“Another one,” I mutter, tapping the shot glass against the bar.

The bartender gives me a skeptical look. “I don’t think you need another one, Your Highness.”

Fuck, does everyone in Dubreva know who I am?

I shift slightly, pull out my wallet and slap some bills on the counter, enough Euros to make the bartender hiss in surprise.

“Give. Me. Another. One.” I sway slightly. “Actually, make that a double.”

The bartender takes the cash, and I sit back on my stool, satisfied.

It seems like it takes way too long for the drink to be placed in front of me. I grab it and throw it back. It hurts so good as it burns its way down my throat, settling in my stomach where it warms me from the inside out.

It fills a void. But it doesn’t make me whole.

I’m such a fucking idiot.

I’m pregnant.

It’s yours.

And I just asked her the most insulting, stupidest questions imaginable. It’s like I can’t think straight when I’m around her, and all that comes out is word vomit. Insulting, putrid, word vomit.

Why did I have to ask if she was sure it’s mine? Of course, she wouldn’t be telling me if I didn’t have something to do with it. It takes two to make a baby.

It only takes me to break her heart, though.

“Fuck,” I mutter, leaning forward on the bar.

“Long day, Your Highness?” the bartender asks.

“You have no idea. And stop calling me that. While I’m getting roaring drunk at your bar, I want to be known as Henry.”

“All right,” the bartender says, backing away.

“This doesn’t mean it’s time to cut me off, by the way,” I tell him. The bartender snickers, and I glare at him.

I slide my shot glass between my hands, hearing it grind against the bar. I want to drink myself to oblivion so I can forget Cat. The mother of my unborn child.

The thought chills me to the core. Not in a bad way, but the realization that I’ll have a shitload of responsibilities ahead of me. There will be a little miniature person that I’ll be partly responsible for. And I can’t leave Cat to that.

I keep running through replays of every single interaction with her. She’s a goddess; while she may be small, she makes you look at her. She’s not only beautiful, but she’s also smart and passionate about what she does. You want to get to know her. Laugh with her.

Love her.

I scowl into my shot glass. This isn’t working, me trying to forget her. I see her face when I close my eyes. She’s the vision that’s been helping me get through one of the darkest times in my life.

“Excuse me, are you Henry? Prince Henry?” I hear a voice beside me ask. Her words are slurred from excessive drinking as well, but I’m curious at this point so I turn my eyes to blink at her. She’s…pretty. Not overly gorgeous, but easy on the eyes, with her blond hair flowing down past her breasts and her red lipstick drawing my attention between those and her rack.

A few months ago, I would have taken her home and had a drunken night of forgettable sex without a thought.

She gasps and covers her mouth, giggling at me. “Oh. My. God. It totally is you!”

“Who’s asking?” I drawl, letting the Aussie twang in my accent peek out a bit more. It does the trick and she giggles even louder.

“Bethany,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. I fight to not shy away from her touch. “I’m visiting from the UK.”

Ah, that would explain her accent. I lean against the counter, putting my chin in my hand. “What brings you to my lovely country?”

Her eyes widen and those sensual lips curve upwards. “Just on holiday with some friends.”

I look around. “Where are your friends?”

She pouts. “They went back to the hotel. Said it got too late when we had an early morning excursion the next day.”

“And they left you alone? At night?”

Fuck, what time is it? I pull out my phone and gape at the time. It’s after three in the morning. I’ve been at this bar for hours now. No wonder I feel like shit.

Unlike many places, Dubreva doesn’t have a hard shut-off for bars. It helps keep our streets safer as we don’t have a lot of drunks piling into the streets at the same time. But this is like a casino—I’d lost all sense of time in here.

Bethany sidles up to me, and I’m suddenly very, very conscious of the swell of her breast on my arm, how close she is to my face.

“Well, I’m not completely alone now, am I?” she whispers hotly.

I raise an eyebrow. This is a woman who wouldn’t care if I accidentally said the wrong thing. She would just go home with me and we’d fuck until the morning. And she’d leave and just be a blip on my radar.

I hadn’t been with anyone since before my accident. Since before Cat.

“No, you’re not alone,” I say back, so close, I’m breathing in her air. She smells like apples, cigarettes, and alcohol.

Her hand reaches down and grabs my cock through my trousers, giving me one, long stroke.

She’s definitely ready.

She’s most definitely what I need to get my mind off Cat.

But…

She’s not the mother of my child.

She’s not Cat.

I painfully swallow back the lump in my throat. “I’ve gotta go,” I tell her as I sit back.

