My Prince (21 page)

When they headed out to the car, George slipped his hand into Alex’s.

Alex looked up at him in surprise.

“All the way out, now,” he murmured softly. “I’m not ashamed to be with you.”

Chapter Twelve

T
HE
PHONE
had rung three times in a row now. Alex had ignored it the first two times, more than content to be stretched out on the sofa with George, paying no attention to anything other than the TV and his man. It was good to be home. But, it could be something important, so he reached over and saw his mother’s name on the screen.

“Sorry,” he murmured to George, pulling himself off the sofa.

He went downstairs rather than taking the call in the living room. Alex guessed that by now someone had caught his mother up on the article and probably the social media reaction too. He was willing to bet half a dozen or more gay “news” sites had rehashed and reported on the article by now.

The call had ended by the time he got into the bedroom, but he called her back straight away.

“Sander,” she said instead of hello, using his family’s childhood nickname for him.

“Hi, Mum.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Did you see the paper?”

“We’ve been brought up to speed, yes. Your father and I have been discussing it.”

Alex leaned back on the pillows and stretched his legs out. He was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a lecture, not from his mum. She didn’t care about his sexuality, and there wasn’t anything sordid in the article that would upset her.

“Oh? Is everything okay?”

“I think so,” she said, her voice crisp on upper-class vowels. “We’d like to make a statement as a family. There will need to be some considerable media spin here.”

“I don’t think so,” Alex argued. “George and I aren’t going to stop going out together. I’m going to get an injunction taken out to stop this again in the future, and if we do need to drip-feed information to the media, we can make sure it comes from us instead of some enterprising journalist.”

“I disagree, Sander,” his mother said easily. “You can’t always hide and pretend the world outside isn’t there. The media—properly controlled—can be a useful tool for us.”

“You want to use me as a tool?” he said, slightly incredulous. “To what purpose?

“It will be good to raise our profile in Britain. We can get you involved in some LGBT charity work. It’s about time you started doing some work for the family.”

“You know that’s not my thing,” Alex said, trying hard to keep the instinctive whine from his voice. “I hate all of that shit.”

“Sander,” she said sharply, her own kind of reprimand. “I’ll need to speak to George’s family, to ask them to what extent they want to be involved. We can, of course, offer them protection if they want it. But I think it would be nice for us to all get together and discuss this.”

“We’re not a business arrangement,” Alex snapped. His family knew how he felt about courting the media, selling stories and pictures in order to satisfy some public appetite no one was sure even existed. “I really don’t think this is a good idea, Mum.”

“Of course it’s a good idea. If we address the relationship ourselves, then it takes away any potential for scandal. We’re not embarrassed of you, we’re supportive of your relationship. Et cetera, et cetera.”

Alex could see, so clearly, his mother waving away his concerns.

“Mum,” he tried again. “George’s family are different than us. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to invite anyone to write about them unless everyone is absolutely in agreement on it.”

Too many people were involved now. Good people, wonderful people, like the Maguires and all the different branches of that family. Alex couldn’t just use them to raise the profile of his own.

“So we’ll talk to them,” his mum said.

“Yes, but as soon as we give their names out, then it gives the media implied permission to write whatever they like. And that’s not okay.” Alex swung his legs over the side of the bed and ran his hand over his face. “I told you, Mum, they’re not like us. We can’t go blindly into this and not expect some kind of backlash from certain media outlets. You know how they’ll spin it—there’s no air of Kate Middleton, middle class acceptability for us to fall back on. They’re working class, benefits claiming, white trash.”

“You cunt.”

George stood in the doorway to the bedroom, his face ashen and furious.

“Are you quite done, Sander?” his mother asked from the phone.

“I’ve got to go,” Alex muttered and threw the phone onto his bed. “George….”

“How fucking dare you?” George said. He was practically vibrating with rage.

“George, please listen to me for two seconds.”

“You and yours can rot in hell. I’ll go back to my white trash family now, thanks.”

