Marshall sank onto the bed next to her. “They can’t keep us apart forever. What are they going to do, lock me up?”
“Of course not. But they can ruin the life we’ve built here,” Sam reminded him. “They can out us. We won’t be Martha and Scott any longer.”
Sam hadn’t anticipated all the ways that their shared anonymity would bring her and Marshall closer. They were both growing and changing, discovering new things about themselves, and the best part was that they were growing together. Their lives had become intertwined by the things most people probably took for granted: Going on quiet walks. Cooking for themselves. Learning how to budget.
Marshall’s features were etched with sorrow. “I don’t know if I want to be here without you, Sam.”
“I’ll come back, I promise. Just let me go home, see for myself how Beatrice is doing. I promise I won’t tell anyone where I was, no matter how much they ask,” she added fiercely. “I won’t blow your cover.”
He sat with that for a moment, the only noise the ceiling fan stirring lazily overhead. “I hate the thought of you facing this alone. I don’t want to ask it of you,” he said at last.
“You didn’t ask. I offered. There’s a key difference.”
Of course Sam wanted her boyfriend with her right now. If she’d loved him any less, she would have begged him to come back so that she could lean on him through the trials ahead.
But Marshall was building something in Hawaii, growing in confidence and self-reliance. If she pulled him away from it now, he might never find it again.
Loving someone, Sam realized, was more complicated than songs and novels made it seem. People always wanted to talk about the falling-in-love part, the rush of hormones and giddy excitement and breathless kisses. But being in love, sharing a life, meant so much more. You loved someone knowing all their scars and vulnerabilities and flaws. You loved someone even when they hurt you; more than that, you let them hurt you, because the last thing you wanted was to become a burden on that person—another weight pressing on their shoulders, when they already carried so much.
“Call me when you get there, okay? I’ll buy a burner phone first thing tomorrow and text you the number,” Marshall pleaded. “Promise me you’ll send constant updates.”
Sam didn’t trust herself to speak right now, so she shifted on the bed, curling her fingers in Marshall’s hair and dragging his mouth down to hers.
Marshall growled as they fell back onto the comforter and Sam tugged his shirt up over his head. How many mornings had they lain in this bed, kissing lazily, telling each other old anecdotes and listening to the distant crash of waves? They had been so oblivious to reality, absorbed wholly in each other, as if the rest of the world had paused while they were here.
But reality had ground on without them, and they couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Sam trailed kisses along Marshall’s jaw, wrapping her arms around his torso as if she might fuse them right here to this spot. If she had to say goodbye—if this was their last time together, at least for a while—then she would make it count.
“I’m so glad you came today. You were overdue for a party. A real party,” Rachel amended, “not some sorority tailgate or stupid League of Kings banquet.”
Nina smiled. The fact that Rachel, a die-hard royal enthusiast, had called the most exclusive gathering in the world stupid was a testament to her undying loyalty.
She cast an amused glance around the backyard, where students in frayed jeans and ripped tees jostled in blithely sweaty proximity. Music blared from speakers in one corner; a group of students whom Nina recognized from an a cappella group had climbed onto a plastic folding table to sing along.
This was Tudor House, one of the old “pass-down houses,” which were handed from one generation of King’s College seniors to the next. With neon murals scrawled over its walls and a mismatched scattering of boho furniture, Tudor House had a reputation among the artsy crowd. It reminded Nina of a club Sam had dragged her to last year, when she and Jeff were newly back from their world tour—some place on the east side with a punk-rock band. The memory stabbed a dagger of worry between Nina’s ribs.
“Should we head inside? My friend Ella is in there. She says they have Jell-O shots,” Rachel explained, typing on her phone.
Nina shook her head. “I need to get some air. Catch up with you later.”
Before Rachel could protest, Nina pushed her way through the sunshine-drenched backyard until she reached a gravel path to the driveway. Dozens of cars were parked there, bumper to bumper, so that the cars at the back were hopelessly boxed in. A staircase led up the side of the garage to what looked like a separate apartment.
Nina sank onto the bottom step and leaned her head into her hands with a muffled groan. Even here, at a college party with cheap beer and indie music—the complete opposite of a black-tie royal gathering—Nina still couldn’t go ten minutes without thinking about the Washingtons. She was always thinking about them, because her life had long ago become enmeshed with Sam’s.
Yet it hurt to think of Sam these days. Nina missed her best friend, and worried about her, and, even worse, thoughts of Sam invariably led to fear for Beatrice—lying there like a rag doll in the hospital bed, surrounded by a tangle of tubes—which led to thoughts of Jeff, America’s Acting King. The one person Nina really, really did not want to think about anymore.
When footsteps sounded behind her, she was oddly unsurprised to hear James’s voice. “Mind if I join you?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You really need to stop following me.”
“You certainly have a high opinion of yourself,” he said cheerfully. “What if I just came out here for a bit of fresh air?”
“You arrived at the party and came straight out here, to the driveway, where I’m sitting alone. That’s not coincidence; that’s stalking.”
“Ahh,” James said in a low, significant tone. “You noticed that I wasn’t at the party earlier. You were looking for me.”
“I was trying to avoid you,” she amended, but she wasn’t actually convinced that was the truth.
The sunlight danced over James’s silhouette, glinting on the beer bottles in his hands. Nina lifted an eyebrow.
“You claim you weren’t looking for me, but you have two beers,” she couldn’t help observing.
He looked down. “So I do,” he said, as if he’d forgotten that he was holding a bottle in each hand. “They were both for me, but the chivalrous thing to do is share, isn’t it?” He handed one to her and started to leave.
Nina sighed. “You may as well sit down.”