It had started like a fairytale. A waitress in New York being whisked away to compete for a Prince’s hand in marriage? It could be the start of a modern-day Cinderella story.
For the first couple of weeks, it had felt like one. Riley wore dresses decorated with more jewels than she had ever seen before. She tried food cooked by what she assumed were Michelin-standard chefs, each dish a work of art. She slept in a room where the walls were embellished with gold and the ceilings were painted with masterpieces.
And then she fell in love.
It could have been the perfect happily ever after if she hadn’t managed to fall in love with two different men.
She fell for Liam first. From the moment they met, he’d been the personification of Prince Charming and it had been so easy to get swept up in the storybook romance he was offering her. It was hard not to be when he talked to her like she was the one making his dreams come true, said things that sounded straight out of one of her ‘summer reading’ romance novels. And his kisses! His lips on hers were enough to send shivers up her spine. In their increasingly-rare stolen moments, she couldn’t get enough of his soft caresses, his gentle kisses, the way he touched her as though she was something to be treasured, loved.
Drake was unexpected. She might have initially found him abrasive but she’d grown to find his grumpiness endearing, even comforting, when she was faking a smile and eating daintily and pretending to be the sort of person a Queen was meant to be and soon she’d been seeking him out. He stopped being someone she spent time with simply because they were sat at the same out-of-the-way tables and became her closest friend as she tried to navigate Cordonian high society. He’d listened to her fond memories of America and told her his own childhood memories in return, about Liam, about Savannah, and she hadn’t even noticed her feelings progressing into something more until they already had and her heart was racing when he was near, any slight touch searing.
With Drake, she could belly-laugh, she could pick at tiny gourmet meals and rhapsodise about cheeseburgers and macaroni cheese, she could splash him at a beach party instead of being poised and elegant and boring. She could be whoever she wanted to be and, whoever that was, Drake would shake his head and roll his eyes and fail to hide a smile.
He was the only thing that kept her sane between moments with the prince.
(And he was the only man she didn’t have to restrain herself with. The only one who set her on fire with his kisses. The only one who could never be close enough, the one she’d needed to kiss, the one who fallen into her when she finally pressed her lips to his, who’d wrapped her in his arms and pulled her into the nearest room and pressed her against the door as he kissed her, hard, passionate, everything. The one who’d cursed her name and tangled his fingers in her hair as she kissed her way down his solid chest, as she undid his belt and sunk to her knees before him.)
She’s never heard of any fairytale where the supposed princess-to-be spent her day being composed and polite as she mixes with royalty only to return to her room in the evening to talk with the prince’s closest friend about how they shouldn’t be meeting like this, shouldn’t be ruining everything with each kiss, even as he pulled at her hair, tugged her head back and trailed biting kisses down her neck.
(Sometimes it felt like they were punishing each other when they were together, but it was always, always, too good to stop.)
It couldn’t last. She knew that. Her too common fantasy of not having to choose, of having both, was just that – a fantasy – and the truth was that the end of the competition was drawing nearer and nearer and there was more to take into consideration than how she felt about both men.
And the thing was, once she started considering everything else, the choice became painfully easy.
She’d told Liam, back when they first met, that she wanted to see the world. She was saving up, she was going to see everything. She still wanted that, even if her many dress rentals over the last few weeks had put a significant dent in her savings, and if she’d learned anything from Liam in their time together, it was that being royalty hardly meant being free. There were traditions and expectations and rules and perhaps Riley could wear a mask and force a smile but that wasn’t really her. She didn’t want it to be her.
It was something she’d known for weeks but was only just letting herself accept. Whatever she felt for Liam, however much she loved him, it wasn’t enough. She didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she’d resigned herself to the truth that no one was getting out unscathed.
At the next event, she tried to act as though nothing was different. She dressed up, she smiled, she mingled. She probably put on a better show than she ever had, exchanging polite conversation with each of the other women as she kept her distance from Liam. It was only once the sun had set and the party was drawing to an end that she approached him.
“I was starting to think I wouldn’t get to see you today,” he said, waiting for the others to disperse before he reached out to take her hand in his. “I had saved you a dance.”
