Waiting for Prince Harry (21 page)

But as I see the panicked look in his eyes, I can’t do that to the man I love. I can’t worry him further. Because in spite of how I feel, I know I can talk to him later about it. At a better time.

“I’m okay,” I say, putting on a brave face. Then I smile at him and utter the words I mean with all my heart. “And I’m not going anywhere either.”

And as Harrison squeezes my hand in his and then turns the engine on, I know one thing. None of this—the way my family acted, the way the public treated us, the way social media is probably lit up with pictures of Harrison drinking a beer while he was holding my hand—will ever matter to who we are as a couple.

We’re good here
, I think.
And we always will be
.

Chapter 26

The Pop Quiz Question:

Things are going along swimmingly with your man. He’s met your family; his family knows everything about you via the magic of FaceTime. You have met his friends, and you like them and they like you. Where do you see things going from here?

A)  Right now I’m happy. Let’s leave it at that.

B)  It definitely has potential.

C)  This man is my future. I know it with every fiber of my being. And nothing could ever change that . . .

Things couldn’t be more perfect.

It is already near the end of August. It’s Friday night, and I’m sketching in my sewing studio. Harrison has just run out to pick up salmon to grill for dinner, and I’m working on new apron designs while I wait for him to come home.

Home
. I think of how drastically my life has changed in a month. Because this guesthouse practically is my home now.

I’m over here more than I’m in Uptown. And we have developed our own routine, too. Harrison goes and trains for hockey in the mornings and then works on the house in the afternoons. I go to work, hit my yoga or cardio dance class at the gym, and come home to my Prince Harry.

We find that we like being at home more than anywhere else. I’m a homebody anyway, and Harrison really is at heart, too. Of course we have been out—we have been to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Perot Museum; to the movies, to restaurants where we can book the chef’s table or reserve seating in the back for privacy.

We had a romantic dinner at Reunion Tower, at Wolfgang Puck’s Five Sixty, and it was breathtaking. The restaurant was sleek and modern, the views of Dallas just stunning, and the food was some of the best I’ve ever had. We decided that is our place and we will eat there once a month to celebrate us being . . . us.

I’ve met some of his teammates and their wives/girlfriends, too, at a cookout at a fellow player’s house. Everyone was very nice, which eased my mind a lot. Of course, all the players’ girlfriends are really gorgeous, and that’s intimidating for sure. But they all welcomed me and that was good. And, Harrison would look at me from across the patio in that way he has, and I know I was the only woman he had eyes for. It’s the way he always looks at me. And he always will.

My family is getting more used to Harrison Flynn the person—not the superstar athlete—and even Brandon is starting to come around, just like I suspected.

The house renovations are coming along brilliantly. We moved forward with the interior designer to create a master suite in calming hues of gray. First, we used a gray silk covering for the walls, providing a rich texture. Then we installed a muted silver-color carpet on the floor.

I made a tufted, padded headboard. We scoured antique stores on the weekends and found a gorgeous chandelier as a focal point of the room. Harrison even made the nightstands and dresser out of dark-stained wood then we found cool vintage crystal knobs to install on them. The designer located a great pair of cream lounge chairs and a large, round leather ottoman in gray to use as a table between the chairs. In essence, we created a chic bedroom with an Old Hollywood vibe to it.

Next, I found an amazing silver cream-colored fabric for the duvet and pillow shams and I sewed those in the studio. I also made stunning long curtains in gray for the windows, and completed the look with cream-colored Roman shades for added privacy.

I pause for a moment. I still feel like the next-door neighbor spies on us. Because whenever we are grilling or in the pool, those lights always come on. Sometimes I even notice it when we are in the guesthouse, too. Harrison assures me it’s just a nosy neighbor and that’s all, but it’s still unsettling to feel watched. But since it doesn’t seem to bother Harrison—who is used to being watched all the time—I don’t mention it. I don’t want him to worry about me.

Just then the door opens and Harrison walks in with a Central Market shopping bag.

“Hi, Gorgeous,” Harrison says, coming over to me and looking over my shoulder. “How are the designs coming?”

“Very well,” I say happily. “I’m so inspired in this studio to sketch and sew.”

Harrison leans down and brushes his lips on the top of my head. “That’s my girl. You are going to be ready for Etsy very soon.”

I fidget on my stool. “Maybe,” I say cautiously, “a better time might be when the house is finished.”

Harrison nods and moves to the kitchen. “How was work today?”

