His Princess (A Royal Romance) (32 page)

Her voice cracks again. “Am I too old? Is it because of the kids? Are you just bored with me now?”

My hands start to move on their own. I want to comfort her, I need to, but I can’t. I pull them back to my sides.

“I should have been clearer from the start. This was going to be temporary.”

She stares at me and starts to shake. “You… How could you?”

I swallow. I don’t know what to say.

“You made me feel like somebody could want me,” she whimpers. “That somebody wanted my kids. Somebody wanted
us
. To be here with
us
. I’m so stupid. I should have known you were just looking for a cheap fuck. Good thing I never begged for your cock after all, you piece of shit. Get off my porch and get the fuck out of my life.”

Before I can answer, she throws the back door open, rushes inside, and slams it behind her.

I start down the porch, only for a quietly weeping Karen to emerge from the back door and grab my collar.

“Don’t go,” she pleads. “She likes you. She
likes you
.”

“I have to,” I say, gingerly peeling her small hand off my shirt. “It’s the right thing to do, Karen. I’m not going to bring good things into your life. I’m not a good man.”

“Why are you saying that? You did all those things for Mom and you made us dinner…”

“That doesn’t make up for what I’ve done. I never should have come here. I’m sorry, I have to go.”

I shake loose and jog down the steps, around the side of the house, and throw myself into the car. I park the fucking thing in my driveway. It’s my goddamn driveway and I’ll park my goddamn car anywhere I goddamn want.

I stumble into the house and crawl down the neck of a bottle of brown liquor and let darkness take me.

I’ll make the calls tomorrow. I’m leaving.

I
walk
up the stairs in a daze. My hand shakes on the banister, all the color drained from my fingers. Stopping to look through the open door into the girls’ bathroom, I see a ghost in the mirror, a pallid apparition with ice-pale skin and red eyes. Lurching into the bedroom, I flop onto the bed and curl up into a ball.

God, I’m so stupid.

I thought he
liked
me.

You sound like a love-struck teenager, Rose. Grow up.

I hear sobbing. Is that me?

“Mom?”

Oh God, not this. Why didn’t I close the door?

It’s Karen.

“Where’s Kelly?”

Karen shuffles on her feet. “I put her in bed. I didn’t think…” She closes the door and sits down on the bed next to me.

“Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not okay.”

Clutching a pillow, I pull it to my chest and bury my face in it. I’m pulling a real winning streak, here. First Russel and now this bastard. I let myself get too involved too fast. I got my hopes up.

“Is Quentin mad at us?”

“No,” I say sharply. “You didn’t do anything wrong, honey. It just wasn’t going to work out.”

“Why is he leaving?”

“I don’t know.”

Karen sits on the foot of the bed, swinging her feet above the floor. She’s not very tall. She spends so much time taking care of her sister that I sometimes forget that fourteen isn’t much older than thirteen. She looks much younger now, more like the happy little kid she used to be before her parents ripped her life apart.

I hug the pillow harder and tremble, trying to hold back tears and failing. I shouldn’t let her see me like this. She doesn’t need my problems. She doesn’t need that dead weight on her shoulders.

Gingerly Karen rests her hand on my shoulder. I flinch, and she starts to pull back, but hops along the bed and lies down next to me instead.

“It’s okay to be sad.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry you don’t have a better life. I’m sorry you don’t have a father.”

“Boys are crazy.”

My head pops up from the bed. “What do you know about boys?”

“Um,” she says, flinching. “Just, uh, what I’m told.”

I can’t muster the energy to laugh, so a smile will have to do. I flop down on the bed.

“Didn’t you say you don’t have to go to work tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

Karen reaches over, grabs my alarm clock, and turns it off.

“I still have to get up—”

“No, you don’t. I can take care of Kelly. We’ll have Pop-Tarts. We can make it one day without you making us breakfast. There’s like twenty other kids that go to the bus stop and all their moms will be there. We’ll be fine. Sleep.”

I nod, and sigh.

“You want me to bring you something?”

“Like what?”

“There’s a cake.”

“Cake?”

“Yeah.”

“Bring me cake.”

Karen slips out of the room. I manage to sit up while she’s gone. She comes back with two overly generous slices of cake and two tall glasses of milk on a tray. She climbs up on the bed next to me and for a while the only sound is the clinking of forks on plates, and slurping.

“Stop slurping.”

Karen narrows her eyes at me and takes a long slurping drink of milk to wash down the last of her cake. It was store bought but it was good anyway. It feels heavy in my stomach, along with all that pasta. I could sleep for a million years.

