Page 74 of Reign
Sam caught the beach ball with a grin. “This is a pretty great ball.”
“It’s from over there.” The little girl waved to a sign markedClearance: Summer Items60%Off, which made Sam want to laugh. Summer felt like a million years ago, back when she’d been on a royal tour with Nina. When her relationship with Marshall had still been easy and uncomplicated.
She tossed the ball back toward the little girl, who clasped her hands together and tapped it up in a volleyball move. “Think fast!”
“Samantha, come on, we need to leave the princess alone,” Mallory protested, but Sam was delighted. She bumped the ball back in her new friend’s direction.
“We can’t let it hit the ground!” young Sam squealed.
“Definitely not,” Sam agreed. Liam was watching her with unmistakable amusement, but he didn’t say anything.
She and Samantha kept bumping the ball back and forth, moving steadily down the aisle as they did, toward the display of on-sale summer gear. Sam’s eyes were drawn to a floating tennis net, meant to be set up across a swimming pool, complete with buoyant racks and squishy neon tennis balls. She fought off a sudden wave of nostalgia, because it was exactly the sort of toy that she and Jeff would have obsessed over when they were little. They used to constantly make up games with water balloons or pool noodles, challenging each other to endless matches that neither of them won because they kept changing the rules.
“Heads up!” Samantha giggled, and Sam quickly tapped the beach ball back toward her.
Their volley had drawn a few curious onlookers. Sam could tell that word of her presence was spreading; several people had begun recording with their phones, but she didn’t care as long as Mallory was fine with it. Besides, even if Sam had tried to take their phones away, the news was already out.
She knew from experience that this was one genie she couldn’t put back in the bottle. Her anonymity in the capital was gone for good.
The palace would have a heart attack when they saw this video. They didn’t even want people to know she was intown,let alone see her at a wholesale shopping store, criminally underdressed in her sneakers and hoodie. When members of the royal family interacted with ordinary people, it was always scripted—a choreographed interaction on a royal tour, or at one of those stuffy garden parties. Even the moments that seemed fun to outsiders, like the time Jeff had played darts at a dive bar on tour, were all staged.
Sam couldn’t help it; she began to laugh. The sheerfunof what she was doing seemed to stretch out space within her chest, making her feel light as air, the way she used to feel when she was a child and anything seemed possible.
Later, after she’d said goodbye to Mallory and helped Liam find the rest of the items on his list, he turned toward the home decor section. “Did you want to get anything for your room? I mean—they sell mattresses here,” he added a little clumsily. “And bed frames.”
Sam edged closer to an enormous display of toilet paper, trying to stay out of earshot of an employee who was restocking nearby. “You want me to stay long-term?”
“Sam, you know I love having you at the house. But doyouwant to stay? What’s your plan?”
“I don’t have much of a plan. I’ve been taking it one day at a time.”
Liam was quiet, so she exhaled and went on. “I came back to see my family, but they don’t want anything to do with me. And I’m not sure what the path forward looks like now that I’m…ordinary.”
Liam nudged her hip with the shopping cart. “Hey, watch it. I’m ordinary too, remember?”
“But you have a plan!”
“I have agoal.And I know you have one, if you can just clarify what it is.”
“That sounds easier said than done.”
“Welcome to being in your twenties. We’re all trying to figure out this whole adulting thing,” Liam told her. “Would you rather have known your destiny from birth, like your sister?”
“No,” Sam said automatically.
Liam tilted his head, studying her. “What do you miss about being a princess?”
The personal chef,Sam wanted to joke, but she sensed that this wasn’t a moment for levity. And the truth was, there were many things about her former life that shedidn’tmiss. The hovering security, the formal state dinners, the endless rules, which she was always breaking.
“I miss the feeling of knowing exactly who I was. I feel so adrift now,” she admitted.
“But youdoknow who you are,” Liam said simply. “You’re a surprisingly clean housemate, you make a killer margarita, you sing woefully off-key—”
“Okay, we can’t all be the front man in a band—”
“You’re Samantha,” he kept going, which effectively silenced her. “My friend.”
Sam looked at him: the handsome line of his jaw, the green flecks in his amber eyes, his hair loose and tousled around his ears. Attraction flared between them like heat, and she knew from Liam’s expression that he felt it too.
