The Snow Prince - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,15

my arm was to his, and I pulled myself in a little bit, making sure we wouldn’t touch.

I was so scared I could barely breathe.

Henry was here.

3

Henry

A lot of guys complain that they think with their dick too much. Always the penis, always getting them into situations they really shouldn’t be in.

I always thought it would be nice if my dick would think, though. Or my brain, or my heart, or even my big toe, for God’s sake. Because I was starting to believe that my problem was that I didn’t think with anything at all.

It was absolutely, definitively, completely fucking stupid to have gotten in this sleek, black car with Sebastian but there was no way on Earth I could have ever backed down from his challenge.

I had seen it in Sebastian’s eyes, as he tried to puff himself up and stand up straight and look at me like I was some sort of peasant that meant nothing to him, just because he was on track to become a king.

After years of ignoring me, that had been his reaction.

Years and years and years of him refusing to contact me, even though I knew damn well he could have if he’d tried. He was a prince, for fuck’s sake. He could have pulled strings. He could have found me. He could have told me why on Earth he was bending to the will of his ice-cold mother, why he still lived in the castle even though I knew damn well he hated it.

But he’d never tried to contact me.

And now he was sitting, rigid and expressionless, right next to me, and his indifference to me was more palpable than ever.

He certainly looked princely as he stared down at a pocket-sized leather-bound notebook, clutching a pen that looked like it was made out of pure gold. His knuckles were white as he scrawled in the notebook, probably drafting some decree that would lead to banning me from Berrydale for all time.

“Fuck you,” I said simply as I watched Sebastian, and was immediately met with four pairs of staring eyes. “Jesus, keep your eyes on the road,” I said to the driver.

“My name is Xavier. And what did you just say to the Prince?” the driver said, thankfully turning back to the front. The rest of them still stared at me.

“I’ll say it again louder this time,” I told Sebastian, staring right at him. “Fuck you.”

The woman in the front seat gasped.

“Unacceptable,” Xavier said, turning on his blinker to pull over.

“Keep going, X,” Sebastian said, briefly putting his hand on Xavier’s shoulder.

“How can you allow this man—”

“This man is Henry Denton,” Sebastian declared, his voice calm and unaffected. “He was… my friend, when we were children. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.”

“Eleven years,” I said. “Of silence.”

“Ten years and ten months,” Sebastian clarified, his lips slightly parted as his eyes danced across my face. “Henry and I have matters to discuss, which will be sorted when we’re back at the castle. But I promise you, he means me no harm.”

“Glad to hear you still trust me that much, Sebastian,” I said.

He swallowed, his jaw set tightly. “We’ll have him at dinner tonight, too. Genoveve, let the staff know we’ll have one extra.”

The woman in the front seat must have been his assistant. She nodded, but still looked at me with questioning eyes.

I puffed out a laugh. “Like hell I’ll be eating at a dinner table in that castle.”

Sebastian looked back down at his notebook. “Mother is out tonight, visiting a cousin a few hours north,” he said. “We’ll need someone with a sharp tongue to take her usual spot, won’t we?”

“Don’t speak of your mother this way,” Xavier chided him, like he’d had to say the same thing a thousand times before.

It was a massive relief knowing that his mother would be out of the castle. But it still didn’t mean that I had any intention of going to a dinner in the place. Sebastian’s gaze made me feel like I was a bug he might squash at any moment, and I had a laundry list of things to do back at my own cottage, anyway.

I was furious when I looked at him. His cheekbones that had only become more defined after years of time. The hard look in his eyes, where back in the day there had only been innocence.

He was breathtakingly handsome, and yet it seemed like all of the light and life had been ripped