Royals Saga 3 Crown Me (21 page)

All the fear over the pain I might face couldn’t compare to the love that I felt for this child.

“If you choose me, then you choose this, too. I chose you, and I want to choose you every day for the rest of my life, but I can’t choose you over our child. I
won’t
choose you, because this is our baby. This is our love given flesh and bone.”

I waited for him to speak, my heart breaking a little more with each second that ticked by. When I lost count, humiliation washed over me.

So much for fighting.

I scooted to the edge of the bed and stood. Alexander watched without a word, still squatting. We were inches apart, but he made no move to stop me. No move to touch me.

I opened my mouth, unsure what to say, and only one thing came to my mind. But before I could speak, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Our eyes locked and deep within me I knew this was the moment where everything would become clear—where my future would be laid bare. He drew it from his pocket and held it to his ear. “Give me a moment.”

With a flick of his thumb, he muted the call but I was already halfway out the door.

“Take all the time you need.” I shook my head, wondering why my tears had stopped falling.

He inhaled sharply, shaking his head. “My secrets protect you, Clara.”

“Your secrets have broken us.”

I didn’t wait for him to try to stop me. I knew he wouldn’t. He’d made his choice.

T
he guard didn’t question me when I pulled out in the new Range Rover, even though it was well past midnight. I’d grabbed my purse and nothing more, but no one had stopped me. There had been a time when I wouldn’t have left our home alone. A time when Alexander would have insisted on an escort. A time when he would have sent Norris to intercept me.

Times had changed.

It didn’t hurt as much as I might’ve expected to have him stop caring. I’d fought him on the guards and the security constantly. In a way I was finally getting what I wanted. No, it wasn’t the lack of concern that hurt. It was the denial.

Alexander could claim to love me. He could fight for me and, for that matter, fight
with
me. But he’d denied the one pure element of our love: our child.

There wasn’t room for more pain. My heart couldn’t shatter any further without turning to dust and blowing away with my very breath.

I adjusted the seatbelt and pulled past the Clarence House gate. A group of intrepid reporters leapt to attention, splashing through the rain to get their shots. I pressed the gas pedal to the floor, screeching forward, wheels spinning, as I took off down the street.

They’d gotten a few shots. I blinked against the spots of light persisting in my vision. There would be speculation, and I couldn’t care less. I finally understood that there would always be speculation. But now I also knew that my job wasn’t to avoid it. That was impossible. My job was to protect our baby from it.

I didn’t want him to grow up without Alexander, but I refused to stay and play pretend. I’d seen how resentment could poison the relationship between father and son. I couldn’t allow that to happen. The greatest gift I could give to Alexander was a normal life for our child, even if that meant a life without him.

He couldn’t see that now. I could only hope someday he would, and that someday he would understand when he was no longer blinded by guilt and grief.

I merged onto the M1, which was relatively empty at this hour.
Normal
people were at home in bed, sleeping before work.
That
was what I wanted. Normalcy. But I’d have to find it first. A few taxis sped past on the way to one of the nearby suburbs. Rain battered against their service lights as they ferried people to chosen destinations.

I had no idea where I was headed. My chest was as taut as an overstretched rubber band, and I gasped for air against the tears lodged in my throat. I wanted to cry. I willed myself to, needing to free the ache trapped inside me. I was desperate for the baptism of grief that would wash away my mistakes.

But this wasn’t an ordinary relationship ending. This was the relationship that defined every moment of my life, both my past and my future. Alexander was as inextricable from me as the blood and veins and the beat of my broken heart. So what did it matter what direction I chose? Every path forward was colored by the absence of him.

My headlights flashed across a mile marker:
Scotland
. I would go to Balmoral while I considered my options. There were people to call, a doctor’s appointment to cancel, a whole life in need of maintenance in the city I’d left behind. But for now, I wanted to be alone, and the highlands seemed the perfect place to retreat from the crown.

The rumble of my stomach half an hour later, followed by an impatient flutter from his little majesty, reminded me that I’d skipped dinner. Rubbing my belly, I exited the motorway to find a petrol station.

“Momma’s sorry,” I cooed, wondering if the baby could hear me yet. It felt good to talk to him—to have a palpable connection with someone I loved, even though I’d never met him. “I’m going to start taking better care of both of us.”

Ten minutes later when I made my way out of the shop with a bag of crisps and a juice, I promised myself that I would do better tomorrow. I popped open the bag as I input the destination into the Range Rover’s navigation system. With the storm, it was getting harder and harder to see directional signs. Balmoral was just over eight hours away. I was pretty sure I could make it on sheer determination alone. I needed as much distance between Alexander and me as possible. An entire country was a good place to start.

I pulled back on to the M1 and flipped my wipers to full blast. The rain had picked up, building from a late spring drizzle to a downpour. Lightning split the darkness ahead, and the crack of thunder that accompanied the flash vibrated through the Range Rover. But what made me nearly jump out of my skin was the piercing ring of a phone a few seconds later.

Crap on a cracker. I’d turned off the sound on my phone, but it must have connected to the stereo’s bluetooth automatically.

“Alexander calling,” a pleasant female voice informed me.

I hit the voice command button on the steering column. “Reject call.”