Karen takes the dishes with her when she leaves, giving me a longing look until I nod that I’m okay and switch off the light. I don’t feel like reading or watching television tonight. When she closes the door the room goes pitch black and I sink down into the bed, tugging the quilts and comforters up to my neck.

Goddamn you for buying a king-sized bed, Russel. It feels so
empty
. Lying on one side, I stretch my arms and legs across and they’re not even close to the far edge. I’m so goddamn lonely, it hurts.

What happened? I can tell Kelly it’s not our fault all I want, but it’s
my fault
, I just know it. I did something, I said something, I ruined it. He’s such a kind man. He did so much for us in only a few days.

The wheels start spinning in my head. There’s something really wrong here. I was getting at it before when I tore into him on the porch.

Oh, and why do I feel
bad
about that? Prick deserves it. Yet here I am tearing up and biting my lip thinking,
Rose, you bitch.

I was always like that, even before Russel. I just let anybody walk all over me. High school boyfriends did the same thing: give Rose the old pump and dump.

I can’t shake the feeling that this is different, though, that there’s something more in play here. Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that somebody wants me.

I thought he did. He wanted me to beg him, didn’t he? I don’t understand why he made me feel like the center of the universe a few hours ago and then completely changed his mind.

Did something happen?

What, while he was…what? What was he doing? He went somewhere, I saw his car. It’s hard to miss. Why does he claim he doesn’t have a cell phone if he does some kind of remote work? What
does
he do, exactly? Even if people are cagey about the details of their job, they’re usually at least willing to mention the industry that they work in. Quentin gave me nothing, just evaded me and changed the subject.

You’re obsessing, Rose. Go to sleep.

Damn it, I can’t. Why did he show up all of a sudden? Why would he leave days later, supposedly never to return? Did he own that house this whole time? Why is he so cryptic? What was he going to tell me before he stopped? What’s he worried about me finding out?

He was upset when Karen was sneaking around his house, too. Anyone would be, though, right? I snort.
Rose, you’re deluding yourself.
Trying to look for an excuse, a reason why he didn’t just want to get his rocks off and give you a pity fuck.

It wasn’t like that. It was more. I felt it. He was
with
me in a way that nobody else ever really has been. I know what it’s like to get fucked by somebody who just wants to blow their load, roll over, and go to sleep. Quentin paid more attention to my pleasure than every other man I’ve ever slept with, combined.

“I though he liked me,” I whimper out loud.

Sleep, sleep damn it. It’s your day off.

When sleep comes it sneaks up on me, stealing over me like an invisible blanket. When my eyes flutter open again, I have to blink away purple splotches from the bright sun slicing through the blinds. I roll over, moaning.

It’s ten thirty in the morning. There’s a text on my phone, from Karen. They got on the bus.

I let out a sigh of relief and rise from the bed.

From there I sit on the steps for a while, rubbing my arms. I’m so cold today. The thermometer hanging on the back porch says eighty-six. I turn the thermostat up a little and look for something to eat.

I haven’t had a day off in so long I can’t remember what to do when I don’t have something to do. I’m hungry. There’s a whole big bowl of leftovers from last night’s spaghetti feast. As angry as I am with its maker, I can’t hate the spaghetti.

I pour the bowl into a saucepan and heat it up, and pull a beer out of the bottom of the fridge. Quentin must have moved them all to the bottom shelf. I wonder why he did that?

The sauce starts to bubble, and I pour the hot spaghetti and meatballs right back into the bowl, grab a fork, and plant my ass on the couch. There’s nothing on but news channels, which I don’t need right now, and cartoons.

Cartoons it is. Cartoons, leftover spaghetti, and beer for breakfast.

This is the high life.

Why
is
there a squirrel wearing a diving helmet at the bottom of the ocean?

I hear the distinctive rumble of Quentin’s car, sigh, and put the half-eaten spaghetti bowl on the coffee table. He pulls out of the driveway and glides down the street in front of me. I turn my head to watch him go and sob, shaking as remorse clutches hard in my chest. Is this it? Is he gone now?

I shake my head and drop back into the couch. The spaghetti doesn’t feel so appealing anymore but I slowly eat it anyway, cutting the meatballs with my fork. I eat the whole damned bowl, put it in the sink, and come to the couch with a double helping of cheesecake covered in cherries. Sweeter than sweet, they pop in my mouth and melt into the velvety cream cheese.

By the time I’m done, I can hardly move. My head flops back against the couch and I start to doze off again, staring at the ceiling.

I sleep lightly for the next few hours, snapping awake every now and then. I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something, but it’s just nerves. I’m used to being at work or hovering over my kids twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I don’t remember how to relax anymore.

