White Girl Problems (23 page)

You have my heart always.

Your Fin

My tears dropped onto the page, smudging the ink, but I knew it was the mature thing to do. I gagged and heaved, but I still rolled the paper and slid the ring over it. I sat on his crisply made bed and leaned my face into his pillow. I took a deep breath of him. I lay there for a minute and placed the letter under his pillow. I didn’t want anyone else to find it. I took one last breath and then got up. The door to his bedroom opened. I stopped, standing next to the post of his bed.

Aiden was standing in the frame of the door with someone, a man I didn’t know. “I know you think you’re happy right now, but she is the wrong choice. You have to think about that. Your father needs you to be there for the country. You have lost a brother and that is sad, but your father has lost a child and the country has lost its future leader. I need your head out of the clouds as of five hours ago.” He slapped Aiden on the arm and walked away. Aiden never spoke. He closed the door and walked to the window. I felt like an ass, but I couldn’t let him know I was there and had just heard that. The words stung, making a ringing sound fill my head.

I held my breath as he looked out the window. He lowered his head and started to cry. Tears washed down my cheeks.

He turned. “Fin!”

I jumped. “I’m sorry. I was trying to leave a note. I thought you were downstairs.”

He rushed at me, scooping me up and carrying me to his bed. He sat on the bed and cradled me like I was a child. He took a deep breath of my hair and sobbed. I crawled out of his lap and pulled him into my arms. I held him until he fell asleep.

I didn’t know what to do but hold him and push away all the bad feelings and sadness.

When he woke up in the morning, I was still awake. I hadn’t slept. He stretched and yawned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

I kissed him, brushing my lips against his. “You can’t be sorry. Your brother died. That’s sad. Anyone would have been upset.”

He shook his head, returning my kiss and then pulling back. “No. I mean I’m sorry you heard that, the lawyer.”

I pushed my lips up into a soft smile and fished the letter out from under the pillow. “I anticipated it.” I pressed the letter into his hand. “And I have to go. I have a car taking Linna and me back to Barcelona today. The driver is probably down there.”

He scowled. “You’re leaving?”

“Your brother died yesterday and you almost died. You have to deal with that. Your family needs you and your country needs you, and your parents don’t need extra people to take care of. Not now.”

He sighed. “When did you become the voice of reason?”

“Hey, I’m eighteen in days. I’m mature and shit.” I kissed his cheek. “Me and you are cool. Just focus on the shit you need to.”

He felt the letter, scowling. He opened it and instantly I could see the change in him. “I gave you my heart. You can’t give it back.”

I smiled, fighting the cracking noise in my hollow chest. “It might not be yours to give away.”

His eyes filled with something not good. It was the same bad juju I had seen in there when he hadn’t been sure he would be able to tell me who he really was. He pressed his lips against mine. “Please don’t make this easy on me. I need you to be the one who fights for us right now.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I have to fight for me.” It was the smartest thing I had ever done and I hated every second of it.

All I want for Christmas is a credit card so I can buy myself everything I want and still have some money left over to go out and show off all my awesome clothes.

Oh, and world peace.

Chapter Eighteen

Two Little Boys

The Christmas tree looked like it was a baby tree compared to the one at Aiden’s, but at least it was just Jess and me there.

“So I dumped him,” she said, looking away from me.

I was excited she hadn’t done it with Aaron. He was a nice guy, but he wasn’t worthy of Jess. She was epic awesome.

“Maybe you guys will get back together?” It was a question. I couldn’t start bitching about him if there was a possibility.

She shook her head. “No. There is no way. I found like a dozen photos of himself that he took. He was sexting half of the senior class, and I don’t even want to talk about the younger girls.”

I shook my head. “Wow. Gross.” I wondered if she knew he had sent me the creepy stuffed animal photos.

“I can’t believe Aiden’s brother died. That’s so heavy.”

I lay down under the nearly empty tree base and nodded. “You know what? It was the saddest thing I’ve ever witnessed, besides my own mother dying. His whole family is crushed and now Aiden is gonna be King Aiden. He’s miserable. That scheming whore Alex is probably trying to rub up against him right now and get him to marry her. She never loved Geoffrey, which is sad. He died never loving someone. His mom planned his marriage. It’s creepy. It’s all creepy. I’m almost glad I’m out of it.”