The words she needed to say were heavy on her tongue, and although she knew she should build up to it and be gentle, it was almost impossible to restrain herself. Instead, she stayed quiet, staring down at their linked hands.
Her silence seemed to concern the prince, and he led her away from the busy servants and the remnants of the party to the centre of the palace maze. She bit her lip at the sight of the flowers and the fairy lights twinkling around them. It had still seemed so easy the first time they’d been here, when they’d laughed and kissed and it had all felt so perfect. Now, she would have preferred to be anywhere but here, somewhere without any treasured memories that could be ruined.
“Riley, are you alright?”
“I don’t want you to choose me.” She hadn’t meant to say that. She’d wanted to ask if they could go somewhere, anywhere, else, but the words had been right there and waiting. “I don’t want to be Queen. If things were different, then maybe, but-”
“Riley, please,” he said, his voice breaking.
She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear to see his expression, and she definitely couldn’t bear to hear him protest. It was already hard enough. “Liam, don’t,” she said gently, letting go of his hand and watching as his arm fell back to his side. “I don’t want you to try and come up with ways we can make it work or ways we can be together. You’re going to be King. We can spend hours thinking about what would happen if you weren’t, but what’s the point? It’s not going to change anything. Cordonia means too much to you for you to walk away from the crown. And so long as being with you means being the Queen, I can’t…”
She choked on the last word, unable to finish, and then finally dared to glance up at him. His lips were pressed together, his eyes rimmed red, his entire expression resigned. “So this is a goodbye?”
It probably should be. It would be best if she packed her things and walked away before things got any worse, before it hurt more.
“Not yet. I’m sure Maxwell and Bertrand would prefer me losing to the scandal of me walking away.” It might have been foolish, but she didn’t want to leave yet. “I’ll see this thing through. But we should probably stop meeting like this. You should spend more time with the other girls. They’re the ones with a future here. Not me.”
“But if you’re staying, I don’t want to stop seeing you,” he said, and she trembled when he reached out and took her hand in his again. “You mean so much to me, Riley, and I’d rather have a few more weeks with you than have it all end now.”
“Don’t you think a few more weeks will just hurt too much?”
“Can it hurt anymore?” He gently tugged her closer, the hand not holding hers rising to cup her cheek. “Riley, I lo-”
She startled backwards, wrenching herself away from his caresses. “Liam, don’t. I can’t… Please don’t say that.”
He inhaled slowly, his eyes closed and his body shaking. “So this is it.” Another long pause, another deep breath and then he was cradling her face in his hands, leaning in for one last kiss.
She let her eyes fall shut, savouring every single second as he slowly closed the gap between them. She wanted to remember the warmth of his body so close to hers, the shivers born from every slight caress, and when his lips finally closed over hers, so softly, so gently, she let the tears fall.
Maybe she wasn’t leaving, but it was still a goodbye.
Back in her room, she buried herself below the thick duvet and wished she’d never left New York. Whatever she’d wanted when she agreed to come to Cordonia, it was never this. She’d wanted a new entry in her scrapbook, another country to cross off the map, not to be crying alone in a room with interior decorating that probably cost more than she could ever hope to earn.
She didn’t hear the knock on her door, not until the visitor tried again, and despite it being close to midnight, she untangled herself from the bed sheets and padded over to the door, not even blinking when she opened it to Drake.
He didn’t say a word until he’d stepped inside – he never lingered in the hallway, not when visiting her – and he turned the key and locked the door behind him first. “Hey.” All she managed in response was a feeble smile. He stared her, looking from her red eyes to the tear tracks on her cheeks, his scowl deepening as it became obvious she’d been crying. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, as though that would be enough to convince him everything was fine, but instead he sighed and pulled her close, folding her into his arms. She returned the embrace, her head tucked under his, her hands clutching at the back of his shirt, and when he pressed a kiss to her hair, all she wanted was to tell him everything so he could somehow make it all okay again.
“I told Liam not to choose me,” she admitted, her words muffled by Drake’s chest. “I told him I couldn’t be Queen.”
Drake stiffened, his arms loosening around her. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why did you tell him that?” he asked, withdrawing from her completely. Riley replaced his arms with her own, wrapping them around her chest as though she could hold on to any semblance of the comfort his embrace had given her. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That whatever I feel for him, being Queen isn’t what I want and I don’t… I don’t love him enough to give up what I want so that I can be what he needs.”
