Page 99 of Thrones We Steal

“Because I’m a dark-skinned gypsy boy your father brought home?”

“No, stupid.” I toss the naked stem at him. “Because they were best friends.” I finish the sentence in my head: who fell in love. We haven’t said it yet, but it’s there in the way he looks at me, the way I catch him smiling at me when he thinks I’m not looking.

“My second guess was going to be because you’re an undisciplined hoyden who screams to get her way.”

“You’re awful. I hate you.”

“You love me.”

My entire body freezes. I should do something, say something, but I’m immobile, held in place by invisible chains.

He doesn’t even notice, just picks up the book and starts reading again, giving Edgar Linton a nasally voice that would normally have me convulsing in giggles if my stomach wasn’t hanging out in my throat just now.

He’s been inching into my heart more every year, until he’s become my whole world. I have other friends of course, but it’s so much easier with him, the way ordering the same dish at a Mexican restaurant is easier than venturing out and trying something new. I know what to expect with him, and I don’t need to fake interest in celebrity gossip or obsess over my latest blowout to feel seen.

Just last week I gave him a leather wallet for his seventeenth birthday, after months of trying to find the perfect gift. He said it was the best thing he’s ever received. I don’t even care if it’s true or not, because in that moment it was exactly what I needed to hear.

“You okay?” he asks and looks up from the book. His eyes are melted pools of chocolate in the sunshine and I could lose myself in them.

“I’m fine,” I manage. “Why?”

“You just let me read uninterrupted for five minutes. You’re not running a fever, are you?”

I pull the hat from my head and whack him with it. “Why are you so horrible?”

“The question of the year.”

We’ve started calling each other almost nightly. My mum doesn’t know, and I intend to keep it that way. She’s orchestrated every day I’ve spent with him, but this feels like our own thing, the only thing we still have control over.

But somehow that control seems to be slipping through my fingers whenever I’m with him. He’s been more quiet and withdrawn lately, and I wonder if it’s for the same reason that I’ve been feeling shy around him for the first time.

“Wanna go find something to eat?” he says.

“Do you make all decisions with your stomach?”

“Duh. It’s more fun than making them with your head.” He stands and offers his hand to help me up.

I take it and allow him to pull me up. He steps closer. My heart cartwheels around my rib cage as he lifts his hand to my hair. When did his touch start to feel like live electric wires? He removes his hand and holds up a grass blade, smiling broadly.

My mouth is full of sand as I look up at him, my heart having given up the gymnastics to go banging around in my chest like it’s in a marching band. It’s the perfect time to tell him. He doesn’t have the courage to go first, so I’ll be the brave one this time. I imagine his reaction, the way his face will soften, the way he’ll take me in his arms and kiss me the way I’ve been imagining for the past three months. We’ll keep our plans secret for a while, away from the prying hands of my mum. But someday …

No matter how many versions of the future I spin, there isn’t one that doesn’t contain him.

It will be the best fairy tale.

I take a deep breath, hoping it will steady my nerves. It doesn’t. “I—I have something to tell you.” My voice sounds small, like a child’s. I need it to sound older, more mature.

He watches me, his eyes growing darker as a shadow crosses over them.

“I’m in love with you,” I blurt out, relieved to have the words off my tongue, where they’ve been searing the skin right off. The hard part is over.

But he doesn’t look happy. In fact, he looks upset. Did he want to say it first after all?

“You can’t love me,” he says quietly.

My heart skydives from ten thousand feet. “But I do.”

“Then find a way to stop.”

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