Or rather,sittingright beside me.

“I don’t think you can bemarriedas a throuple,” Eliot snarked as he and Scott watched Henry warily. “But invite yourself to our table, why don’t you.”

“You invited yourself to my party once.” He put his bottle of water in front of him and started diving in on his ownvegan lasagna. “Fair is fair.”

Why did it make me so ridiculously happy?

“I should mention that you alsouninvitedus from them. Technically.” Scott looked between the two of us now, eyes starting to glint with amusement.

“I didn’t remember you being so rude, Scott. That’s definitely not polite conversation. Travis is definitely having a good effect on you.”

Henry’s thigh was warm against mine. I hadn’t spoken a word since he’d arrived, almost catatonic with the shock, but the contact revived me.

“Scott has always been internally kind of rude. He just didn’t show it.”

Henry looked at me then, his dark eyes roaming my face, my body, and my food, lingering on the sight for a long moment, and just because I could, I reached out to his own plate and took some ofhis foodand put it in my mouth.

“A thief, are you?”

“King’s food always tastes sweeter, they say.”

Henry’s eyes heated, but El cleared his throat, interrupting us.

“So. What brings you here?”

Henry shrugged. “I just came from seeing my advisor. He suggested some internships to me that might go well with my ‘people skills’.”

“People skills?” Eliot coughed. “What people skills?”

But he was just being annoying and a contrarian and Henry knew this.

“That’s good,” Scott said. “More chances for you to take over the world.”

Rolling his eyes, Henry was suddenly very focused on his food as he said, “I guess I thought if I was going to work, I might as well do something I liked. And being a tyrant is kind of my jam, or so people tell me.”

Heart thudding inside my chest, it was very hard to not just allow myself to reach for Henry and kiss him. Hug him. He looked a bit bashful but actuallyhappy. It was in the relaxed line of his shoulders, in the lack of bite to his words, in the soft way he admitted he was finally doing something for himself and letting go of some of the resentment that he felt for his father that had been stopping him until now.

And in that moment?

I realized I had to tell him.

I had to share with him the conversation I had with his father at the steak house. Tell him that I’d accepted, even with my own selfish motivations, and that all I’d wanted was for him to do whathewanted, whether his father would approve or not.

It terrified me. Because now that I was this close to him, I’d started getting my hopes up thatmaybehe might forgive me. That he might understand.

Because if someone knew me and understood me, if someone could stare into my eyes and feel like he was staring into my soul, it was Henry.

And something was happening between us.

I needed to come clean.

“You okay?” Henry asked, low between us.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Yeah. Sure.”

He eyed me for a moment but didn’t say anything. Instead, he just kept eating and bantering with us, like we’d done it a million times. Henry being Henry, he tugged smiles and laughs out of all of us, because he was an asshole with a wicked mind and Eliot’s snark combined with that was an explosive combination.

I noticed too that people were watching us. Scott, the college Prince, was in the same place as the King, and it was a rare sight indeed.