I was interrupted by someone carelessly walking by, almost hitting me in the face with a black and white Van's backpack.
"it's impolite to stare", he said when he was already a step behind the table I was sitting at, leaving me with an open mouth.
...
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-L-
Shit. That didn't go according to plan at all. (Not that I had had any plan. Me and Harry – I didn't even know what that was. Yes, I was crushing on him. The words felt foreign, unknown... yet I was happy that I had finally admitted this to myself. Just – what now? I has spent all my childhood and youth learning about what I had thought was everything, but no. Nobody had ever told me how to... how to handle this feeling. How to handle... love?
I was walking back to the royal wing of the palace, to my chamber after history with Liam. It used to be like a prison cell for me, a place I hated. I had spent too many years in there, and the only people I talked to were my stepsisters, my stepmother, and my maids.
But now - more and more - it was becoming a place of retreat for me, and I was increasingly happy when I came home - a feeling I had never known before.
I walked through the automatically opening door into the interior when Paul spotted me. I hadn't seen him since the incident when he discovered me at the university and I fled through the window, and that was probably a good thing - which unfortunately didn't mean that he had forgotten about it.
"Louis, may I ask you what you were doing outside? As far as I know, you hadn't registered for a permission to go out."
Permissions. They were a terrible thing my stepmother had invented, because me and my siblings had sneaked out a few times and she had heard about it. But I didn't know that they still existed, the last time I had a permission was a few years ago. Since then, I've done what I wanted. they couldn't keep me locked up all day. And, uh, frankly I had totally forgotten about it.
"Paul! What a beautiful day it is today, don't you think? And oh, I don't remember it being any of your business what I do in my spare time.", I said, extra smiley. I was still the prince and hypothetically, I could do whatever I wanted. Even Paul could not change that.
Sure, sometimes he'd catch me and carry me back thrown over his shoulder, to my embarrassment but... quite a few employees had laughed at the scene. Still, he wasn't the one who could forbit me to go out. Whenever I would point it out to him that, he would start with his I-am-in-charge-of-your-safety speech.
"Do I really have to remind you that I am the responsible person for your security?"
There we go. I didn't have time to listen to his sermon, which I certainly knew would follow, so I just walked past him and got into the elevator. The doors shifted close just before he was near enough to prevent it - I had to bite back a laugh.
