Her Royal Highness (Royals #2) - Rachel Hawkins Page 0,77
around, I face Flora, my hands clasped in front of me, and she blinks, her shoulders stiffening a little bit. “Quint?” she asks. “Seriously, what’s wrong?”
“Did you dump Tamsin?” I ask, and Flora blinks.
“What?”
I take a deep breath. “Tamsin,” I say. “You acted like she broke up with you. Like you got how I felt about the thing with Jude, but . . . is that not what happened?”
Flora wrinkles her nose. “Why does it matter?” she asks, and my heart sinks.
“So . . . that’s a yes, then. You broke up with her.”
“Only because she wanted to be almost absurdly secretive about us,” Flora counters. “Which made me feel slightly rejected, so to my mind—”
“That’s not the way the world works, Flora,” I tell her now, stepping closer. “You can’t just say, ‘Well, to me, it was like this,’ and have it actually be that.”
Flora waves a gloved hand. “Quint, this is ridiculous. Tamsin has nothing to do with us.”
“But she does,” I say, “because that was this . . . this thing we had in common. The thing that made it feel safe to like you.”
Flora looks as baffled as I’ve ever seen her, one hand on her hip, her head tilted to one side. “Safe? What does that even mean?” Sighing, I look up at the sky above us. It’s clear tonight and cold, stars twinkling in the inky black sky, Arthur’s Seat rising to my left, and I almost shake my head at all of it. Up here on the terrace at a palace with a princess under a starlit sky by an ancient volcano, like a fairy tale I never thought to imagine.
“I don’t want to be your distraction,” I say at last. “I can’t be that again. Someone fun to hang out with until the person you really want comes back.”
“Is this about Dastardly Jude?” Flora asks. She’s got her arms folded tightly around her middle, and I don’t think it’s from the cold. She’s so beautiful standing there in her golden dress, her diamonds and emeralds glittering, but just like the stars and the palace and the entire night, it’s a reminder of how different her life is from mine.
“Maybe?” I say. “And let’s get real here, Flora. The Tamsins and Carolines and Ilses of the world are much more your type,” I finally say. “I’m short, I say ‘y’all,’ I have no idea how anyone plays polo—”
Flora’s face is cold now, her shoulders back. “That’s what you think my type is, is it? You think I’m only interested in girls like Tamsin?”
“I think the princess and the scholarship kid looks good on paper, but is too hard in reality,” I reply, and Flora waves a hand again.
“You’re not even on scholarship anymore, for heaven’s sake, and honestly this is so—”
“Wait, what?”
I move closer to her, the night breeze tugging strands of hair from my updo. “What do you mean I’m not on scholarship anymore?”
Some of Flora’s coldness fades away, and she shifts her weight, her eyes sliding from mine. “I . . . may have paid your tuition for the rest of the year,” she says.
“You just . . . paid for school? And didn’t tell me? Didn’t ask me?”
Her gaze meets mine again, lower lip poking out just a little. “Oh, yes, so very sorry to have done something nice for you. What a villain I am.”
But I shake my head. “No, Flora, that’s not the point, the point is you did it without asking if I wanted you to. I earned that scholarship. I worked hard for it. It was important to me, but you just saw it as . . . what? Something embarrassing? Something a little grubby.”
“Yes,” she says now, turning to face me. “That’s what you want to believe, isn’t it? That I couldn’t bear to date someone not of my class.”
Shaking her head, she backs off in a swirl of skirts and perfume. “Honestly, Quint, if that’s what you think about me, then I’m not sure why you ever liked me in the first place.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Somehow this has all gotten so twisted and out of hand so fast that I’m not even sure what to be mad about anymore. But I am mad. And hurt and confused.
Flora, however, is just mad. “Anyway,” she says on a sigh. “This entire scene is unnecessary and, frankly, boring. Why don’t we go back inside, and you can run off and hide in