Page 13 of Good As Hell

“Lyric.” The harsh sound of my name has me stumbling as I’m pulling on my shoes. My fingers seem to be all thumbs, so I give up. Turning around, I face him, dread consuming me as if I were the one caught speaking to a significant other.

“Um…” I hesitate, seeing the hard look on his face rife with angry expectation. Despite the rumors, actually hate confrontation and avoid it at all costs. What people get as tabloid fodder is when I have been pushed to the brink because I’ve been too nice and let folks get away with too much, which is something FADE has got on me about many, many times. Perfectionist? Yes, when it comes to my craft and giving the fans what they pay their hard earned money for, but just being a pain in the ass for ego’s sake has never been my thing. So when this six-foot-four mountain is frowning down at me with the expectation of me throwing a fit, I just shake my head, backing up a step. Well, two.

“Didn’t know you were married.” My nose stings. Blinking fast as the horror I’m about to cry hammers into me. I’m acting like this is my fault. I’ve never heard that he was married — should have suspected. He’s a royal, for goodness’ sake.

“I’m not. Khadijah is my fiancée,” he states with grim finality.

“Okay, fiancée then. I didn’t know you were engaged. I would never—” words fail me. Raising my arms while holding the shoes, I feel ridiculous letting them flop at my sides. I turn to leave.

“Let me fuck you raw all last night and this morning?” He scoffs in disbelief like, ‘Sure Jan’.

Heat races to my face like he’s smacked me. I swing back around, hurt making my voice sound weak, and I hate that for myself. “No, no, I wouldn’t have, Hassan.”

In that moment, I can see every terrible thing he thinks about me playing across his face right before he says, “Yetyou’ll sneak away like a coward instead of talking to me like an adult.” Disdain drips from every word.

I clamp my mouth shut, refusing to let him blame this on me.

“And do what? Are we including Khadijah in on this conversation?” Scorn drips from my lips as I shake my head, looking at his serial cheating ass. “Let her know how you’re going raw up into bitches while she’s waiting for you in Morocco?” If I thought my words would bother him, I should have thought again.

“You fucking Americans with your fake ass puritanical ideas. She knows who I am just as you did last night when you let me come inside you again and again,” he sneers down at me.

I’m not going to allow him to treat me this way. As much as I want to smush his fucking face in the wall beside me, I know this is a battle I can’t win.

Plus, he’s had his mind made up about me long before last night. It may have meant nothing to him, but it was everything to me. I’m not going to let him take that from me. He served his purpose.

“It was just supposed to be one night anyway,” I say as cavalierly as I can with a negligent shrug of my shoulder.

Turning, I press the button to the elevator. Nothing happens. That’s when I remember the access code. I don’t have the card and I definitely don’t remember the code.

After what seems like a small lifetime, I smell his cologne as he reaches past me to put in the code.

“Goodbye, Lyric.” His tone is furious in its finality.

“Bye.” I step into the doors.

He watches me as I leave his face filled with cold rage.

Chapter Four

REVELATION

PRINCE HASSAN AL RASHEED

“Oh, Habibti, please say we can.” I look up from the blueprints for a new hospital that needs to be built in Rabat to the tedious plans for this fucking wedding that’s supposed to take place in three months’ time.

“Sure, whatever you want, my love.” I murmur dismissively even though I haven’t heard a word and couldn’t care less about what Khadijah, my soon to be wife, wants at this wedding that is ranging in costs to the tens of millions at this point.

I’m so ready to be done with it all. We’ve been in negotiations with her father, one of the world’s biggest oil and real estate magnates for a more than a year and the signatures on the contracts are barely dry and we are already in eight figures for the seven-day affair. There has been no limit to the Khadijah’s wishes, and no expense spared to the only daughter of Jhori Bin-Saladin. He may have his five sons fighting for control of the vast riches, but his only daughter he lavishes with everything her heart desires and he can give her. He is also not above her betrothed and my family, despite our royal blood displaying ourgratitude for having her join our family. Especially since my brother Sadiq, the other crown prince, lowered himself to marry a commoner and an American to boot. He nearly pulled out of the marriage, then based on my brother’s actions. Only his love for his daughter allowed him to come back to the negotiating table.

“Yay,” she jumps up with glee, clapping her hands like I hold the world. I close my eyes, not being able to bear the sight. She’s a lovely girl, my sister Amani’s best friend. And we’ve been betrothed the better part of a decade when she was a teen and I on the cusp of my majority, but there is not where the misgivings lay. It’s that I feel utterly nothing for her other than brotherly affection. And seeing the love between my parents making it even more apparent. Yet duty calls and it all falls to me since Sadiq followed his heart when he married Lovie-Belle. I knew the moment I nearly caught them kissing when she was visiting for a brief stay during the making of our movie Just Forever that they were inevitable.

“Ahem,” comes the dulcet tones of my mother’s admonition.

“Yes, Umm?” Turning, I wait, watching her brow quirk in frustration. Only I’m not sure who is warranting the reaction, me for my inattention or my soon to be bride for her exuberance.

“I would remind you that getting a star of the Empresses’s caliber at short notice is not only going to be exorbitant but near impossible as she starts her world tour.” My mother informs us both calmly. Filling me in on what the discussion I’d been doing my best to ignore entailed.

I try to quell any reaction at the mention of Lyric’s stage name. Still, I can feel the muscle in my jaw flexing. It’s not a surprise Khadijah wants Lyric to perform at our wedding. It’s all she’s spoken about from the moment our engagement was formally announced and we’ve been able to speak freely with oneanother without a chaperone sitting beside us. They are still in the room, but we can at least have a conversation.

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