Page 60 of A Girl and HER Prince
He was silent for a moment. “Achilles, he—he was just as traumatized by this war as we all were.” It was like he was trying to convincehimselfnow.
She hated that they had to think of any of these people as murderers. “Of course he was,” she said. “His parents died in that war.” There was no use pretending that she didn’t knowanydetails.
“His mother’s death hit him hardest,” Venice said. “His father wasn’t around much, but his mother? Even I remember her. She was famous in our circles, so talented, and a singer… she was Tirreoy’s rock star. Think Spice Girls all in one woman—sassy, beautiful, refined, athletic. Everyone adored her.”
“How did she die?” The question left her mouth before she could stop it. Could people ask that? And yet, how else would she understand this man beside her if she didn’t know what formed him into who he was now?
“Achilles’s father was a great military leader and he planned to stay behind to fight while the royals got out of Tirreoy,” Venice answered. “Peleus knew my father was taking off that day, and so he smuggled his young family to our hideout so that they could escape with us on the next flight out, but we think Peleus got ambushed after he left. We never found out exactly how the Myrdons discovered our location, but we think they followed Achilles’s father to our base.”
He took a deep breath, and Livvy knew that this was difficult for him to talk about. Somehow he kept the most traumatic thing that had possibly ever happened to him cold and clinical, but she sensed the sadness behind his words, just like she’d discovered the traces of tragedy in his eyes before this. She found his hand.
He grasped her fingers like a lifeline, the only sign that he was bothered at all by this. “Achilles’s mother, she—she refused to believe her husband was as good as dead, and so she left us… and her children… and ran after him. She didn’t make it far. The Myrdons dragged her away. We saw them take her. She screamed for her babies.”
That is horrible.Achilles’s jovial face as he teased Venice and flirted mischievously with Deedee flashed through her mind.It seems like a mask now.
“Achilles has a sister who’s five years younger. Luckily, she doesn’t remember a thing.”
“A sister?” That was hard to imagine. “Is she anything like Achilles?”
“Not even a little bit.” A low laugh rumbled through Venice’s chest. “Iphigenia’s pretty much the opposite of Achilles, Bris, all of us. She’s smarter, and Iphigenia… well, we call herGena—she just wants to live a normal life, and she does. She rents a tiny flat in London, and she’s a speech therapist, great with kids—a mirror of her mother actually, even though Gena never knew her. But Achilles’s sister is the one who grounds him. Good thing, too. He went through a rough patch after graduation when he got into partying—we do nothing like that now, of course, but back then, he was hardcore into drugs and… other things. And so, Gena brought him back from all of that. I’d say she’s the most well-adjusted of us all—Bris and Achilles are utterly messed up. Maybe it’s because they remember what happened. I don’t know.”
And what about Venice? What could he remember? “Your mother died in that too,” she said.
He shrugged. “No, that was my stepmother. My mother had already passed away—she was the fabulous Afrita Godita, but… yes, um, Creusa was a second mother to me and losing her was…” He stopped himself from saying more. “This is a lousy story.” He squeezed her around the middle. “I’m sorry. We should be checking on your hair.”
And there he went deflecting anything to do with his own tragedy, like he was afraid to feel anything sad and so he just blocked it out, just like Deedee had warned. “My hair?” she asked.
He patted the long strands they’d laid over the rock behind them. “It’s got to be dry by now. I want to play with it.”
Glancing over at Venice, she saw that his carefree expression was set in stone, like he’d been talking about someone else’s family and not his own. He found a long strand of her hair and began to weave it around his hand. He let it go and it made a curl. “See? I knew that would be a lot of fun.”
She burst out into a laugh, hardly believing that he could joke after what he’d shared. And yet, he wasn’t completely devoid of emotion. She’d sensed the pain he’d tried to hide from her at the festival when he’d talked about his upbringing in the UK under strict tutors and an absent father… and he’d laughed that off too.
“After everything that’s happened, you’re playing with my hair?” she asked.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” he said glibly. “We’ve gotnothingbut time to do whatever we want.” His hands went back to her charm bracelet. “Like play with this dolphin and this… Pantheon. Hey! You got another charm for your bracelet! It’s as adorable as you are.”
Deedee had called it, hadn’t she? He didn’t like to feelanysorrow, and so he was throwing all his cute humor at her to throw her off. Deedee hadn’t been afraid to hit below the belt to get something else out of Venice besides his devil-may-care attitude, but Livvy sensed that trying to poke at his weaknesses had only made things worse.
The more the opposition, the more his walls came up.
Well, he wasn’t about to hide his true self from her. Livvy decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. She jerked her wrist from his hand. The charms from her bracelet settled against her as she sat up, staring down at him.
His grin broadened, and when she rested her hand against his chest, it turned even more genuine. “Let’s see how your hair holds a curl,” she said. Under his curious gaze, she found the longest strand she could, the one that kept falling over his beautiful eyes.
The second she had its feathery softness in her hand, she realized how tempted she’d actually been to touch his hair. It was smooth and very wet. She wrapped the darkness around her finger, though, of course, she couldn’t get the tendril around as many times as he’d done with hers over his hand, but she was going for ringlets here. Nice and tight.
She let the strand go and it slipped right back to where it was before. She chuckled. “Straight as thread—just as silky too.”
He swallowed, and she realized she was seriously in his personal space. Their noses almost brushed. His lips? He took a careful breath, his chest moving under her hands.Uh oh.
She pulled away, lying back down against his shoulder. “I don’t think our hair will be drying out for a while.” Her voice came out in a squeak.
He took a while to answer back, and she realized he was trying to catch his breath too. Good! Livvy wasn’t the only one suffering from a “breathing apparatus” problem.
She bit down another smile, one that was dancing with excitement. How could someone like her mean so much to a prince anyway? She brushed her pinky over his, and his hand convulsively wrapped around hers, just as tightly as he had when he’d told her about his traumatic childhood. No one had ever touched her that way before.
He needed to talk.