I get up from the studio table and follow him. I lean against the kitchen counter and watch him unload the bag. “We got our heavy coats in, and boots, and I’m putting together an amazing display in the front of the store with them.” Then I sigh. “And there is this gorgeous pink Prada cross body bag that I’m in love with. It’s the perfect pink, just
perfect
, and it adds a vivid pop of color against black clothing.”

Harrison grins at me. “Well, since you have not cashed one single check I’ve given you, I’ll make that Prada purse happen.”

“Oh no! No, no, no!” I cry, putting my hand out. “Don’t do that. You know I’m here not for a check, but because I love working with you and being with you.”

“That wasn’t the arrangement,” Harrison says good-naturedly as he puts the salmon on the countertop. “Besides, since I’m your boyfriend, I’m allowed to buy you a gift.”

I’m about to argue when his iPhone rings. Harrison digs it out of his shorts pocket and glances at it. “It’s Dan. This is about the labor meetings,” Harrison says, referring to the Dallas Demon who is the team union representative. “Hello?”

I wind a strand of hair around my finger, watching as Harrison talks to Dan.

“. . . that’s awesome! Fucking awesome! What are the details? . . . Yeah . . . Right . . . Okay . . . So when is training camp? . . . Okay . . . All right, talk to you later.”

Harrison puts his phone down and stares at me. “The dispute has been resolved. There won’t be a lockout. We’re on!”

I see the look of relief that is on Harrison’s gorgeous face. His biggest nightmare—of having a life without hockey—has been avoided for now.

But I know it’s an issue he’ll eventually have to deal with.

Harrison lets out an excited yell and picks me up, swinging me around. “Did you hear that, Kylie? I’m
back
. Back on the ice!”

I hear the joy in his voice, nothing but pure elation, and I laugh with him. “I’m so happy for you. And I can’t
wait
to see you play.”

Harrison puts me down and cups my face in his hands. “I can’t wait for that either. But we do have a dilemma to face now.”

“What?” I ask, resting my hands on his chest.

“Training camp starts September 15. So we have to work really hard to finish the main house before I leave.”

I juggle the tray of ridiculous Starbucks orders as I walk to Boutique Dallas on this hot September day. I grimace. Harrison is with the rest of the Dallas Demons, constructing a playground for underprivileged children this morning, and I know they must be trying to get everything done before the heat is unbearable.

And then, within two days, he’ll be leaving for training camp in Vail.

I can’t believe how much we have accomplished with the house in the past few weeks. Appliances are being moved into the kitchen this week, and the dream culled from my folders will be complete. So will the rest of the house—freshly painted, new fixtures, new floors and tiles . . . I swear I’ve never worked so hard in all my life.

Nor have I enjoyed anything more, or had such a sense of ownership and accomplishment as I do now.

I enter the store, and I see Mona and Laurel at the front counter, staring down at Laurel’s iPad. They look up and see me, and both of them have odd expressions on their faces.

I furrow my brow. Okay, why are they looking at me like that?

“Kylie, I need to talk to you,” Laurel says urgently.

“Okay,” I say, concerned. “Is something wrong?”

Laurel swallows. “You need to be aware of something.”

My heart freezes in my chest. “What’s going on?” The last time people acted like this at work Harrison was missing. Oh, God. Has another accident happened? On the playground? I feel panic sweep through me. “Has something happened to Harrison?”

Mona walks over and takes the tray from my hands. I notice Bradley and Alyssa are watching us, too.

“Kylie,” Laurel says slowly, “I know you have removed yourself from social media.”

I nod. “Yes, I don’t need to see what people are saying about me or Harrison.”

“I think there’s something you do need to see,” Laurel says slowly, picking up her iPad.

My stomach begins to churn. Oh God. She’s about to show me something awful. I can feel it in every fiber of my being.

“Kylie, you know I tweet the things that Harrison has bought from our store,” Laurel says softly. “And I like to see our reach, so sometimes I’ll do a #HarrisonFlynn search to see what random people are saying. And I stumbled on this.”

Laurel turns the iPad toward me. I glance down at the Twitter feed, which has a video of me and Harrison kissing in his swimming pool. A video!

I gasp for air as a wave of nausea washes over me. I stare at the video, in shock. Then I force myself to read the tweet:

Watching #HarrisonFlynn make out with his girlfriend. Again. #Exhibitionists.

“Oh my God!” I cry, tears of humiliation filling my eyes. “His neighbor . . . His neighbor has been
recording
us?”

I turn to my coworkers, who all look back at me with nothing but pity in their eyes.

Then I realize we have been in that house a month and a half now.

“How . . . how many of these tweets are there?” I whisper.

Laurel bites her lip, hesitating before answering me.

“You don’t want to know, Kylie,” she says quietly. “You don’t want to know.”