When I finally wake up after some weird dreams influenced by overeating and the cartoons droning in the background, it’s almost time to go get the kids. I yawn and look down at myself. I’m in my pajamas and there’s spaghetti sauce on my chest. I wipe it up with a napkin but it leaves a stain anyway.

Fuck it.

Yawning, I put on my sneakers, grab my keys and start plodding down to the bus stop. Great, now I feel fat.

I can’t help but look over my shoulder. Quentin’s car is in the garage. He hasn’t left yet.

He could still change his mind. I should go…

Go what, crawling on all fours, begging for him? No. I’m not going to let some man wrap me around his finger ever again. Never ever. I did that before and look where it got me. The only thing I have in my life is my girls.

My girls.

I wait at the bus stop with the other moms. It’s weird how many of my neighbors don’t work. Half of them are in sweatpants and the other half are dressed up from whatever part-time job their husbands pat them on the ass and send them off to during the day. Selling houses or whatever.

The kids file off the busses (the neighborhood has enough kids to require two) and I wait.

I wait, and I wait.

All the kids pile off. The doors slap closed, and the busses’ diesel engines snort as they roll off, rumbling, and my kids aren’t there. Karen and Kelly aren’t there.

Panic reaches up from somewhere deep and squeezes my heart.

I’ll call Karen. I pat my pockets. No phone. I left my fucking phone at home.

Turning back to the neighborhood, I bolt, running full tilt, ignoring the burn in my legs and lungs. I run all the way back to the house and stop, almost falling when I spot Russel’s Jeep in my driveway.

I can’t muster the energy to run. It feels like I’m swimming up to the house. The door is open.

Russel is in my fucking house, and so is his slut. Her name is Skyler. She’s twelve years younger than I am. When she started riding Russel’s dick she was barely older than Karen is now, a freshman just like I was, although this time he learned his lesson and plucked a flower that wasn’t in his classes.

I hate the sight of her. Tall and willowy, she has a model’s proportions, a pretty heart-shaped face with rosebud lips and high cheekbones, and a haughty look. Her hair is bleached blonde and she’s either wearing a padded bra or she’s gotten implants since the last time I saw her. She’s in my house, making sandwiches in my kitchen.

“Oh, hi,” she says, “The kids were hungry.”

Kelly doesn’t care. She’ll eat anything anybody puts in front of her. If looks could kill, Karen would burn a ragged, hot hole through Skyler’s forehead. She accepts the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in sullen silence and takes one bite before slapping it contemptuously on the saucer and folding her arms.

Russel stands in the living room, staring at the television.

“Hello, Rose.”

“What do you want? Why are you in my house?”

“It’s my house,” he says blithely.

“Then you should pay the mortgage.”

“I’m up to date on all my payments.” He gives the tomato sauce stain on my chest a contemptuous look. “I see you’re keeping yourself up.”

“I had a day off from work. I don’t get many of those. I have to work myself to the bone taking care of
my
kids and paying the mortgage on this monstrosity.”

“That’s a shame.”

Russel doesn’t look much different from the first time he connived me into his bed. He’s got a little more gray—when I first fell for him he had those little wings along his ears and exuded that “older man” charm that dumb girls like me fall for so easily. God, I’m such a cliché. If I’m not falling into the arms of an older man I’m getting used as a fuck toy by an obnoxious bad boy.

“What do you want?” I ask again. I fold my arms over my chest, careful to avoid the stain on my shirt.

“I picked the kids up from school. I can do that. I’m their father.”

“You get one weekend a month, and this isn’t it.”

“For now,” he says. “I’ll be in touch, Rose. I don’t think this is a good living environment for my children. I understand you have them unsupervised for long periods of time.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you, Russel. Leave.”

“Well, alright, then. Come on, honey.”

Skyler flounces out of the kitchen and glues herself to his side. He makes sure to grope her in front of me, never mind that it’s in full view of my daughters. They head out the door and I slam it shut behind them, turn the deadbolt, and sink to the floor.

Silence reigns in the house, except for the sound of chewing. Kelly finished her sandwich and is now eating Karen’s for her.

“She has fake boobs,” Karen announces.

“Karen,” I drawl, trying to sound mad at her for saying that, but I can’t muster the energy to pull it off.

Kelly giggles through a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly.

“What did he say while he was driving you here?”

Karen shrugs. “He just asked us about our day, and wanted to know how your job was going and about your classes. I didn’t tell him anything. He wants to take us away and make us live with that bitch Skyler.”

“Karen!”

“She is a bitch,” Kelly agrees.

I sigh. “Stop saying that.”

“It’s true.”

“I know it’s true, just don’t say it.”