I stopped ranting long enough to catch my breath. Why hadn’t he stopped me before I turned into a raving lunatic?
“He’s such a good fucking human being, you know?” I added in a rough voice. “So beautiful. His heart is so pure. He deserves so much.”
I looked down and realized I was gripping Grandpa Wilde’s hand.
“You should tell him all those things,” he said lightly.
“I can’t. I can’t be what he needs. What he deserves.”
He gave me a look like I was a simpleton who needed the Cliff Notes version of life’s lessons.
“You already are what he needs and what he deserves, and from that little outburst I can tell you’re what he needs and deserves too. What’s stopping you?”
“Are you kidding?” I gestured around me at the ornate furniture and the palace beyond the lounge doors. “The entire fucking universe and their goddamned expectations. A thousand years of history and tradition.”
Grandpa Wilde’s eyes brightened. “Felix told me the guy he met at Gadleigh shared his love of artichokes.”
I stared at him. Felix hadn’t mentioned his grandfather suffering from dementia, but now I wondered.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m surprised. It would seem from your attitude about Felix that you’d walk right past a good-looking artichoke for fear you’d get pricked.”
He stood up and pushed in his chair. “Imagine if someone somewhere along the line hadn’t had the guts to work their way past the prickly outer bits of one of those things to find that glorious heart in the center. None of the rest of us would have known how good those damned things were. But it took one brave soul to try it first. And after that, people could look at that artichoke pioneer and model their actions. ‘If they can do it, so can I,’ they’d say. And after a while, eating artichokes became so commonplace, no one thought the prickly bits were anything to worry about. Ignore them, or snip them off and move along.”
I tried to get his metaphor straight in my mind. “I get that having Felix is the heart, but what are the prickly bits? There’s nothing remotely prickly about that man.”
He took one last look back at me before walking out of the room.
“Homophobes and the godawful bloodsucking tabloid press. The best part of life is waiting for you, Lio. All you have to do is get past the bullshit and claim it. You might get poked, and the damned things might draw a little blood, but isn’t it worth it? I’ll answer that for you from personal experience. It’s worth every single thorn you come across. When you meet my husband someday, you’ll see. He lights my life on fire, and seeing his beautiful face every morning when I wake up is worth every bit of bullshit I went through to claim him. Good night, son.”
I was left with a lump in my throat the size of Texas, and the realization that fire spreads. Grandpa Wilde’s passion for Doc was enough to set my heart ablaze with thoughts of what it would be like to wake up beside Felix every morning. What it would be like if I was strong enough to fight through the bullshit and claim what was mine?
Chapter 34
Felix
The following day was like one of those silly princess makeover montages from a teen rom-com movie. Hen convinced Arthur to drag me to some kind of high-end tailor’s shop to have me fitted for a tuxedo, and the staff of the place bent over backward to accommodate such a good friend of the prince and princess. For a split second, I wondered what princess they were referring to. Henriette had never seemed princessy, especially when she’d been sobbing and slobbering all over my shirt while we gorged ourselves on caramel popcorn Mari had made us the day the photo came out of Hen and Jon.
Doc and Grandpa came with me to ooh and ahh over the fancy clothes at the custom boutique, but they’d declined the invitation to attend the coronation themselves, claiming they’d rather stay back in their pajamas and eat some of the pastries they’d picked up at a nearby bakery. Otto hadn’t come with us to Monaco, preferring instead to sneak off somewhere in Spain to visit friends on leave from a naval base there.
Once back at the palace, Hen dropped me off in what appeared to be a formal music room for royal etiquette lessons. As soon as I entered, I met Jeanette, the woman teaching us, as well as two fellow students, Eleanor and Sabine. It turned out that Sabine taught art history in Paris and had heard about my presentation at the symposium from a colleague.
“I didn’t know you had a connection to the royal family, Felix! What a lovely surprise. Wait until you see the palace all decorated for the event. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before,” Sabine said after we met one another.