It was too dark and too wet to risk searching for my phone in my purse to turn it off. Maybe it was my newly minted maternal instincts kicking in, but there was no way I was taking a hand off the wheel. When the phone rang for the tenth time in the space of twenty minutes, I pulled to the side of the road, grateful that no one else was out at this hour, and dug my phone free. Edward’s face smiled on my screen with this incoming call though. Apparently Alexander was calling in favors. I considered for a moment before I hit accept. I wasn’t running away, so there was no reason not to be honest about my plans. I just wanted to be alone, and I knew that was something Edward could understand. “Hello?”

“Clara!” Edward’s voice filled the cabin. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him, scanning the road for a sign or mile marker, but between the pounding rain and pitch blackness, I couldn’t see anything but a few feet in front of me. “And I have no clue.”

“Say put,” he ordered. “There’s a tracker on the car. I’ll send someone to find you.”

“Of course there is,” I muttered. “I’m not lost. I’m on my way out of town on the M1. It’s too dark to say where exactly, but there’s no need to send anyone. I have a navigation system.”

“I’d feel better if I did.”

“Edward,” I said, lowering my voice secretively, “it’s over. I left him. I can’t come back.”

There was a pause before he finally spoke again. “Just tell me where you’re headed. I’ll come.”

His offer dislodged a fresh batch of tears that had started brewing the moment I’d heard his voice. I swiped at them, frustrated to have added heartbreak to hormones. “Balmoral.”

“Balmoral?” he repeated in shock. “Christ, that’s near half a day’s drive. Pull over to the nearest village and I’ll meet you. We can go anywhere you want, but it’s late now. You should sleep.”

“Edward…” I trailed away when I heard his muffled voice. He was talking to someone else. Someone in the room with him.

I didn’t have to ask who it was.

“Clara.” Alexander said my name with such power that my body responded as if he was next to me. My nipples stiffened as goose bumps rippled across my skin. My tears fell faster now, matching the incessant beat of the rain, and the impatient kick in my belly made me cry harder. I guess little majesty could hear us, and he knew his daddy’s voice.

“Please stay where you are,” he spoke smoothly, but there was a frantic edge to his words.

“I had no idea
please
was in your vocabulary.” I couldn’t remember hearing him say it before.

“When you tell me that you’re going to listen, I’ll say thank you.” His voice took on the charming huskiness that had first lured me into his grasp.

I shook my head before I realized he couldn’t see me, but I couldn’t bring myself to say no. Silence stretched between us, emphasizing how far apart we truly were, until the boom of thunder broke through the void.

“You’ve already walked out,” he said. “I can’t handle it if you say goodbye tonight, too. Let me bring you home.”

“I can’t,” I finally managed. “I can’t come back. We both know how this ends, X. You warned me from the beginning.
You
told me to run.”

“That was when the most I knew about you was your name.”

“You warned me and you came for me anyway.” My words were caught between accusation and memory.

“I couldn’t stop myself,” he admitted. “You sighed so perfectly when I touched you.”

I closed my eyes, soaking in his confession. Even if I could forgive, it didn’t change anything.

“Have I ever told you that?” he continued. “Have I told you that this perfect flutter of breath escapes your lips when I take your hand or wrap my arms around you? I live for that sound. I crave it. It took me a long time to understand why such a simple thing could have such an effect on me, but now I know. It’s the sound of utter contentment—the sound of total love and trust. And you made that sound the day I met you. I’d been waiting my whole life to hear it, and I didn’t even know it.”

“X, don’t,” I broke in, swallowing hard. My fingers reached toward the dash and the sound of his voice.

He isn’t here
, I reminded myself, slamming my fist onto the steering wheel.

“You know so much more about me now, but you’re still keeping secrets,” I whispered. “I’ve watched too many people I love turn a blind eye to lies. I don’t want to live like that.”

“It’s not a secret.” His tone shifted from soft recollection to fierce dominance instantly. “I’m—”

“Let me guess?” I interrupted with an angry sob. “You’re protecting me? From what? Pain? I don’t need you to lie to me. That doesn’t protect me; that hurts me.”

“Goddammit, Clara,” he roared, his words booming through the confined space. “Someone killed my father. They—”

“Daniel,” I interjected. “Daniel killed your father, and Daniel is dead.”

“It’s not that simple. Someone provided him with information, with a weapon—I have a duty to find out who.”

I drooped in my seat, bracing my forehead against the steering wheel as exhaustion suddenly overcame me. “Why would you keep that from me?”

“Because you’ve been busy with more important things,” he snapped. “Things that don’t remind you of that day or of him.”

“No.” I said it so softly I doubted that he heard me. “I’ve been busy being lonely, because you shut me out.”

“We can get through this.” His voice softened again.

“Alexander—” A knife twisted in my chest, but I knew what I had to do. I knew what I had to say. “—there is no
we
.”

“Never say that again,” he commanded. “You and me, we’re…”

I lifted my head, struggling for the right way to explain and knowing there was no magic word that could sever the bond we shared. “X, I—”

The sickening crunch of metal stole my words from my lips and drove the air from my lungs as my body was thrown hard against the steering wheel. The world spun. Glass cracked and showered over me as I became weightless, soaring without wings. My only anchor was his voice, screaming my name—until even that was gone.