Her eyes widened. “What? You don’t think he’ll be back?”

I shook my head. “No. He’s got obligations and rules now. It’s about time reality came crashing back in though. Who meets a prince, falls madly in love, and gets a happily ever after love story at seventeen? No one. It’s not realistic.”

She gave me a sad face. “Dude. I don’t know a lot about guys or love, but I know he loves you. He is crazy about you.”

I laughed. “Ya know the funny part is I don’t doubt him or me or our love. I know he loves me and he’s crushed, just like I am. But this is where we are. We’re stuck between a rock and hard place and there is no room for wiggling, as Mae always says.”

She laughed and we both looked at the tree. “I guess we should open our presents. Happy friggin’ Christmas.”

I sighed. It was our first Christmas alone. Sheila had demanded a vacation for being wrongly accused of tormenting Jess and me. The story of Sheila’s evil deed had become that the evil maid recorded Sheila talking because I paid her to and then the maid was the one who trashed Jess’s room. The maid took all the blame and in two years, my dad would swear that was the way the story had happened.

So Jess and I were alone, with no presents from our parents, just from our friends and each other. Dad had given us both a huge lump sum of money, buying our holiday for us.

I fluffed the pillow under my head and closed my eyes. “If I let myself daydream, I think I would wish that he would just come here and we would try to make it work. I left it in his hands and all I can do is hope he will choose me. If he ends up becoming king, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. My Christmas wish would be him just choosing to be twenty and me eighteen and us just seeing what happens.”

She laughed. “So that’s all it took for you to decide to trust a guy and love him and let go of the control?”

I smiled. “I guess so. That’s sort of the problem with meeting Prince Charming. You have to let yourself be open to the possibility of true love. And no matter how much my chest burns or my heart hurts, I have to be proud of the fact I was open to it. It took a lot, but I did it. I let myself be vulnerable and got my heart broken, but I also fell in love.”

“I’m proud of you!” She sniffled. I opened my eyes, barely able to see her through the kaleidoscope my tears were making with the lights from the tree. We both cried and she saw just how vulnerable I really was and just how broken my heart had been.

The problem with Christmas wishes is they only come true in movies.

My Christmas wish never came true, not at Christmas. I ate a TV dinner from Jamie Oliver’s line of frozen food with Linna and Jess. We watched James Bond movies all day. Apparently they run back to back and contain no love stories. It was perfect. Three girls with broken hearts didn’t need anything else.

The day before New Year’s Eve, we took down the tree and made the house look like before. Both of us seemed pretty tired of Christmas.

The doorbell rang as I was pulling down the lights. “Can you get it?”

Jess ran over but called me. “Dude, it’s for you.”

I groaned and left the lights on the couch. I was covered in tinsel and tree bits, thankfully fake tree bits, when I got around the corner. Aiden was standing there with a letter in his hands. I smiled and jumped into his arms. I couldn’t fight it.

He took a long smell of my hair and it made me smile more. “I missed you,” he whispered into my hair.

I nodded. “Me too.” I pulled back. “How are you?”

He shook his head. “I hardly know.” I looked behind him to see Mary. I squealed and ran to her. We hugged; it was different with her. I knew how I felt about her and how I was allowed to feel about her. She squeezed me. Johan was behind her. He smiled wide. I rolled my eyes. “Came to cause havoc in the US, huh?”

He laughed. “I am fulfilling my dream of always wanting to go to Washington.”

I laughed and hugged him. Jess was excited to see Mary, who hugged her and introduced Johan. I turned back and took the letter from Aiden. “What’s this? My Christmas present?”

He laughed. “No. It’s mine.” He took my hand and pulled me up the stairs to my room.

Mary shouted, “Make sure you add the I told you so, Fin. He needs it.”

I looked at Aiden. “What?”

His cheeks flushed. “Three days after his funeral, Alex made it perfectly clear she had always been madly in love with me. She and my mother decided why not just rearrange it and make her my bride too? Like Catherine of Aragon.”

I gasped. “Like the chick on
Tudors
? Dayum. That’s evil. Who does that?”

He sighed. “Royalty, apparently.”