Drake shook his head, his eyebrows furrowed in a familiar, unexpected, scowl. “And what does that mean? You go back to New York and move on with your life like none of this ever happened while Liam marries someone he doesn’t love and Maxwell loses what little he had left?”
“I can’t marry Liam to make everyone else happy if it will make me miserable,” she snapped back, on edge and emotional and wanting Drake to make her feel better, not to tell her she was doing everything wrong.
“You’d be miserable?” he repeated. “Are you miserable here, Riley?”
“No, no, of course I’m not miserable, but-”
“Why are you here, Riley?” he asked, his tone biting. “To ruin everything and then just walk away?”
“I thought you’d want this.” Her declaration seemed to surprise him, his eyebrows rising, his hands clenching into tight fists at his sides, but she’d never stood by and let his grumpiness go unchallenged before and she wasn’t about to start now. “I thought you’d be happy about this.”
“I didn’t want this,” he told her. “I didn’t want any of this. Liam loves you.”
“And you care about that now?” she asked furiously. Drake sighed and ran a hand through his hair, no longer meeting her eyes. “You didn’t seem to care when you were fucking me last night.”
“You weren’t leaving last night.”
“I’m not… I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I can tell.”
Drake was angry, but she was starting to doubt it was directed at her. She braved a step back towards him, and when he looked up at her, she’d never seen anyone look as devastated. He didn’t move when she reached for his hands, gently prizing his fists open and lacing her fingers with his.
“What I do know, Drake,” she said quietly, her gaze locked with his, “is that I can’t be the Queen and I can’t be with Liam, but… I can still be with you.”
He seemed to shrink into himself, somehow looking small, and his fingers tightened around hers. “So you’re hoping to walk away with a consolation prize?”
“No!” She shook her head and pressed a desperate, hard kiss to his lips. “No, no, Drake, I… I didn’t want to decide. I didn’t want hurt anyone, but all I’ve managed to do is screw everything up. The only reason I haven’t already packed up my things and hightailed it out of here is that I lo-”
She didn’t get the chance to finish. He was kissing her, one hand hot against the back of her neck, the other knotted in her hair. It was a bad idea, it had to be, but they’d always been a bad idea and she’d never cared before. She clutched at his shirt, tried to tug him impossibly closer, her mouth opening to him when she felt his tongue at the seam of her lips. Her mind was fuzzy, her whole world was Drake, and when they fell onto the bed, everything became a blur of kisses and caresses.
(His palm on her breast, her hand on his heart, his mouth between her legs, licking into her, her pulling at his hair.)
He was everywhere, he was everything, and after he was inside her, after they finally came together, her nails had drawn scratches on his back and his mouth had sucked bruises onto her breasts and she couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe.
They shared a few moments of softness. She curled into him, her fingers writing nonsense on his chest, her head tucked beneath his chin. Drake’s hand combed through her hair, twisting strands between his fingers, pausing only when she turned her head to press a kiss over his heart.
But the softness, the silence, didn’t last. It hadn’t been long enough when he gently nudged her away, rolling her away from him so he could sit at the edge of the bed and start to get dressed.
She considered crawling over to him and embracing him, enticing him back to bed so the world could be just them again, but she didn’t. She rolled onto her back, the sheets pooled at her waist, and stared up at the white and gold ceiling.
“You’re going to see Liam, aren’t you?” she asked. He paused, shirt half on. “What are you going to tell him?”
“Today? Nothing.” He finished buttoning his shirt and stood up, turning back to look at her. “He doesn’t need to know about this. He’s just going to need someone to talk to.”
He left her with a kiss. It felt like another goodbye.
Riley stared up at the ceiling, the gold embellishments glistening where the moonlight caught them.
It wasn’t a choice. She knew that now. They’d all let things go too far, toed at the lines constraining them, but she would never be Queen, Liam would always be King, and Drake would always be his right-hand man. None of them would compromise, none of them wanted to. Instead, they’d settled for a few stolen weeks, fleeting moments to be remembered and treasured and left behind.
It had never been a fairy tale.