Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,50

elsewhere, because wearing the crown or not, there’s no one else I’ll ever want by my side.”

Jules cocked his head, contemplating him for a moment. Then, “Oh,” he said, his lips curving up into a brilliant smile. “Okay. I didn’t realize.”

Leo blinked. “Didn’t realize what?”

“You’re in love with him.” Jules grinned. “I’ll quit worrying, then.”

“What?” Leo repeated, suddenly feeling off balance. “I didn’t say that.”

Treble hissed and bit his shoulder, then jumped down and stalked off toward the carpet-covered jungle-tree-like scratching contraption Hugo had snuck into the corner of Leo’s suite for her the other day.

Jules’s grin got even wider. “And don’t worry about Mother and Father, either. They’ve been fretting about what’s best for Rosavia, and that is a consideration, but you have to know that the way they’ve pushed you on this has just as much to do with them wanting you to be happy as it does with the crown. I mean, all that partying you’ve done over the years wasn’t really making you happy, was it? You’ve never really been serious about anyone, but maybe once you settle down, fall in love…” His grin turned into a smirk. “I mean, not necessarily in that order at this point, but—”

Leo finally found his voice and interrupted Jules’s attempt to disprove his “not a relationship guru” status. “That’s not… Jules, you misunderstood, I don’t… it isn’t…”

Leo’s pulse spiked as he stumbled over his denials, his throat spasming in a way that gave him a new empathy for the way Eddie struggled when he got overwrought.

Jules grinned, then pulled him in for a quick hug. “I think it is, though,” he said, giving him an embarrassingly-loud kiss on the forehead. “Now go get your man and tell him you love him.”

Well, Leo could do one of those things. And yes, Jules may have made some good points earlier, but he was definitely wrong on this one, because Leo… Leo didn’t know how to do love. At least, not the kind Eddie deserved. Leo wasn’t even very good at the familial kind that Jules had just offered him so freely. And Eddie deserved love; of course he did, but quite frankly, Leo wasn’t sure he’d ever be capable of giving it… not because he wouldn’t want to, but simply because he’d always felt a bit distant and… and separate, even from the people who loved him the most. And how could he give something he didn’t have in the first place?

What he could do, though—what he would do—was make sure that Eddie had everything else. Eddie mattered to him, all the Bloms did, and even if Leo couldn’t put something as amorphous as “love” on the table, he was entirely confident that he could still make his sweet little librarian happy. Take care of him the way he deserved. Spoil him, treasure him, cherish him… and hope that it would be enough.

Leo took a shuddering breath as Jules released him, then straightened his shoulders. No, he wouldn’t hope that what he had to offer Eddie was enough. He’d make it be enough. Because it was all he had to give, so it would have to be.

Anything else quite simply wasn’t an option.

Chapter Ten

Edvin

The last few weeks of falling for, and being wooed by, Eddie’s own personal Prince Charming had quite honestly made Edvin feel like he was living in a real-life fairy tale, but the minute he stepped into the palace—the actual Rosavian Royal Palace, which they’d entered through a private entrance, no less—his rose-colored glasses had fallen off and reality had set in with a vengeance, tapping into every single insecurity he’d ever had and uncovering a few new ones for good measure.

Everything about the palace was gorgeous and refined and opulent and… and regal, and Edvin… Edvin wasn’t any of those things. He swallowed hard, his throat getting tight.

He didn’t belong, and if he needed a reminder of this fact, all he had to do was glance down at the mustard stain he’d discovered on his shirt. A carryover from his lunch, no doubt, that he’d only noticed after Leo had already led him inside and was in the middle of introducing him to a whole host of various well-dressed people whose names had all gone in one ear and out the other because Edvin’s brain had shut down and panic had taken over.

Had they been staff?

Foreign dignitaries?

Rosavian knights?

Members of the royal family that Edvin should have recognized?

Oh Lord, hopefully not that last one, since his tongue had