I beamed. “So you’re engaged, then?”

He pushed me on my bed. “You better watch yourself. You’re speaking to the future king here.” I loved it when he mocked it too.

I made a face. “Ooohhh, scary.”

“I would never marry her, or anyone but you.” He laughed and lay on the bed next to me. “Tell me you can forgive me for calling you jealous and petty.”

I smiled and ran my fingers through his recently cut hair. “I can forgive that. It’ll be my Christmas present to you.” I winked, making him laugh. I loved watching him laugh. “But you have to stop saying the word marry or I will run away again.”

“Cross my heart, I will only say it when discussing my sister.” The blue of his eyes held me captive. “I love you, Finley. I know the whole thing between us is awkward right now, but I wanted you to have something back.” He pulled the ring from the letter I had left him. “I know what I want and I will find a way to have it. So I want you to keep this, my heart, until the moment you are ready to be mine in the way I want you to be.” He winked. “See I never said it.”

My face must have expressed the panic in my heart because he laughed again and brushed my hair from my face. “You don’t have to worry. I don’t have any expectations. We will be like any other normal couple our age until we can no longer be a normal couple. Can you grant me that?”

I nodded. “I can. Well done for not saying it. You had a lot of opportunity there.” He slipped the ring on my right hand and I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders.

He kissed me and whispered, “Not that being together isn’t amazing, but there is something I desperately want to give you for Christmas, and I’m not sure if you noticed or not, but my guards have managed to stay outside in the car.” I felt his smile against my lips and laughed.

He pulled off his coat and got up to lock the door. He lay back down beside me and pulled his phone from his pocket. “I am actually going to do a selfless act and ruin the mood I think you’re in. But the reason the guards stayed outside has nothing to do with what your dirty little mind is thinking.” He lifted his phone so we could both see the screen. I had expected we would get naked, but instead, he kissed my cheek. “After much nagging and bothering, I managed to get something from Hattie that I knew you would like.” He kissed again. “She found it at a friend’s house after I made her search high and low, just in case something like this had ever been recorded. This was my intended Christmas present to you.”

He tapped his finger and started a recording.

It was a fuzzy and kinda crappy recording of a living room. I didn’t understand what it was until I heard a voice I knew, a lady I knew. She was talking to a small child. The camera zoomed in and a tear slipped down my cheek. It was her, my mother. The small child on her lap was me. She kissed my cheek, but I sniffled like I had just been crying.

“Did that doggie scare you?” my father asked. It was him who was recording.

I sniffled again, sticking out my little lip. My mother lowered her face to my cheek and wrapped herself around me. She rocked back and forth and sang in a low voice. It was the two little boys’ song. After a few minutes, I stopped sniffling and she smiled and I could see it. She loved me. She smiled at me and kissed my cheek. She was oblivious to the rest of the room, and maybe the camera, but she was smitten with me. I reached up and grabbed at her face and she blew a raspberry on my hand. The video ended.

I looked at him, tears filling my eyes. “Thank you.”

He kissed my cheek. “It comes with a message from Hattie. She doesn’t care if you’re the queen of bloody England next year, she expects you will be in Nova Scotia at least once.”

I sniffled and laughed. “Okay.” I couldn’t believe he had found it. “How did you find it?”

He wiped away my tear. “I figured it was the nineties and everyone had a bloody recorder and there was no way she had gone all that time without being filmed, even once. I never expected to find her with you, not after the way she has been described to me. But Hattie remembered one Christmas you had all spent in the Hamptons at an estate, and she said the whole thing was recorded constantly. It was two years before your mom got sick. She wasn’t positive she would find anything, and then she struck gold in a dusty attic.”

I smiled. “My last memories of her, she was always tired and in bed and then she was asleep. She wouldn’t wake up. I was four when she died so the memories are funky. But I remember her pulling me up onto the bed and showing me the picture book she’d gotten. It was a Barbie book. The next time I came to see her, she wouldn’t wake up. I had brought the book, probably wanting her to read it, but she never woke up again. It was so sad. My dad cried. I never saw him cry again. Not even at her funeral. I didn’t cry either. But I heard her sister saying she was so glad she’d never married and had her life sucked down the drain like my mom did.”