It was in these moments that Max was reminded how elementally alone he was. One would think, given that his mother was asking him to help, that there would be a sort of solidarity in the act of trying to manage Father. There was certainly a common understanding of what needed to happen. But somehow that didn’t translate into actual understanding. Understanding of the emotional variety, the sort that was supposed to travel, unconditionally, from parent to child.
“You and Lavinia looked like you had a lovely evening,” Mother said.
“Yes,” he said flatly.
“Your father was very happy.”
“Grand. That is the most important thing, after all.”
“Max.” She huffed a martyred sigh. “Don’t start.”
He eyed Father. He was right in Lucille’s face, jawing about something and shaking his finger. The crowd had thinned considerably, and their heated argument was beginning to draw the attention of people near them.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it, Mother?”
She looked at him for a long time, and for an instant, he thought he saw something different in her eyes—a flash of uncertainty, perhaps? It was gone before he could puzzle it out. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
As they approached Father, Max ran through what would happen. Mother would apologize for interrupting and make some case for why they needed to leave, and Max would engage Lucille in conversation. That was their first strategy, and it might work. If they needed to escalate, Max and Mother would switch places, and Max would hiss in his father’s ear that he was embarrassing himself and the family and strong-arm him out of the room.
That would work, but there would be a cost. Father, humiliated, would turn his rage on Max. He wouldn’t hit him. It would just be words. Words, Max reminded himself, slid right off him. He was a well-seasoned pan, impervious.
Max stopped walking and looked around.
No, he looked for her. Even though he’d had an ever-humming awareness of her, of her presence in this ballroom haunting him like a ghost breathing down his neck, he’d been trying to avoid looking at her. Out of self-preservation. But now, though it defied logic, looking at her felt like an act of self-preservation.
There she was, at a small table with Leo, deep in conversation. Some wisps had come out of her hairdo. They had their heads together, and their faces were lit by the flames of a candle on the table, making her skin glow.
She looked up and right at him, as she had earlier that day, during the dress fitting. As if she felt him. As if they felt each other.
“I’m not doing this.”
Mother, who’d proceeded a few steps ahead of him before noticing his absence, turned. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve been helping you extract Father from potentially embarrassing situations since I was a child, and I’m not doing it anymore. I’ve spent my whole life listening to you two tell me what’s wrong with me. Seb and I have spent our whole lives being abused by Father while you stood by and let him. Why would I help you? Why have I been helping you for so long?”
He huffed a laugh. He couldn’t believe he’d said that, but he also couldn’t believe how easy it had been, in the end. “I’m going to leave now. Good night, Mother.”
“You can’t just leave.”
“I can, though.” It was a revelation, an overdue one. He laughed again. Wait until Mother found out he and Lavinia had been faking all evening.
They thought he was such a loose cannon, and he supposed in some ways he was, if you looked at the external shape of his behavior and judged it against an arbitrary standard. He didn’t act the way they thought the firstborn son of a duke should act. But when it came to this, when it came to shame and complicity and pretense, he toed the line every time. Why? Seb didn’t need his protection anymore. And Max didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thought.
Except her. And she knew him. He found Dani in the crowd again. She was still looking at him. She had probably been keeping him in her sights this whole time. He nodded at her and pointed at his watch. A slow smile blossomed on her face. Her smile was knowing, seductive. The one that broke out on his face in answer was dopey. He could feel it. But he couldn’t do anything about it, so he hitched his head toward the exit. I’m leaving now. She held up a finger. I’ll follow in a bit.
And then he left. He just left.
Mother had left him alone that night in the nursery, but he saw now that he hadn’t actually let himself be left. He had spent his whole life proclaiming that he didn’t care about his parents’ indifference, that he was immune to their little cruelties. But part of him had held on.
Max had always thought that abandonment felt terrible. But it actually didn’t, not if you were really, truly abandoned. If you were no longer in anyone’s debt.
It felt like freedom.
There was a lightness in his step as he strode out of the ballroom. He jogged up the steps to the third floor. He wasn’t sure what the hurry was, only that little bursts of energy were propelling him, compelling him to move.
He paused after opening his door. It sounded like Seb was in his room across the hall—it sounded like he was doing jumping jacks in there.
He crossed the hall and rapped on Seb’s door, wanting to try to put into words his big revelation, to tell him about how he’d left Mother to deal with Father and how doing so had felt like a sort of liberation. He pushed the door open.
Ohhh.
Seb was not alone.
Seb was also not dressed.
Neither was the man who dived in front of Seb and covered him with his body.
And that man was not Mr. Benz. He was much bigger. His giant torso blocked Seb entirely from Max’s view. It was Torkel Renner, the head of palace security.
“Well. I got that wrong, didn’t I?” Max said as there was some scrambling on the bed. The men had been on top of the covers, and now it looked like Torkel was trying to get Seb underneath them. “Really, really wrong.” He chuckled.
He started to leave, but Seb’s face popped up over Torkel’s shoulder. “Max?”
“Yes. My apologies.” Torkel looked over his shoulder and glowered at Max. “I’ll be—”
Seb patted Torkel’s bulging biceps and whispered, “It’s all right, love.”
It’s all right, love? Well.
Torkel moved off the bed, apparently unembarrassed about the fact that he was flashing Max his ass, pulled on a pair of pants, and turned and stood next to the bed with his tree-trunk arms folded over his chest. He looked like the bodyguard he was. If bodyguards went shoeless. And shirtless.
“I don’t want to hide anymore, Max,” Seb said quietly.
Something caught in Max’s chest. That sounded like a version of what Max had come here to tell Seb. Max wasn’t the only one who had had enough of the old ways. He cleared his throat. “I know. I’ll help you.”
“Will you?”
“Always.”
Seb glanced at Torkel, who was still standing there like a statue. “But maybe you could help me tomorrow?”
“Yes, of course. Well, I’m leaving early tomorrow morning, but I can—”
Seb shook his head and laughed. “I meant it more metaphorically. We can talk when you’re back. I’m taking a little trip myself.” He glanced at Torkel and tried and failed to stifle a smile. Sebastien had never had a poker face. That had been half his problem as a child. That had been what Max had always been trying to protect—Seb’s openhearted warmth.