Her Off Limits Prince

CHAPTER FIVE

Blythe looked so lost.

Tor sighed. "Listen, Blythe, my family isn't perfect. My father can be ruthless when it comes to encouraging his sons down the path he wants them to take. He's not the warm-fuzzy father you seem to think he is."

"He cares about all of you. I've seen it."

"Really?" On what did she base such a rose-colored conclusion?

"Yes. He takes an interest in his children's lives." Blythe was so sincere in her belief.

Part of Tor did not want to burst her bubble of belief, but a bigger part needed her to understand that his relationship with his family was not what she so obviously thought it was.

He didn't know why that was important to him, but it was. "My mother died when I was eight."

"I know. I'm sorry," Blythe said, her tone ringing with sincerity.

"I lost my dad the same day."

"What? No. That's not true."

Even after what he'd told her at the wedding, when they were dancing, Blythe maintained this stalwart belief that Tor's father was also his dad. That it was true at one time, he would not deny, but it hadn't been true since his mother's death.

"Yes. It is. He stopped spending time with me, Blythe. Completely. The only time I saw him was during the meals he managed to show up for, and those were not usually family only. I don't think he stopped caring, but it felt like he did."

He used to think differently, sure his father had stopped loving him at all, but as Tor grew older he realized that Prince Canute had dealt with his own loss and grief in a way that didn't leave him available for his youngest son.

Tor didn't know if it was because he had been his mom's favorite, or if the questions and needs of a younger child were just too hard to deal with. Whatever the difference, their father had not cut himself off as completely from Tor's older brothers.

"That…I don't understand."

"I was a child and I didn't have a mom or a dad anymore," Tor spelled out for her.

"That's when Holger stepped in," she said, but then her brows furrowed. "You said your dad changed after the heart attack."

"No, you said he did and I didn't correct you."

"He didn't?" she asked, her expression concerned.

He didn't need her concern, or her pity. He just wanted her to stop feeding him a rose-colored view of his own life that was nothing like the truth.

"No. Holger was still the one who had to approve my choice of university and my major." And anything else to do with Tor's studies, or life.

"You said he pulled away when he became king."

"Naturally. He had concerns of much heavier import. I wasn't his responsibility. After all, he's not my father."

"But your father—"

"Wasn't interested in the role either." Prince Canute had thrown his time and energy into improving his own health and the duties that he had maintained on the diplomatic and business front as a past sovereign.

He didn't put the time into work he once had to preserve his own life, but that didn't mean he put it into his family either.

"Your family loves you." She said it like it was something she had to believe.

He had no desire to make her think otherwise. Only to stop assuming that love played out like the fantasy in her head. "And I love them."

"It doesn't sound like it."