The New Boy- Completed

Thirty Three

"See I knew coming out here would help?" 

"What on the boat?" I chuckled at him, turning my head back as he put his phone behind him. 

"To Greece. The heat, the sea, sand. Just get away from it all." I gave him a small smile before turning my head back. "Do you feel better? Even a little?" 

"What that I broke it off with the love of my life because my ex found a way to fuck me over. Yeah 100% Never been better." I laid back down. My skin was still roasting from the 5th day in the sun. I didn't really need the jumper to keep warm, it was more a comfort thing right now. 

He'd dragged me out here after we'd spent a solid week of me crying on him. I'd be doing okay and then just break down again as soon as I moved or he left. He literally hadn't left my side in almost 2 weeks. 

We'd said that I needed to get better before I saw Evan. That I needed to be in good standing to process it all with him. But honestly, I don't think I could be until I cleared the air with him. Knowing I'd hurt him so much was hurting me and I didn't know what even waited for us next. I didn't know if this was one of those things we could recover from. If the shoe was on the other foot, I wouldn't forgive him for making the presumption I'd told something I promised I wouldn't. Just outright telling him I didn't trust him without saying those exact words. 

"So you dropped out of uni?" I turned to him as he patted his chest, asking me to come sit with him. I wasn't crying now. I think I'd cried enough tears to fill this ocean we were sitting on. 

After I had finally admitted to him there in my little art studio that I wasn't okay, he'd carried me back to my room. He sat me on the bathroom side and washed the paint off me, got me a change of clothes and let me change there with his back to me before picking me back up and laying me in bed. He found my laptop, closed down all the self destructive pages I had open, put on Netflix and we laid there not even speaking, he just held me as we watched comfort shows for days on end. He didn't stop the show when I broke into tears on him, let it play as background noise to distract me as it got easier. 

He tried his best to hide that he was texting Evan and my dad, keeping them both updated on how I was. No one came to bother us during that week. Not a single knock at the door unless it was people bringing food and drinks that he'd asked for.

"I did." I laid down my head in his lap, letting him run his hands through the lengths of my messy pony tail. He sat there detangling the knots gently, looking down at me dying for me to carry on talking. "It was all too much. Trying to catch up and then me just being a mess and I couldn't take it in. It felt so weird being at home I couldn't focus anywhere and I had no one to talk to or read my work so I got a few really bad grades which isn't like me and then I just stopped." 

"You just stopped going?" 

"Stopped attending meetings with the tutor, stopped doing the assignments, stopped working, reading the emails. I just stopped. I was like what's the point right? I'm only here to get married and produce children for the throne. But my brothers and sisters had taken care of that. I've gone from 5th in line, to 13th in the space of like 2 years. They don't need any more kids to take over. To have this weight hanging over their heads forever. I can't get a normal job with the degree. I was only doing it for my own gain right? Just to say I'd done it. But then what? What do I do once I've done that? Find another to do? Keep putting myself through the hassle of assignments and essays and exams and deadlines? For what? Literally nothing of any importance? It still doesn't really make sense to me. It's not like I'm working towards something. The courses I took, I enjoy them sure, but is that just because I was forced to take them as a kid in case it was me being put on the throne? Is that what I was conditioned to like or do I actually like history and literature and everything else." He nodded along like he understood. 

"Like take Evan for example. He has something he's working for right? To take over his dad's business eventually. Stephen and his kids sure. Even Ed and his kids. But beyond that? None of us girls are going that way anyway. I can only marry down really. It's not like there's many royal families out there now that put us high on the chances of being up there and I'm the youngest. All I have now is business men. But I don't understand the business world." 

"In this world I'm smart Sterling. People need to know about a family they are working with and chances are I know what they need to know. I know history on every single country in the world Ask me about Nauru and I can tell you pretty much anything you want to know. Ask me about stocks and shares or legalities behind HR and everything and I don't have a fucking clue. How am I supposed to interact with people I don't have any connection with? Nothing in common. And I can't marry lower than that, dad would never allow it. So then I'm back to the whole so what? I go to school to learn about things I have no clue about, that don't necessarily interest me? Or do I just wait for something like what happened with Evan, just wait for someone to fall into my lap and him to be the perfect match. Hope that the universe does the work for me." 

"I mean that's something you would expect to happen." He smiled and I sighed. 

"Right? But now after everything I'm just thinking it's not even a realistic expectation? To ask for the stars to align in such a specific way that I'll be delivered the perfect guy twice in a lifetime? It doesn't happen. I've had my one. He was my one. And I let Bash just come in and show him that I didn't trust him. Because that was my very first thought. That it was him. It wasn't that someone found a news article online, or that someone in my history classes worked it out, or that one of the tutors told someone. It was that he'd told. And you can't love someone that doesn't trust you."

"You know that's not how he thinks about it all right?" 

"Then he's a lot less intelligent than I thought he was."