PLAYBOY PRINCESS (gxg) ✓

08. Rory Preston

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               RORY KNELT BEFORE THE ASH, LAYING her fingertips against the snow.

               A good brother—Declan had been a good brother, even if he hadn't been a good prince . . . or a good person.

               She remembered the week after she had turned twelve. Her father's birthday present to her had been a one-way ticket to an all-girls boarding school in Switzerland. He might as well have been saying, I don't need you here. 

                In return, she had gifted him a present. She had said to him, for the first time in her life, I hate you. 

                Her mother had been gone since her seventh birthday. And ever since, Rory had approached her father the same way she would if she were barefoot, creeping over shattered glass. Scared of cutting flesh—scared to bleed.

               But she had hated him that day—she had hated him so much it hurt.

               Rory hadn't wanted to go to Vega's Boarding Academy for Ladies. A punishment for her wild, reckless behaviour—skiing on the Black Hole in Vermont, whitewater rafting in the DMZ. Just last week, she had biked down Death Road.

               She would always think it was funny, later—this punishment. 

               She had only ever been imitating her older brother.

               And if she was wild, then he was worse.

               Declan had done too many dangerous things to keep track of. He had been seventeen when their mother left. But not even a year later, he was unrecognizable.

               Rory heard the whispers about him in the castle walls.

               Womanizer. Attention-seeker. Thrill-chaser. 

               She had idolized him—the way he could grab the attention of any woman. The way he laughed so easily, so charming, and with so much life it made people cling to him.

               And the other things—the dangerous stunts and the fifty-foot list of women he had slept with—could be thrown away. He was a prince, and if he had a little bit of fun—as a man should—then it could be excused.

               Now, Rory shook her head. The sprinkle of ash she had laid over the snow looked like a fine dusting of silver-grey. 

               Her locket trembled in her hand. Declan's remains.

               The priest had given them to her—the cremation.

               Declan had wanted the ashes to be spread around the world, in all the places he had been. And if Vancouver was good for one thing, it was this.

               Her brother had once went skydiving here. Landed somewhere among these trees.

               What would he say to her now? If he were alive?

               Don't think about it, Rory told herself. Because he was dead—and for a good reason.

               Shivering, she scraped her fingertips back from the snow and the ashes. Leaning back into her wheelchair.

               The locket was half-empty now. The list was almost done.

               And she missed Declan.