“What?”

He throws his arm out, spilling champagne. “Haven’t you seen The Notebook? Or any movie where someone is writing someone love letters and those love letters never seem to reach the person they are intended? This is bullshit.” He leans forward and taps his girl on the shoulder. “You’ve seen The Notebook, yes?”

“Oh I love that movie,” she says excitedly in an incredibly nasal voice.

“It was shit,” Magnus swears, pounding back the rest of his drink and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He points at me with his empty glass. “And this boy over here is trying to re-enact a scene.”

“Awwww,” the girl says, looking at me like I’m a puppy. “That’s so adorable.”

“It’s not fucking adorable,” Magnus grumbles “It’s shit.”

And then he puts his arm around her and starts making out.

I cautiously make eye contact with the other girl, the one Magnus tried to get for me, knowing she’s going to expect the same.

“I’ve seen The Notebook too,” she says proudly.

I just nod, finish my drink and put down my glass, slapping a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got to get going. Give my regards to Prince Suckface. I’ll leave a key in the door for him.”

Then, trailed by my guards, I go out the way we came in and get in the waiting limo. I’ll make sure it comes back for Magnus later.

Until then, I have a flight to book.

Chapter Eighteen

Maggie

There is a vacancy that grows in your heart after someone you love leaves you. When they leave, they take everything with them. All the furnishings, all the artwork, even the flooring, until you are stripped bare. Cold. I am one big empty room that echoes with the loss of him.

At first people indulged me and my heartbreak. After I returned to Tehachapi and after everyone was done losing their mind over Viktor’s gift, the mustang, they put up with my crying and blubbering. Annette and Sam especially consoled me and my grief, letting me talk about him for hours, letting me wonder over and over again if it had been a mistake to go to LA, if it had been a mistake to not follow him to Sweden. Of course I knew I couldn’t go but it doesn’t stop me from wishing things had been different.

People like Pike would tell me that I was crazy for thinking I was in love with him. They still didn’t know he was a prince, everyone just thought he was some handsome, foreign rich dude (except for Callum, who still thinks he is the Swedish Chef). They thought I was infatuated with him because of his money, because of his promises he must have made me. They thought it was just a crush gone wild and that in time I would realize that it wasn’t love at all.

How could you love someone after a week?

It didn’t seem possible.

And yet I knew if I even tried to pretend that I didn’t feel this way, if I tried to ignore the pain in my heart, the depth of my feelings for him, that I would be hurting him in some way.

So I decided to hurt instead.

And eventually, I wasn’t allowed to talk about him anymore. If I opened my mouth about him, they’d switch the subject. Even Sam, Sam who I’ve been there for through so much drama and breakups, even she once told me, “You need to get over him right now. That was never love, it was lust and both suck to lose, but if you don’t forget about him, you never will.”

Everyone thought I would get over it and it would go away.

Everyone thought I should get over, at the very least.

But the more that time went on and the months ticked by, the more I thought about him, ached for him, needed him. The more I realized that this empty room I carried around inside me wasn’t getting filled. I hadn’t even attempted to decorate, there wasn’t any point. Nothing would do except for my prince, except for Viktor.

It wasn’t all a loss though.

We’ve stayed in touch for the most part.

I first heard from him a day after he left, when he arrived in Stockholm.

After that weekend, my body and soul felt like it had been dragged through the mud. I looked like hell too. Whatever sex-filled rosy glow I had turned to the pallor of heartbreak.

That first day back at work I’d slept in a little and rushed to get the kids to school. I took the minivan since driving the mustang felt strange (though it was hella fun to drive), then did what I could to get through the day. It wasn’t my best and I knew it, Juanita pointing out some pillow cases I forgot to change, but I got it done.

It wasn’t until I got home later and was walking past the mustang into the house that I heard ringing from the glove compartment.

Puzzled, I opened it and found an iPhone in there.

A brand new iPhone.

Ringing somehow with a Post-It note attached to it.

The note said Answer Me and my first thought was of Alice in Wonderland when she’s picking up the food and drink. What if I answer it and I’m sucked into the phone, straight to Sweden?

So I answered it.