She doesn’t get my drift, because she flutters her eyes. “Where do you want to go?” she purrs.

“Somewhere not with you.”

I get up from my stool, grabbing my cane. It’s become just a necessary source of annoyance for me by this point—I can’t walk without it. Bethany’s confused expression goes from my face then rakes down the cane, and she makes a face.

Yeah, it’s not pretty. But it’s my reality.

I slap some more bills on the counter. “I think I am cut off now,” I tell the bartender.

“Have a good rest of your night…Henry,” the bartender calls after me.

I smirk at him and then give a little good-bye wave to Bethany. She looks at me like I’m a lobster installing a new engine in a car, and I don’t care as I limp out of the bar, leaning against my cane with all I have.

I have one destination in mind.

Even though I’ve felt the urge many, many times since I woke up from the accident, I haven’t been able to drink like this due to my painkillers. So that also means that I haven’t tried walking with my bad leg while intoxicated.

But determination spurs me forward, and I take a left outside the bar. It’s a little loose and haphazard, but if I walk down Spiaggia Reale street, I’ll go right up to my destination.

The Palais Dubrevs.

It’s a long walk, and I didn’t realize how bad stumbling with my bad leg would be until I do it the first time. I barely catch myself and I grimace. I’m too drunk for this long of a walk, even with a bum leg.

But I make it.

The doorman looks at me, shocked. It’s a different guy from earlier today, but I give him a lazy salute as I pass him. He shoots out a hand, blocking.

“Y—you can’t go in there, Your Highness,” he stammers, looking at me.

“What?”

“It’s after hours. Only guests and their companions can enter after midnight.” The doorman gives a shrug. “It’s the rules, sire.”

I frown. I have two options: I can either get a hotel room here myself or I can claim that I’m a friend of Cat’s. If she’d even have me. Then again, I could get a room of my own and never find Cat in the 204-room hotel.

So, I take out my phone and scroll down until I see her number from when she input it in my phone while straddling my lap the morning after our night together. Fuck, even thinking about the way she ground against my cock makes me rock hard.

I hit “Send” and I put the phone up to my ear, praying that she doesn’t have her phone on silent.

Please, please, please…

“H—hello?” a bleary voice asks into the speaker.

I almost melt into the ground in relief. “Hey, Cat,” I say, hoping my words aren’t too slurred. “It’s Henry.”

“Henry?” She still sounds half-asleep. “What it is? What time is it?”

At least she hasn’t hung up on me yet.

“I’m at the Palais Dubrevs,” I explain to her. “And I want to…talk.”

“Are you drunk?” she asks, a little more alert now.

“Yeah.” She lets out a short laugh on the other end, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. “Listen, Doorman McDoorman won’t let me inside unless I’m a guest.” The doorman in question looks at me like I’m crazy. “And I’m going to be outside here all night unless you come down and let me in.”

“Henry—”

“Please, Cat.”

There’s a long pause and then she sighs loudly, filling the earpiece with static. “I’ll be down in a bit.”

I triumphantly hang up my phone, giving the doorman a sly look. “She’s coming down for me,” I tell him. “The mother of my child.”

The doorman looks like he doesn’t believe me. Or like he doesn’t care. I don’t care either. I take a seat on a bench outside, as my bad leg is killing me at this point. I have to stick it straight out because it doesn’t seem like it wants to bend.

I sit and wait for what seems like ages.

“Henry, what on Earth?”

I turn at the sound of her voice, and she’s a vision wearing a bathrobe. The fact that she’s so comfortable with herself that she’s able to come outside wearing just a robe makes me feel hot deep inside.

“I want to talk,” I mumble. “Apologize for earlier.”

She shakes her head. “It’s fine, Henry.”

“No, it’s not!” I yell. “It’s not. I just—”

I reach out for her. I want to comfort her, to tell her how badly I fucked up. But in standing, I put my weight on my bad leg. Combined with the alcohol, it’s just too much for my system to take. Blackness edges into my vision and I fall into her, passing out.

Like a pathetic fucking idiot.

* * *

I’m on a plush chaise lounge when I wake up to sunlight streaking across my face. I blink several times, trying to get the harsh light from burning my eyes. Whose fucking idea was it to have the sun?

I try sitting up and I groan loudly.

Hungover. And not only that, my entire body aches.

“You’re awake,” a voice says lightly. One that makes me freeze where I am. I look up to see Cat standing there, this time fully dressed in a striped skirt and a black t-shirt. Much to my disappointment.

