“It wasn’t wasted here. Not a drop of it. Love doesn’t go to waste on Queen Skya’s watch.”
Rafe turned his back to the fire and faced Jeremy again. “And you and I, we—?”
Jeremy slowly nodded his head.
“A lot?” Rafe asked.
Jeremy nodded again.
“So my high school girlfriend Cassie in my truck wasn’t my—”
Jeremy shook his head no.
“It was you and it was here.”
Jeremy pointed at himself and then at the bed behind him.
Rafe took all that in. “Okay. Good to know.”
The fireplace gave a satisfying pop. Another wave of déjà vu washed over Rafe as he inhaled the heady scent of the burning logs, like smoked brown sugar. He’d stood here before, smelled this scent before, felt this feeling before, that he was where he wanted to be with the person he wanted to be with and all was right with the world. This world at least.
“You could’ve told me.”
“I should’ve told you,” Jeremy said, “but that’s a very awkward conversation to have with someone who hates you. ‘Oh, by the way, I know you think you despise me, but actually you were once madly in love with me, and we used to fool around in the Star Tower so much that Mira, the court astronomer, had the locks changed.’ ” He clasped his hands behind his head and shrugged. “Here’s another bad memory you’ll find in your book. We broke up. We had no other choice, since you literally forgot you loved me. And, it’s no secret I haven’t been a monk since then, and don’t pretend you were either—”
“Monkish,” Rafe said. Then, “Except when I wasn’t.”
“But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“And what are the facts?”
He slipped his hand under his collar and took out the St. Hubert medal he wore. Rafe’s medal around Jeremy’s neck.
“I have always been in love with you, Rafe.”
Rafe needed a moment to recover his ability to speak. “All this time?”
“All of it,” Jeremy said. “Every minute. Every hour. Every day.”
Rafe didn’t know what to say except, “Why?”
“Why?” Jeremy laughed at that. “Why? Do you want the reasons in alphabetical order or by order of importance? Let’s go with alphabetical, because my top ten is a little shallow.”
“How shallow?”
“Number six is your eyes. Number three is your mouth. Number two, never mind.”
“What’s number one?”
“Because I remember who you are, even if you don’t.”
Rafe looked at him and waited for a punch line that never came.
“You mean that.”
Jeremy nodded, then groaned softly. “God, it was easier going in the Ghost Town than telling you that.” Jeremy looked away from him. “I know we had a nice couple of moments back there, namely when you forced your tongue down my throat along with half an apple. But I’m not asking for anything from you. I don’t expect us to pick up where we left off. You deserved to know everything. Now you know.”
Rafe took a deep breath, and said, “You’re being very fair.”
“I am a knight of Shanandoah. We have a code of honor. I don’t remember all of it, but gallantry in matters of the heart was mentioned once or thrice.”
“Do princes have to be gallant in matters of the heart, or can I just order you to kiss me until I forget who I am again?”
Rafe took perverse pleasure in seeing Jeremy dazed and dumbstruck.
“I suppose…uh,” Jeremy said, then cleared his throat. “I suppose if I don’t find that objectionable at all, then it wouldn’t be, you know, un-gallant of you. To give your knight such an order, I mean. We do live to serve. Sort of the whole knighthood gig.”
“Consider it an order then.”
Jeremy sat up a little straighter, then put his feet on the floor, his hands on the chair arms, and pushed himself to his feet. He came to stand by Rafe in front of the fire.
Rafe laid his palm over Jeremy’s heart. It pounded against his hand nearly as hard as his own heart pounded inside his chest.
“Might be fun to fall in love with you again,” Rafe said. “I don’t remember the first time it happened, so who knows…maybe it’ll feel like it’s the first time.”
“Two first times? Now you’re being greedy.” Jeremy leaned close just as the sun sank behind the mountains and the night fell like a black curtain over the kingdom of Shanandoah. He whispered into Rafe’s ear, “But I like the way you think.”
And then Sir Jeremy proceeded—very gallantly, of course—to make Prince Rafe forget his name.