He turned and stormed up the stairs, feet echoing loudly on the polished Scandinavian wood. For a few, hideous seconds Alex felt frozen to the spot while nausea churned in his belly. He was convinced he was going to puke for real, until the front door upstairs slammed shut and the familiar roar of George’s Golf echoed between the houses on their street.

F
OR
THE
next two days, Alex skipped his classes and rang George every ten minutes or so, day and night. Every time it was the same: six rings, then it cut to voice mail.

On the second day, George deactivated that voice mail. Probably as a result of the forty or so, increasingly desperate messages Alex had left for him the day before. Now, instead of the recorded message picking up and George’s voice telling Alex he’d call back, the line would ring and ring with no answer.

On Wednesday, Alex went back to class. He’d missed stuff—important stuff—though his excuse of being “sick” for the past two days didn’t seem to hold. Apparently his tutor had seen the article in the paper, along with everyone else in the world.

On Friday Alex called Doug.

“Meet me at the baths.”

“Fuck no, I’m not going in there, Doug. Come over to mine and I’ll make dinner and we can destroy a couple of bottles of wine.”

“To borrow an expression, darling, fuck no. If you’re wallowing, I’m not going to let you drag me down with you. Meet me at the pub in an hour.”

“Fine,” Alex sighed.

“And whatever funk you’re in? Pull yourself out of it. I’m not going to take any of your ‘poor me’ bullshit today.”

Doug hung up before Alex could come up with a witty reply.

He looked down at himself and reluctantly (and silently) admitted Doug had a point. He was wearing pajama bottoms with cartoon reindeer on them and a T-shirt that was stained with last night’s dinner. He hadn’t bothered getting changed before he went to bed. He’d been wearing the same outfit at home for… far too long.

Alex hadn’t contacted Doug to let him know what had happened with George, though apparently Doug’s psychic, best-friend skills meant he knew far before Alex told him about it.

Or maybe George had contacted him.

The thought made Alex sit bolt upright.

Maybe George had called Doug and asked for…. George didn’t ask for anything, Alex thought, and slumped back against the pillows. George wasn’t one of those superclose, best-gal-pals sort of guy. He was stoic and grumpy and kept his emotions to himself.

And Alex loved the miserable bastard.

With that thought hovering like a cloud of angry bees around his head, Alex pulled himself off the bed and stumbled toward the shower. If he turned up looking anything less than perfect, Doug would roast him. And not in a good way.

He showered, ignoring the dark blue bottles that definitely didn’t belong to him, which had appeared at some point over the last couple of months. No, he used the expensive crap his mother had bought for him at Christmas and slicked the good stuff through his hair to make it shine.

When he was done, Alex wiped the steam off the bathroom mirror and checked his face. He needed to shave, but at this stage the fuzz on his cheeks read more like the start of a hipsterish beard than scruffy, so he let it be. He chose light jeans, a gray-striped shirt, and boots from his wardrobe, and he made sure to style his hair before spritzing on cologne.

There were still dark circles under his eyes from nights of broken sleep, and his skin had taken on the saggy pallor of someone who had not eaten decent food in some time. That was the problem with his usual health and fitness routine. When he let it go, he looked like shit.

By the time Alex arrived at the pub, Doug was already working his way through a bottle of wine.

“You were here when I called, weren’t you, you shit,” Alex muttered as he slid into the seat opposite him.

Doug made a noncommittal noise and blatantly checked Alex out.

“Trouble in paradise?” he drawled.

Alex shrugged and helped himself to a glass of wine. It was nice stuff; he wasn’t going to bother asking beforehand in case Doug said no.

“It’s over, I think,” he said after taking his first sip.

“Oh dear. And after that charming article was printed about you in
The Sun
. Did the publicity freak him out?”

“No,” Alex said, and chugged the wine this time. “No, we sailed through that. I met his family.”

“Oh?”

“They’re wonderful.”

“So?”

“Mine aren’t,” Alex said dully.

Doug—the bastard—laughed. “Really? That’s the best you can do?”

