7James
After a grand evening full of palace exploration and good food, Reid's daughter had decided she would like to spend the night in the company of her new friends. All of the children who were allowed to go had been gathered into one of the living rooms to watch movies. As there was no school the next day, a guard and a few servants were to serve as chaperones for as long as their young charges were awake.
It wasn't as if the kids would actually manage to be awake for long, though. When Reid and I left them, most of them were curled up in heaps and piles, like exhausted puppies.
As happy as I was to have been part of the excitement and activities tonight, I couldn't help but be over the moon that Reid was free to sleep in my bed.
My door had been fixed at some point during the evening, and the lock was repaired. I didn't much care about either of those facts. Let the damn door hang open. Let the entirety of the media in all of Denmark come barging in to gawk at us. I would show them what a man was made of.
The moment Reid curled up in my bed, he fell asleep. I wrapped my body around him like a dragon protecting its treasure, tucking my cheek against the top of his head. The silkiness of his hair underneath my skin made me feel like I was resting my head on a cloud.
I would protect him. I wanted to protect him.
Even more than that, I wanted to put to right all the wrongs I had committed against him back in our college days. He had loved me so much, and I had just been getting off on how exciting it was to date a commoner who didn't treat me like I was God himself. I had taken that open acceptance for granted, treating him in the same way as I treated everything else: like I was owed it by the world.
I was late to our dates. I ignored him at parties. I hid him from my family. Hell, I'd continued flirting with servants and cooks and guards, and random hot men out on the street. Most of that, I had done behind Reid's back.
Then, there was the party. The vodka was flowing and the music was loud. I'd smoked too many cigarettes, and I was annoyed at Reid for wanting to go home because people were getting too rowdy. I got drunk, drunker than I had ever been, drunker than I had been since, and I found myself making out with some random freshman boy in the middle of the dance floor. The harsh, strobing lights illuminated us for everyone to see.
For Reid to see.
And then the freshman's tennis player girlfriend had come up and backhanded me across the face so hard I fell against the wall. Dizzy, probably concussed, definitely embarrassed, I looked up and saw Reid staring down at me, with disgust written across his face.
"You deserved that."
And then he had left me, with those words echoing in my ears, but that wasn't the final straw. No, my last mistake had been a thousand times worse.
What an absolute fool I had been back then. Not a man at all. I had been a boy playing at manhood, testing my limits, and then throwing money at those limits to get them to move even further.
I was a man now. I had a second chance here with Reid. I was not going to fuck it up this time.
I fell asleep dreaming of what could have been, and what might be now.
Reid was first to awaken in the morning, and I knew that because he was propped up on his elbow and blinking down at me by the time I managed to open my eyes.
"What time is it?" I groaned.
"Breakfast time," Reid said. "A servant just came by and knocked on the door to announce it."
