Page 98 of Royally Drawn

“Maybe I am?” I asked. “Maybe if you asked me tomorrow, I would stupidly tell you I wanted it all, and I wanted to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life.”

The words spilled out—from nowhere.

“Ingrid, I?—”

“You promised me a million I-love-yous, and I want to claim them all.”

I was choked up now, fighting tears.

“I will be back. And if you still want it all, we can discuss how to make that work. I promise you.”

“You don’t want it all?” I asked. “Do you just want to have me andthen… leave… and never make any commitment to a life together? Because eventually, I will want babies and marriage and all of that.”

Keir didn’t have an answer.

“Keir, you cannot say these things without follow-through.”

Keir set his jaw. He sat me down on the floor, pushing me away, and stood back up.

“Ingrid, we cannot have this conversation here.”

“Where then? When? Are you just going to get on a plane and leave? Never to be seen again?”

He looked near tears. For a minute, I thought he would pull me close, give me one of those patented forehead kisses I adored, and tell me that he loved me to the end of time and would do whatever I asked.

Instead, he indignantly said, “I cannot promise you all that right now, and you know that. Don’t try to pick a fight here.”

Pick a fight? I wasn’t trying to.

Tears welled, and I stormed ahead—out of the ballroom, down the corridor, past the throne room, and back into the family’s side of the house. Keir followed me at a fast clip. I ended up in the drawing room, staring at the fireplace.

“Ingrid! Ingrid! I love you!” Keir said, pulling me to a stop with his hand on my wrist.

I pulled it back. “You don’t love me if you aren’t being honest. You’re not. Do you not intend to come back and settle down with me?”

“Define that. Because we’re together?—”

“But you don’t want the press to know?”

“To protect you, my love.”

My love. It felt so dismissive and wrong.

“I mean sticking as close as possible so you can at least see me at the weekend, Keir. Knowing that if life is good in a year or so, you might decide to make this permanent.”

“In my eyes, it is.”

“And in my eyes, permanence is all of this,” I said, throwing my arms up. “The big white wedding, the massive ballgown, tiaras, the whole deal. And children. That is permanence for someone who hasnever really known it. It’s what everyone has—everyone but me. And I will not settle for less.”

Keir’s green eyes welled with tears. “I cannot promise you that right now. I don’t know if I am even capable of it. And I would never lie to you, Ingrid.”

“So, you don’t love me?” I sobbed. “You don’t love me.”

“I do love you,” Keir said. “But loving you forever is not the same as marrying and popping out babies. I never once told you?—”

“So, you don’t see yourself pulling back in two or three years? Staying close and making a life with me?”

He struggled to find the words, but I knew the answer. It was no. He may have loved me somehow, but that wasn’t how I needed him to love me.

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