“I might have inadvertently called his family scum.” He tilted his head to the side, thinking. “Poor, white trash scum.”

“I thought you liked them?” Doug asked and topped off both their glasses. Alex was getting through his at quite the pace.

“I do! I didn’t mean the way it came out. I was putting words into other people’s mouths, and he overheard me. And decided it was my opinion, I guess.”

“You idiot.”

“Not quite his words, but close enough,” Alex sighed.

“Have you apologized?”

“No. He won’t answer the phone to me.”

“I’m not surprised,” Doug murmured. He pushed his hand through his short hair, messing with the silvery gray strands, and pulled his purple and red tartan scarf from around his neck. As always, he was perfectly coordinated.

“What am I going to do?” Alex said, his words slipping into a whine despite his efforts to prevent that.

“I don’t know, darling,” Doug said. “Did you come to me for answers or for someone to complain to?”

“You’re a bitch,” Alex told him with a startled laugh.

“Thank you.”

“Will you talk to him for me?”

“After you just called me a bitch?”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Doug leaned back in his chair and cradled the glass of wine to his chest. “You can’t go with grand gestures, not with George. He won’t appreciate them, and you’d likely embarrass him.”

“So… no going back to
The Sun
and asking them to print an apology for me?”

“Fuck no. No, Alex. George is a normal guy. Brain-achingly normal,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You don’t have the emotional or social skills to deal with a guy like him.”

“Ouch.”

“I’m serious. Your backgrounds are too different. Your education and upbringing and all those different societal influences are all polar opposites. I told you back at the beginning, to make this work you have to find your common ground.”

“Yeah, but I just set a bomb off in our common ground.”

“Then you need to rebuild it,” Doug said with a smug little smile.

“Easier said than done when he won’t even talk to me.”

“I don’t know the answer,” Doug said. “I got laid last night, by the way. Thanks for asking.”

Alex huffed a laugh. “That’s nice for you.”

“By the same guy who fucked me the last three times.”

“Really?”

“Mhmm.”

“That’s… new.”

“It is. I think I might like him.”

“Well, what do you know. It turns out all the lost boys do grow up in the end.”

“We’ll see,” Doug said with a self-deprecating shrug. “As for George… you might have to go outside your own comfort zone if you want to make this work. Figure out what your long-term goals are—with him and without him. What do you want from your life, Alex? It’s time you stopped being a spoiled little princess and make some decisions.”

“Fucking ouch,” Alex said again.

“I’m serious,” Doug said, draining his glass of wine and reaching for his scarf to wind it back around his neck. “You say you don’t want to live that pampered, precious, privileged life that your family has laid out for you, but you still survive on their money and their influence.” He stood and leaned over to kiss Alex’s cheek in his usual good-bye gesture. “If you want George—really want him—you’re going to have to make some changes to your attitude, darling. Think about that.”

And he left, sweeping elegantly out of the pub and into the bustling rain.

I
T
HAD
been two painful weeks since George had thrown his epic tantrum and stormed out of Alex’s flat. Two weeks of being annoyed that he’d left certain items there that he needed—his Kindle, for one, which had a half-finished novel sitting on it. And some toiletries, and his spare phone charger, and a whole bunch of underwear.

His dignity.

George was annoyed that he
could
go and get his stuff back, but it would mean answering one of Alex’s constant phone calls, and he was too childish and too stubborn to do that.

His housemates had learned not to ask why he’d suddenly moved back in after spending nearly all his time at Alex’s flat over the past couple of months. It was a shock to the system, suddenly being surrounded by people again after the calm peace of Alex’s place. He was thrown right back into the midst of epic Xbox battles and screaming arguments about the state of the kitchen and whose turn it was to buy more toilet paper. It was back to the hard, lumpy single bed that he’d never liked and his cramped, cold room and no sweet, snuggly boy to sleep next to.

It sucked.

George rolled over on the bed and grabbed his charger to plug his laptop back in. He’d been outed in a national newspaper, which was one thing; another was knowing that none of his friends from back home had known he was gay.