Chapter 27

The Pop Quiz Question:
You and your man are about to face your first true crisis together. How do you cope?

A) It’s hard to face a crisis when you are nothing more than hookup buddies.

B) I see it as a test of how we are compatible . . . or not.

C) Of course we’ll cope. Love can see us through anything . . .

I run to the restroom and lock the door behind me. I can hear Laurel and Bradley calling my name, but I don’t care. I sling my tote and purse on the floor and scramble to get to the toilet. I kneel down in front of it, grab my hair with a shaking hand to hold it back, and immediately throw up.

Oh God. Oh God. This isn’t happening.
Please let this be a dream. Please
. That video . . . those tweets . . . for the entire world to see . . .

I push myself back and stand up on shaking legs. I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and then splash cold water on my face. I can barely see the mirror through my tears. I’ve never felt so violated and exposed in all my life. My most private moments—my most sacred times—splashed all over social media? It is so horrifying I can barely wrap my head around it.

I collapse against the door, sliding down to the cold tiled floor. I fumble for my phone and call Harrison. I get his voicemail, as I know he’s working outside on the community playground, and the second I hear his voicemail greeting, I burst into tears.

“H . . . Harrison,” I sob after the beep, “. . . the . . . the . . . nei . . . neighbor has b-b-been posting videos of us,” I cry. “Private things. They are all over Twitter!” Now I’m really sobbing and no more words can get out. I end the call and throw the phone back into my bag.

“Kylie!” Alyssa shouts, pounding on the door. “Kylie, please come out. Please. We all want to help you. Please.”

I don’t answer. Nobody can help me. My private life has been splashed all over the Internet. There’s no going back. I’m humiliated and ashamed. I want to curl into a ball and disappear. How can I go out now, with the world having seen God-knows-what?

I bury my face in my hands, my sobs racking my body so hard I can’t breathe.

Alyssa tries a few more times, then Bradley speaks to me, but I don’t answer either of them. Finally they give up and leave me alone.

I sob until I can’t cry anymore. I get up, grab some Kleenex, blow my nose and toss the crumpled paper into the trash.

I know I can no longer live in ignorance of what’s going on social media sites. Harrison fought me every step of the way on this, overprotecting me, and look what happened. My reputation has been destroyed, and this is just one tiny fraction of it.

So with a shaking hand, I fish out my iPad and log on to the Internet.

“Kylie!” I hear Harrison pound his hand against my apartment door. “Kylie!”

Gretchen leaves my side to go let Harrison in. I’ve been curled up in a ball on the sofa ever since Gretchen came and brought me home from Boutique Dallas. Harrison has been calling, then Brandon, leaving me message after message that they are getting this all sorted out and the neighbor taken care of.

But I couldn’t talk to anybody.

Not after what I have read about myself today.

So Gretchen called both of them, relaying updates, and trying her best to make me believe that this was not the end of the world, people will barely remember it. I’m not famous so this, too, shall pass.

If only I could believe that.

As soon as the door is opened, Harrison sprints to my side.

I push myself up to a sitting position, and Harrison immediately takes me into his strong arms, holding me tighter than he ever has before.

“I’m so sorry, Kylie,” Harrison murmurs, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m so, so sorry. I’m taking care of everything. I
promise
you I am.”

I push myself away from him. “How can you?” I blurt out. “How can you fix this? My privacy has been violated in social media. You can’t fix this, you can’t!”

“Um, I’m going out,” Gretchen says quietly, picking up her purse. Then she quickly leaves the apartment, shutting the door behind her.

I see nothing but panic on Harrison’s face.

“Kylie,” Harrison says, his voice taking on a desperate edge as he puts his hands on my face, “I’ve been working with Brandon and the police. It was the neighbor’s seventeen-year-old daughter. She was doing this because it made her feel important, to have info others didn’t have and get followers by tweeting about me. Everything has been removed. It’s all gone. And Brandon made it very clear what would happen if anything remotely close to a mention of my name comes about again. She apologized profusely, and her parents are mortified. Trust me, she won’t be spying on us ever again.”

Suddenly two months of frustration and anger about being in the spotlight come raging to the surface. And for once in my life, I can’t physically hold it in.

I leap off the couch and whirl around to face him.

“Do you think she’s the only one?” I scream, tears streaming down my face. “I went online, Harrison. Do you know what people are
saying
about me? Do you have any idea? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m one of the lowest-ranked girlfriends on a ‘Rate The Athlete’s Girlfriend’ site. I got a C because my boobs are too small. Do you have any idea how this feels? Do you? I feel like I’ll never, ever, be good enough for you!”