“Hey,” he’d said and hearing his voice, even though I’d heard it twenty-four hours before, nearly brought me to my knees again. His accent, the warmth and polish of it all. I never realized how used to that voice I had got.

“Hey,” I said back, suddenly overwhelmed with everything all over again. “You’re here. And you’re on a phone that was in your car’s glove box. Did you mean to leave it in there?”

I heard him sigh patiently. “I told you that you needed a new phone.”

“Viktor, I can’t accept a fucking mustang and a new iPhone.”

“And a moose, please don’t forget that moose.”

“I can accept the moose. No one will take him after what you did to him.” I paused, rubbing my palm against my forehead. “I just…why are you doing so many nice things for me?”

“Why?” he asked, sounding both shocked and insulted. “Why would you think? You’re everything to me, Maggie. I feel like I can’t do enough. And, well, selfishly, this way I can talk to you every day. I got you a good calling plan.”

“Isn’t it late right now?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t wait. Is it okay that I called?”

I’d never talked to him on the phone before this, so it was funny how slightly awkward it was, showcasing just how new we were to each other.

But as time went on, keeping in touch became more and more difficult. Those first few days he was back in Stockholm, he was still adjusting to his new life and getting it all together. Not always easy to do when you get back from a long vacation. And because of it, I think he was given a lot more slack by his family and whoever else keeps him in line. We talked often.

Then the phone calls tapered off and the time change and his rigid schedule became more of a big deal, so we started texting. I would text him and it would be eight hours until I got a response and visa versa.

Then there were love letters.

Oh yes, the art of the love letter isn’t dead.

And even though Viktor’s never mentioned the word love, I felt it in his words so elegantly scribbled on paper I could have sworn smell like lavender.

This was my favorite way to communicate. Even though he told me he hand-delivered them to the post box and they never had a return address, so I couldn’t answer him back, I still felt like his words were reaching into my soul. I was seeing a Viktor that I wouldn’t have heard over a phone line, that wasn’t so pithy and quick as he was over text.

In these letters he took his time. He took his time writing them, took his time describing how he felt, took his time with all the details, much in the same way he took his time when we had sex. He was so thorough and in return I felt so wanted. So…loved. True, he never used the term love (though he did use the term älskling, once, which apparently means the same) but I felt it in his every word.

But slowly, as summer turned to fall and then now, as fall turns to winter, the frequency of the letters dropped off and I’ve been too scared to text him and ask why. There’s a distance between us now that seems greater than the distance between here and Sweden.

It makes that cold empty room that much lonelier.

* * *

***

* * *

“So I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on your Swedish Prince,” Annette says to me over her beer.

I look at her in surprise. After LA I confided in her that Viktor wasn’t just a pretty face but the crown prince of Sweden. Though I still haven’t told my family and probably never will, I couldn’t keep it from Annette, and I thought I owed it to her since she took care of everyone while I was gone.

She took it all in her very dry, cynical stride. Which I appreciated. Sometimes a dose of cynicism is needed when your heart is feeling things it shouldn’t.

But since it’s been months since he’s left and I’ve tried my hardest not to talk about him with anyone anymore, I’m not sure why she’s suddenly bringing him up.

Maybe it’s because we’re at the Faultline again. Annette actually moved to Bakersfield a few months ago. Got a good job, a small apartment. Started dating a guy, a dad of three kids, she calls The Dude because he’s like the king of bowling or something. She’s in town today because she met with her lawyers to finalize her divorce and we’re celebrating.

Naturally there’s only one place to do that here.

“Reading?” I question. “Like, history of the royal family?”

“No,” she says. “Like tabloids. Internet gossip sites. Swedish ones. I just use the translate app. I believe everyone thinks he’s having an affair with his butler. Assuming butler is butler in Swedish and doesn’t mean, like, farm animals.”

I frown. “Farm animals?”

She shrugs. “He’s everywhere, honey. The press can’t get enough of him. Makes me understand better why you couldn’t either.”

I really wish she hadn’t brought him up, my plan for the night was to not think of him for one second. It has been a week since we last texted and it was along the lines of “How are you doing?” and “Fine, how are you doing?” and it pains me to feel so much distance, to be reduced to just text on a screen.