumpkins are considered fruit as they develop from a flower and contain seeds.” His eye roll was epic. I longed to drag him into my arms and hold him, kiss the furrows on his brow away, and rub my cheek in those springy curls. I did none of those things. I was being a good little princeling. “Still, the point was made. I agree. I’m dumber than a pumpkin. No matter what my reasons, I hurt you badly. And I would like to apologize profusely for doing so, if you’ll accept my atonement?”

“I need to think on that,” he softly replied.

“That’s fair. If you do decide to forgive me, could we possibly consider a new beginning for us? One where I don’t hide us from the world. One where I treat you like the treasure you are?”

“That is also something I need to think over.”

I nodded. “Thank you for hearing me out, Rani. I hope we can start over in some way. If you cannot see yourself ever loving me again, I’ll accept that graciously. We can just be friends. Even that would be better than this wall of bitter cold whenever we see each other.”

He inhaled through his nose, then let it out in a rush through pursed lips. “To be honest, I may have held onto my anger a bit too long. It seemed to be the only way to ensure that you never got close enough to hurt me again, so I kept adding onto that wall, ice block by ice block, until the only ones who could see over the top were myself and Jon Snow.”

I snorted in amusement and waved a hand about at the blazing fall colors all around us. “Well, winter is coming.”

“That it is. Thank you, Harold, for the apology and the explanation. I’ll take some time to think about everything you said. I won’t leave you hanging either way.”

“You’re a better man than I can ever hope to be, Rani Adhikari.”

His gaze mellowed slightly just as Houghton called out to me that we were to meet the press at the house for some pumpkin tarts and warm cider. A young man, big and pale as curd, ran into the field. Houghton was on him like ugly on an ape. Poor fellow was patted down and given a stern warning about racing up to the prince. Once the young man was over his shock, he meekly climbed into the wagon and sat on the seat with the reins in his hand, scared to say boo by the look on his face.

“Warm cider sounds nice,” Rani commented as he climbed in the back, taking care not to let his thigh touch mine in any way. Bummer but expected. Houghton climbed up to sit with the farmhand.

“Two cinnamon sticks for you,” I said as the wagon lurched forward.

Rani stared at me. “You remembered.”