Harrison’s eyes are wide. He looks as though I have hauled off and slapped him across the face.

“You . . . you went on the Internet?” he asks quietly.

“Of course I did!” I scream at him. “You’ve tried to protect me, but you can’t. You can’t! And the Flynnbabes think I’m not worthy of you, by the way. On the Rank the Girlfriend board they’re amazed because your previous girlfriends are way hotter than I am. And the most painful one—that you’re ready to settle down so that is why you have gone with someone as boring as me.”

Harrison turns away from me for a second. Then he looks back at me, a pleading expression in his eyes.

“This,” he says slowly, “is exactly why I told you to stay away from it. Because of utter
bullshit
written by people hiding behind their fucking keyboards.” Harrison closes the gap between us, putting his hands on my arms. “None of that is true. And none of it matters, Kylie. None of it.”

“It does!” I cry, jerking away from him. “Do you know how
violated
I feel right now? Do you know how badly I hate that if we go out women are asking you to sign their chests? That I feel uncomfortable with the paparazzi stalking me at work and shoving cameras in my face? It’s horrible, and I
hate
it!”

Harrison stands very still, almost as if the wind has gone out of him. He exhales, absorbing my words as if he was absorbing a punch. “So . . . how long have you been feeling this way, Kylie? How long have you been lying to me?”

“I didn’t lie,” I sob. “I never wanted to bother you with it. I always thought I’d bring it up later, when—”

“Bullshit!” Harrison yells, his temper exploding. “You were
never
going to tell me how you felt, even though I fucking
begged
you to! You just didn’t want to deal with an uncomfortable conversation!”

“What? No, I just didn’t want to upset you—”

“Not true,” Harrison interrupts angrily. “You run from confrontation. You have your whole life. You ran from the Parsons fight with your parents. You run from Mona and Laurel at work. And now you just ran from me. That’s why you turn to the future. That’s why every plan in your folder, every uncomfortable thing you face, you simply shove in a drawer and say, ‘Later!’ Either because you’re afraid of standing up for yourself or afraid you’re going to fail. Well, we are dealing with this
right now
. I live in the now. And if you’re going to be with me, you have to as well.”

“What about you, Harrison?” I cry angrily. “You’re so afraid of the future that you can only deal with the now!”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” I challenge. “You’re terrified about your life after hockey. That’s why this labor issue freaked you out. You’re afraid of taking steps for your post-hockey life. You could go to college. But you’re afraid to.”

“Not true,” Harrison says, his voice shaking.

“It is,” I cry, the tears continuing to fall. “You’re
brilliant
. You could easily go to college and become a psychologist. Or you could be a life coach for young athletes. But you’re too scared to deal with your future to even see it.”

An awful silence falls between us. I feel nothing but tension and hurt and I don’t know where we even go from here.

“I think,” Harrison finally says, his voice shaking, “you need to decide if you want to be with me, Kylie.”

I gasp aloud. “W-what?”

“You need to decide if you want to be with me, and all the crap that comes along with being with me. That I’ll never have a college degree. That I’ll be photographed and approached for autographs when we go out. And you’ll be discussed on Twitter and forums because of me. Personally, I don’t give a fuck about what anyone says about me online, Kylie. You just need to decide if you can do the same.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that I don’t want to be with you?” I cry, incredulous.

“Yes, I am,” Harrison says. “I chose you, Kylie. You, just the way you are. But if you can’t believe that, I don’t know how we have a future.”

“A
future
? Maybe you need to think carefully about that word,” I say, my words barely coming out over the lump in my throat. “Because how can we have one if you can’t even
face
it? And, Harrison, I do choose you, just the way
you
are. But I can’t help you if you believe having a degree matters to me when it doesn’t. It matters to
you
, Harrison, not me. But you can’t face that, so it is easier to make this my issue when in reality it’s
yours
.”

Harrison draws a sharp breath of air and I know my words have hurt him.

We don’t speak. I ache to throw myself into his arms and just say none of this matters.

But it does.

Harrison clears his throat. “I’ll be in Vail for the next two weeks,” he says softly, so softly I can barely hear him. “We should take that time to decide if we are meant to be together, Kylie.”

His words shatter my heart. I can’t even reply. Tears fall down my cheeks, and I watch as Harrison swallows hard.

“I’ll let you know when I’m back,” he says.

Oh God. He doesn’t even want to
speak
to me for the next two weeks? Is he seriously going to consider if he wants to break up with me? Panic surges through me. I’m about to tell him we just need to take a moment to think, but Harrison turns around and goes out the door, shutting it behind him.