Page 83 of Heavy Crown

“Oh, no.” She laughs. “Sex with Brent is never boring. He’s amazingly flexible.” She gets a dreamy look on her face. “Has definitely come in handy.”

I shake my head. “Forget I said anything.”

“Okay, okay,” Posey says, and she grins at me. “There’s like, two schools of meant-to-be love, right?”

“Soulmates.” Everyone knows that one.

“Right, and twin flames. Or twin souls. Can’t remember exactly what it’s called. The soul is split in two or something. Your perfect connection.” She takes a bite of brownie. “If you’re into the idea of marrying yourself, it’s a good one.”

“Alex and I aren’t the same.”

“More like opposites, I think. You’re open. He’s closed. You’re small town. He’s big city. He runs a country. You live in a country.”

The last one makes me laugh again. “Alex would never go for some airy-fairy explanation like that.” Does he even feel what I feel when we’re together? Does either explanation fit the sensation I’ve been having around him? Wasn’t he the one who mentioned reincarnation once?

“Does it really matter?” Posey asks. “When your gut tells you someone is right, that instinct is rarely wrong. Some things can’t be explained. They just are.”

“Is that what happened with you and Brent?”

“Well, my libido was pretty sure we were destined to mate. Took the rest of me a while to catch up to the soul part.” She flicks out a hand. “You’ve seen him, you know.”

Muscles galore, and he doesn’t seem to mind playing the straight man to Posey’s antics. Appears to delight in them, and in her, most of the time.

“None of that matters.” I set down my spoon. “We’re sort of together for now, I guess? At some point, it’s going to end. Has to. He can’t marry me. Do I even want to get married? I’m twenty-three.”

The scary part is that I would. I would marry Alex. But marrying the royal family is another consideration entirely. I’m not naïve enough to believe Alex is the only person in the equation. A family. A country. If it were possible to be with him forever, would I be capable of giving him everything he needs?

“I will say this.” Posey takes her last bite of brownie. “I’ve never seen Alex look at any other woman the way he looks at you. I’ve never known him to take a day off or to be so attentive to anyone else in his life. Whatever is going on, he’s into it.”

“Yeah, I—” None of that is news to me. Obvious, in some ways, that he cares about me deeply. Neither of us is going to escape this unscathed. “He’s going to break my heart though, isn’t he?”

Posey’s exuberance vanishes, and her eyes soften in sympathy. “Just make sure the pleasure is worth the pain. That’d be my criteria. If you’re going to feel like crap for months afterward, make these moments count.”

I take another mouthful of soup and stare out the window to the ocean in the distance. If I was only worried about months of feeling terrible, what I’m doing wouldn’t seem so bad. A few months in a lifetime is nothing. The reality, and what I will not say to Posey, or anyone else for that matter, is that I may never get over Alex. That’s how it feels right now. That he’ll never be a cool story to tell people—my affair with a future king. Instead, memories of him will be stored inside me. A butterfly dead in the cocoon, never able to take flight.

Later that night when there’s a knock on my door, I sit on the couch for a beat. Posey’s advice has been ringing in my ears since she left after dinner. Soak up the happiness to make the unhappiness worth it. Show me heaven before you drag me to hell. That’s what I told Alex the other night, isn’t it?

The thing is, sitting alone in my apartment, I’ve gotten cold feet. Who agrees to spend the rest of their life in hell for a glimpse of heaven? No one. No one in their right mind would agree to those terms.

There’s still a chance I can save myself. If I have the strength to turn Alex away tonight, maybe there’s a chance I’ll experience a month or two of heartbreak. While there is an eventual expiration date on whatever is developing between us, there’s no way to know if that’s weeks or months from now. I have almost a whole year left on my visa before I’m forced out of the country.

A year of sneaking around with Alex. Would I make it that long? Would he tire of me? Would I get over my fascination with him?

Sitting here, both seem impossible. My feelings for him are infinite, all-consuming, rip-my-heart-out, never-the-same-again kind of levels.

I’ve got one last chance to find the brakes.

Heartbreak is here, on my doorstep. I cannot let it in.

With that thought in my head, I tug open the door. For a beat, I’m dumbfounded. How did I forget this? Why does heartbreak have to look so fucking good?

“Alex,” I breathe out.

“How are you feeling?” His voice is husky, and he devours me with his dark gaze.

“Like myself,” I say. Not exactly true. Right now, my heart is beating so fast and hard there’s no way I’m telling him to leave. There are no brakes. Were there ever? Between my sickness and his absence for the last few hours, I underestimated the pull between us.

Whenever this ends I’ll have to leave the country. I won’t be able to stay when being face-to-face with him dismantles any sort of defense. Seeing him and not being with him will be a thousand tiny cuts across my heart. He is everything.