American Queen

“It’s just so impossible to believe. That you—Maxen Colchester—remembered me. Thought about me.”

A noise leaves him, half heavy breath, half incredulous laugh. “We are meeting after all these years,” he says, “and you believe I haven’t been thinking about you?” He takes a step closer, so close that I could lean in and press my lips against his icy blue tie if I wanted. It’s nearly the same color as Embry’s eyes.

“Look up at me, Greer,” the President orders me. I do as he says. It almost hurts to look him full in the face, he’s so perfect, but it hurts more not to look.

“All the words that men use about women—enchanted, charmed, addicted—they don’t even begin to cover what I felt for you and your handful of shattered glass. I thought about you that night, and the next and the next, and when I was deployed to Carpathia, you were all I thought about. I built these fantasies in my mind where I would come home after the war and find you at whatever university you were at. I would kiss you until you were like you were that night at the party, begging me to do whatever I wanted.” His green eyes are dark, stormy, his pupils wide. “Years later when I finally came home, all I wanted was to find you. But things happened…the war started up again and I was promoted and Merlin needed my time and then I met Jenny…” He lets out a breath. “I had just proposed to her the night before I saw you in Chicago.”

Chicago. Also known as the night I met Embry. The night I lost my virginity.

“Ash, you don’t have to—”

“I do,” he cuts me off. “Because I don’t think you believe me. And it makes me a terrible man, wanting you after all this time, through all these years. Because I did want you, even while I was married to Jenny. I sought out your grandfather every chance I could, just to listen to whatever scraps of news he had about you. Whatever academic honor you’d been given, what you decided to major in, whether you wanted to move back to America or stay in England. And late at night, while Jenny slept next to me in bed, I’d replay our kiss over and over again. What it felt like to pin you against the wall. What your voice sounded like in my ear, all breathless and full of wonder, like I’d just given you a gift. And I would hate myself for it, but I couldn’t stop.”

His eyes search mine. “So why did I want to meet you today? Because I haven’t been able to stop wanting to meet you for ten years. Because I want you. I want to kiss you again. I want to learn everything about you, everything about what you love and hate, what you study, what you want for your future.” He reaches up, his thumb brushing against my lower lip. “I want you to be mine.”

I try to hide my shiver. He can’t know, he can’t possibly know, how those words roll through me, punch through my skin and crawl into my veins.

Be mine.

Not let’s date, not be my girlfriend. This would be more than anything that trivial, and Ash knew it.

But the exhilaration is chased by a quick, cruel voice.

Remember the times you’ve been hurt before?

There’s no way this can be true.

This is crazy.

Say no.

Leave.

I shake my head, but his thumb stays against my lip. I fight the urge to bite it or lick it. Instead, I meet his eyes and say firmly, “You don’t know anything about me, other than what I kissed like once. That’s not enough to build on.”

“Does it scare you that I thought about you as much as I did?”

I think for a moment. It doesn’t, actually, especially given how much I thought about him. Much more than thought—I wrote to him. I touched myself to the memory of him.

“No. Just, it’s so unexpected. I had no idea how you felt…”

His thumb sweeps across my lip a final time and then moves to the line of my jaw. “I was at war, Greer. And then I was married. It wasn’t something I could act on.”

I nod. “I get that.” But I don’t say anything else because my mind is racing faster than my pulse, stacking what I know against what I feel.

I now know that Ash has been as preoccupied with me as I was with him—for all these years. So preoccupied he wants to be with me now, and I can’t pretend this doesn’t make me dizzy. Like my blood is carbonated, like my body is fizzing over with feelings. Excitement, lust, relief. But those ten years didn’t just sail by—they left an indelible mark on me. I fell in love with Ash, only to watch him marry another woman. I slept with a different man, only to never hear from him again.

In short, this last decade has been a harsh lesson in guarding my heart, and I have been a very, very apt pupil. I have built walls around my feelings, barriers and bridges and moats, all to protect me from the possibility of getting wounded again.

So how can I honestly be thinking about saying yes to Ash? How can I—cautious, closed-off Greer—concede to being his? What if he hurts me again? What if he’s disappointed in me or falls in love with someone else?

And, the largest question of all, how can I try to date Ash with Embry in the background?

For the first time, Ash looks uncertain. “You’re thinking of reasons to say no, aren’t you?” he asks quietly. “Did that night not mean to you what it meant to me?”

I shake my head vigorously. “No, no. That night meant absolutely everything to me. And that’s why this is a bad idea. Aside from you being the President and having no time or space for some girlfriend, I’m scared that I’ll get hurt. I’m scared that we’ll find that we don’t have anything in common, that our kiss was just a fluke, and even after all that, that it won’t matter because I’ll still fall in love with you. I’ll fall in love with you even as we find out we’re all wrong for each other and I’ll be left broken-hearted over you again—”