Page 123 of Underground Prince

The flattery had my toes curling. “I wasn’t always so exceptional, you know,” I said.

“No?”

“I loved being a hermit. Book-smart. Shy. Preferring the walls of libraries and my bedroom to open air.”

“So you were smart, shy, quiet and sweet?” Theo said. “You’re still sounding pretty extraordinary to me.”

In return, I kissed his jaw, wondrous over the idea that this man could see so much in me. “Looking back, I lost a lot of chances,” I said. “Cassie’s death showed me the consequences. And—well, there was nothing wrong with what I was doing with my life, I know that. I was happy studying, planning my future—but everything warped when she was gone. It was like I exploded, from the inside out. My skin singed off, and every day I had to wait to heal. The burn of finding new skin, to be forced to build new flesh, that is agony unlike anything. I didn’t want to come back the same. It was crucial to become so changed that my remnants could be nothing like her.”

“To live another day,” he said, “You had to shed your past.”

I rose up to say, as clearly as I could to him, “Never did I consider meeting someone so different, with such an opposite background, lifestyle, presence, and yet have such understanding. Complete conviction.”

“We’re not meant to be together,” he said, stroking my shoulder.

“I could be ruining your life, refusing to leave,” I said.

“I’m putting this new life of yours in jeopardy, wanting you to stay.”

“We should put a stop to this. We’ve had everything we can give to one another. We should be bored now. Move on like we would’ve weeks ago.”

“Scarlet.” He held a hand to my cheek. “Conviction, remember?”

26

THE AGONY AND THE MDMA

A bang woke me from a deep slumber and I rocketed up, hair flopping into my face, glancing around, assessing the situation, and scanning the broad shoulder of the man lying beside me.

Theo is in my bed.

Perfect round buttocks greeted me, a line traveling down the center of his back, marking the fortune below. He was golden everywhere. Did he tan naked?

A second bang grabbed my attention, sounding more and more like a skillet was being fished out of our terribly unorganized pots-and-pans cupboard. Metal tumbled and clanged against each other for a third time.

At the fourth clang, Theo had rolled onto his back. “It sounds like buckshot out there.”

“Verily,” I said as an answer and threw the covers off. I slipped on Theo’s button-down that was in a pile on the floor. “I’ll be right back.”

I moseyed down the hallway and finished buttoning the front of my shirt, peering around the corner into the kitchenette.

Verily was there, covered in flour. She caught sight of me and said while standing in the middle of our galley, “I’m trying to make waffles.”

I scanned the disarray on our limited counter space and the many frying pans warming on our stove. “I have no freaking clue how to make those.”

“I know, but you like them, right? I was….” She spanned her accoutrements with her hands. “I was making them for you.”

I stepped all the way into the kitchen. “You were?”

“We don’t have a waffle maker.”

I shook my head. “Nope, we do not.”

“So then I switched to pancakes.”

“And how’s that going?”

“I don’t know how to make pancakes.”

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