Page 43 of Forbidden Royal Vows

Everyone thought so.

Literally everyone. His so-called defenders, if such they could be called, thought he was attractive. That was it.

He had read hundreds upon hundreds of comments about himself and Mila on too many sites to count, and had not encountered anything he could construe as positive, save that.

Caius had expected to be called names. He could even have guessed the names, without having to look. He’d made those kinds of names the basis of this character he’d been playing all this time.

Given that the Countess had often called him a great many of these names herself, they didn’t really have the power to bother him anymore. He had cultivated his own image, after all. He wanted people to think of him as entirely insubstantial, so they could never be disappointed by him. And would never expect anything of him, either.

He was, as one scathing commenter had put it, A man whore of epic proportions whose only talent seems to be showing up next to cameras where other, more talented people happen to be standing.

That was all fair enough. But the more he read about people’s disappointment in Mila for lowering herself to the likes of him, the less fair enough it felt.

Because it wasn’t simply that they didn’t like him looking at everyone’s favorite queen. And they really, really didn’t.

It was more than that. Her proximity to him in one photo made her a disappointment. It made the entire world question who Mila really was.

Caius could not think of a greater torture, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing he could do at all.

The last time he had felt this powerless, he had been a child in his mother’s neglectful care. He had vowed he would never let this happen again, and now it was not only happening in real time—it was happening to Mila, too.

His phone kept ringing and ringing, but he didn’t answer. When he drove through Santa Barbara, he chucked it in a bin and bought himself a fresh new phone that no one could reach.

And then he drove. Low and fast, in a sleek little sports car that made him even more of the flaming cliché that he was. An embarrassment of such epic proportions that a single photograph of him with an otherwise beloved queen meant that there were calls for her to abdicate, so thoroughly had she stained the crown.

It wasn’t his history splashed all over the papers that bothered him. He knew how much of it was made-up. It was the one they’d created for her.

As if he was so infectious—A virulent strain of cringe, one young girl said in a widely circulated video—that it was obvious she had to be some kind of liar and deceiver to have concealed this kind of thing.

He called only his assistant, to update her on his new mobile number and the fact he was not available, at all, to anyone.

Though he knew that if Mila really wanted to reach him, she could.

But she didn’t.

Mile after mile, she didn’t.

And that was why, in a tiny little town up north, he bought the supplies he needed, stashed his flashy car, and hiked his way back to the Pacific Coast Trail.

Because everything in him rejected the character he was reading about in the papers, because he knew that wasn’t him.

But all he could think was that this was how Mila saw him.

This was the reason she’d walked away from him five years ago—and even now, after their month together, assumed without any question whatsoever that the only logical thing to do was separate again.

It hadn’t even been a discussion.

And now he knew why.

He should have expected it.

The truth was that Caius had already been tired of the games he played. Reading about them was even worse. Cataloging the entire series of a lifetime of misdeeds made him feel sick.

It didn’t even matter that more than half of the suppositions about him weren’t true.

This was who people thought he was. Like his mother, they might have valued him for his proximity to fame, but they didn’t value him.

He had turned into the Countess, he realized now. Entirely without meaning to, he had become a parody of himself. Just as she was.

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