She smiles softly at me. “Good morning.”

“Fuck, what happened last night?” I rub my eyes with the palms of my hands, trying to get the burned retina effect out of my vision.

“Well, I don’t know what happened before you showed up on the Palais Dubrevs’s doorstep,” Cat says, sitting on the sofa across from me. “But I do know that you showed up here like a drunk idiot wanting to talk to me.”

I freeze. “Did we talk?”

She gives me a strange look. “No, you passed out. Doorman McDoorman, as you called him, had to cry you up to my room.”

So, she didn’t just leave me out on the street. Something about that makes me feel that maybe she doesn’t consider me a lost cause. I rub the plush couch, and it grounds me here. I’m really in Cat’s room. She cares enough about me to not abandon me.

“Here, drink this,” she says, handing me a Bloody Mary.

“Thanks,” I say, taking a tentative sip. “This is good.”

She grins. “Jessica says the same thing. I think that’s the real reason she wants to hire me again.” She watches as I take another sip. “It’s my dad’s recipe. It’s supposed to help cure any hangover.”

Even now, hearing the D-word makes me shiver. She has a dad. And I’ll soon be a dad.

“What did you want to talk about last night?” she asks softly, and I look at her, silhouetted against the morning sun.

“I wanted to apologize.”

She snorts derisively. “You said that on the doorstep. And that couldn’t wait for a phone call this morning? Or something.”

I shake my head, but immediately regret it. “No.” I comb a hand through my greasy hair, and I hope I don’t look as disgusting as I feel. “Because that’s something that I have to say in person. And I didn’t want you suffering, thinking that I’m an idiot. That you’re carrying the baby of an idiot like me.”

She regards me silently. “Well, you are kind of an idiot.”

I give a short laugh. “You’re always so honest.”

She gives a half-hearted shrug. “I work with truth in the news. I’m blunter than I need to be, sometimes.”

“Don’t ever lose that.”

She shakes her head with a laugh.

I clear my throat. “I went to the bar last night,” I tell her, the words tumbling out of my mouth so quickly, I wonder if I’m still drunk. “I drank until I was nearly cut off. There was this blond there, this sheila named…” I frown. “Actually, I don’t remember her name, but she was so ready to pounce on me. And I was ready, too.”

Cat balks. “Why are you telling me about your one-night stand?” Her voice is full of hurt, and I want to take it away from her.

“Because,” I say softly, looking her in the eyes, “I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t kiss her, didn’t take her home. She wasn’t right. Because she wasn’t you.”

She narrows her eyes, as though waiting for the punchline.

I get up from my spot on the chaise lounge and painfully make my way over towards her. That walk and my tumble really did a number on me, and I can only imagine how pissed off Margo will be at my next physio appointment. I sit next to Cat on the couch and take her hands.

“I went to the bar last night,” I tell her, looking her deep in the eyes as she looks back at me, surprised, “to drink the memory of you away. I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened between us that night. And I think that this baby—having this baby—may be Fate trying to say that we’re meant to be together. In some way.”

She gulps audibly. “How are we meant to be together, when we don’t even know each other?”

“Maybe if I hadn’t fucked up that morning, we would have known each other far better by this point. Would have been more equipped to raise this child together.”

She smirks. “Well, you were the one who messed that up.”

I nod. “And I want to make it up to you. Let me take you to my favorite restaurant. And we should find out what could have happened.”

“What, like a date?”

I find myself grinning. “Yeah.”

She considers this for a long moment, before sighing. “Well, I can’t get drunk again, so you may not get as lucky.”

“I’ll take that as a challenge.”

She laughs lightly, her unabashed grin making her glow.

I think about the life growing inside her, how different this whole thing could have been had we been together all this time. I would have been there with her for the first doctor’s appointment, her excitement when she found out about her pregnancy.

Was she excited to find out that she’s pregnant? Or was her initial reaction fear and denial, like mine?

I can’t handle that thought.

I reach my fingers towards her abdomen. “May I?”

She seems taken aback by it. “There’s not much really there to feel,” she says embarrassedly.

“I know. I just…”

She takes my hand and guides it to her belly and I lay it flat against her stomach, feeling her breaths beneath my palm. True to her word, I don’t feel any kicking or any mound there at all. But somehow, that solidifies it in my head that this is really happening. This is real. That’s my baby in there.

“Hey,” I whisper. “I’m going to be your daddy.”

And if I don’t fuck up again, I could be something more to Cat as well.