“Holy fuck.” She picked it up by the hilt with both hands, testing its weight. “This is amazing! Does it have any secret compartments or anything?”
He didn’t understand why she was talking to him like everything was normal, but he went along with it.
“No. That isn’t a puzzle. It’s just something I made for you.”
“Thank you. This has been down here all weekend?” She leaned the sword back against the wall, carefully, and came toward him and the giant cardboard loom he was trying to block with his body. “This is incredible.”
Her eye caught on the spindle, wrapped with green yarn, and she pulled it gently. Gus closed his eyes. He heard her gasp when she saw the perfect paper rose that bloomed—spread, really—when the spindle was tugged just right. He’d expected her to take longer to find that. Maybe the design was bad. Or maybe she was meant to find it.
He opened his eyes and found her looking down at the rose, spinning the spindle stem between thumb and forefinger.
“I messed up this weekend.”
He shrugged. “You were worried about your sister. I get it.”
“No.” She sighed.
“You weren’t worried?”
“I was. About Portia but also about something else. And it was easier to focus on Portia than the something else.”
Gus shifted from foot to foot. She looked up at him, eyes sunshine bright.
“I—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it because I gave you a sword. That isn’t why I set this up, or why I was leaving. I misunderstood things and that’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay, not at all, but buying her love with Reject Squad swag didn’t feel any better.
“Gustave. You know what? I just had a conversation with my sister that ended a misunderstanding between us that had lasted almost half our lives.”
“That’s a long time,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I am. And I’m learning that maybe it’s best not to sleep on certain conversations because it’s easier. It’s best not to wait until feelings have been hurt for too long and everything explodes.”
“Too late for that,” he said, running a hand through his hair.
“Your reaction wasn’t an explosion. It was frustration. And confusion. And partly my fault.” She brushed the paper rose across her chin, then sighed. “I’ve had a crush on you for a long time.”
Gus went stiff. “What?”
“Do you know how many times I’ve listened to your old streams? I emailed you to ask for your voice, like some weird sorceress trying to trick you.”
“You had a crush on me?” He was trying to fit this puzzle piece in with all the others he’d scattered when he told her he was leaving and could find no place for it.
“Yes. I was in denial, of course, until I called you. Denial is kind of my jam.” She took a deep breath. “I love you. Not your voice. Not your salad dressing. Not how you make my body feel—okay, I guess in addition to all those things. I love you.
“I’ve never said that to someone not related to me before and I got freaked out. Turns out it’s actually not that hard when you mean it.”
She grinned, and then grinned wider and Gus realized he was just staring at her instead of responding. He dropped down to his knees so her beautiful face was at the same level as his.
“I’m confused. I thought I moved too fast,” he said.
“You did. But I was right there with you, buddy. Every step of the way. I started this whole thing, remember?”
She had. Gus had been thinking of the money, and of how he pushed their relationship forward, but he’d let tunnel vision take over. She’d had her sister find his information. She’d barged back into his life with a weird email and never left it. She let him into her home almost every day, she’d let him into her bed, and she’d as much as told him she loved him back when he first blurted it out.
I don’t feel comfortable expressing that sentiment, yet. That was how she’d responded, and it was different from I don’t feel the same way, yet.
“You had a crush on me.” It was a statement now, the confusion replaced with laughter and joy and the satisfaction of a Rubik’s Cube with the colors all sliding back into alignment firmly in the center of is chest. “And you love me.”
He laughed, and she laughed too, resting her forehead against his.
“Right. I thought we could just coast along as we were, that you could just know how much I cared without me having to say it. Without me having to be vulnerable because that shit sucks. But I know how much it hurts to assume that someone you love doesn’t love you, and I know how hard it is to ask them how they really feel. I won’t ever hurt you like that again.”
He leaned in to kiss her, bracing his hands on her knees. Just as their lips touched something pricked his finger and he winced.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said. “I should have used a fake one.”
Reggie looked down and burst out laughing when she saw the pointy tip of the spindle pressing into his index finger.
“You’re cursed now,” she said, throwing her arms around his shoulders.
“I like sleeping,” he said with a grin. “That’s not too bad a curse.”
“Oh, this is much worse,” Reggie said. “You get me. And we live happily ever after.”
She leaned in and kissed him, and Gus kissed her back, hard and deep and completely forgetting the pain in his finger because he was too busy basking in the warmth of Reggie’s love.
An Excerpt from A Prince on Paper
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A PRINCE ON PAPER
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Chapter One
Welcome to the world of One True Prince, where the prince of your dreams might be just around the corner. Are you ready to find true love with a handsome royal? If so, enter your name here, and then the keys to the kingdom are yours! Remember to choose wisely—the royal life isn’t all fun and games, and not every prince is who he seems to be!
Nya Jerami returned her obscenely comfortable seat to the upright position, then pushed aside her braids to remove the wireless earplugs from her ears—no amount of relaxing meditation music was going to make her feel better about returning home to Thesolo.
Before leaving to participate in an early childhood development master’s program at a university in Manhattan, she’d imagined days spent surrounded by a throng of intrigued peers, and nights being courted by handsome men. She’d had a plan for how things would go: after years of being kept like a caged bird by her father, she would arrive in Manhattan, spread her wings, and soar straight toward her happiness. That was how things happened in the films she had grown up watching, where every timid girl secretly had the heart—and talons—of an eagle.
But in real life, the jostling crowds and tall buildings had made her uneasy, the subway trains had given her motion sickness, and traffic had moved in a wild and frightening way that left her in constant fear of being crushed. She’d sat silently in class, biting back her thoughts, and her peers had barely known she’d existed. Dating had gone no better, a series of uncomfortable and disheartening encounters with creepy men.