A Royal Christmas Cruise (Stonewall Investigations Miami 2.50)

“I need to have a chat with my friend,” I said, walking to the elevator bay. “Keep your eyes peeled, Luna.”

“I will, Nick.”

We got onto the elevator, falling silent when someone else joined us, the woman smelling strongly of coconut sunblock. She smiled pleasantly as the glass elevator took us down. I mustered up a smile back even though my insides all felt like they’d been replaced with jelly.

How the hell was I going to tell Shiro this? That I was actually the closeted prince of Spain and I now needed his help to find out who was sneaking pictures of me on this ship? His mind was going to blow. Would he be upset? Would he be scared? After the immense amount of fun I’d been having with him, I certainly didn’t want to scare him away.

Fucking hell.

If I were out and proud, I wouldn’t have to worry about scaring Shiro away. I could have been truthful with him from the start. I could have prevented this entire mess by just living my truth instead of living this fucked-up lie.

The elevator opened on Shiro’s floor. I stepped out, Luna following. She stayed a close distance behind me but hung back even farther when I reached Shiro’s door. She gave me a thumbs-up when I threw a glance her way. I had a feeling that, out of everyone on this planet, Luna had known me better than most. In her eyes, I saw recognition. She knew the photo wasn’t an accident or I wouldn’t have been freaking out so much about it. I had a feeling she understood the storm that raged inside me on a daily basis. She tipped her straw hat back down on her face, concealing her eyes just as Shiro’s door opened.

“We’ve got to talk,” I said.

“Oh, trust me, I know.”

“You… know?”

“I know.”

I drew my brows together. “You know… what?”

“Get inside,” Shiro said, grabbing my wrist and pulling me into his room. He shut the door, his back falling against it. He looked like the definition of a snack, wearing black shorts that ended midthigh, hugging his muscular legs. His shirt was a black V-neck with pink writing scrawled over the chest saying the date and city of the Ariana Grande concert he’d bought the shirt at.

“Mind the mess,” Shiro said, motioning at the suitcase sitting on his bathroom floor, clothes spilling out of it. “I don’t have a royal cleaning crew.”

“So… you do know.”

“That you’re a freaking prince? Yes, I figured that out last night.”

“How?”

Shiro pulled out his phone and showed me the tweet he had stumbled on.

“And then I did some googling. It wasn’t that hard.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.” Shiro grabbed his phone back and walked to his bed. He sat on the edge of it, looking at me as if I were a Rubik’s cube he was trying to solve. His eyes raked over me, looking me up and down and up again. “I can’t believe it.” He said it to himself, but I still heard.

“Shy…”

“The prince of Spain.”

“Please, just call me Nick.”

“Okay.” He slanted his lips into a smirk. “Prince Nick.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just Nick.”

“I’ll think about it.”

I went over to the table that was set against the light brown wall. His balcony curtains had been drawn open, giving us a view of the sun glittering off the blue waters. I took a seat, facing him. “I would have said something before you found out this way.”

“Really?” Shiro asked. His walls were going up. I could tell in the way he sat, his legs angled away from me, his hands in a tight fist on his lap.

“I swear it. I would have told you, I just needed a little bit more time. This vacation was supposed to give me an escape I’ve been needing. So I’m sorry I wasn’t very forthcoming about my title, I just haven’t been wanting to think about it much.”

“Isn’t that a little hard when, you know, you’re a freaking prince?”

“I’m coming to learn it’s harder than I thought.”

Shiro let out an exasperated breath. “This is crazy.”

“It is.” I latched on to that statement like a bass on a worm-wiggling hook. “It’s crazy how intense our chemistry is. How it’s exploded in a matter of hours. It’s crazy how I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, even with the threat of being outed by some dickhead with a camera phone. For the first time in my life, I’m beginning to think, ‘fuck it.’ And that’s what’s so fucking crazy about all this.”

Shiro looked to me, his liquid-gold eyes catching the sunlight just right, lighting them up as if he had two small stars tucked behind his pupils. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you either.”

“That has to mean something. I’ve never met someone who’s done that to me.”