~Louis~
I wiped my hands on my silk linen pants and wished yet again that the girl I had spent the night with would just hurry up and leave my room as I grew weary of the clingy, desperate girls who caught my attention at first but then were unable to keep it.
I longed for the days when I could just find someone to spend my time with casually, not wanting everything to be about sex.
The stirring of her waking body jolted me out of bed as I scurried into the bathroom so she would think that I was out of the room already, hoping that the absence of my presence would prompt her to vacate the premises. One could only hope.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror, always wishing there was someone else looking back at me instead of the face I saw on a daily basis-a face full of duty and responsibility when it should have been one of carefree happiness like a normal teenager.
Royal crowned Prince Louis Arthur Windsor, Duke of Edinburgh and Second in line to the throne of the great nation of Britain. I hated the way my name sounded, the pompous annoyance of a mouthful of words, I simply preferred to go by Louis.
I knew that once my grandfather passed away, my father would take the helm and then it would just be a waiting game to see how long he would hold the throne as well.
I would be just as happy if my father held the throne as long as my grandfather did, sixty years and counting and in his old age was still as strong as a mule.
I didn't want to be the face of a nation, I buckled under the pressure of just being the grandson of the leader of this nation.
I wondered briefly how hard I would fall being the actual leader of my country.
I shook my head. I had plenty of time to worry about that, and hopefully starting a new chapter in my life would make it an easier pill to swallow.
I checked my cell phone and cursed under my breath, hoping that girl from earlier was already gone. I was going to be late for my first day at Wilmington Prep, and my father would not be lenient on me after that.
My parents decided to send me to a civilian school, albeit a school with top of the line security and filled with the most rich and elite non royals the country had ever seen.
They were the closest to royalty you could get without being the actual thing, and they acted like it too, always being perceived as if they were better than the royals whose blood ran through the heart of the country.
I was going to despise every second of being at that school, but if it meant getting my father off of my back, I'd do anything the old man said.
And then I thought to the pool of awaiting females waiting for me there and that almost lessened the blow. Until...
"Baby, you in there? Maybe I can join you for a shower?"
I groaned internally, running an exhausted hand across my tanned face and rolled my eyes dramatically. Why did I have to be so nice? Why couldn't I simply be a jerk and throw her out of my room?
Oh right, because I had human decency and wasn't a complete and total jerk-off.
"Yeah, give me a second."
I wondered briefly how hard it would be to escape out of the bathroom window without being seen by the palace guards before swinging the bathroom door to reveal the girl in nothing but her skin. I was definitely going to be late to my first day.
*****
~Malia~
"I can't wait until you graduate and get out of my hair," his gruff voice slurred at me, and I couldn't help but think the exact same thing in agreement.
I didn't dare respond to him, however. The last time I did, I had a shiner for three days afterwards.
Anytime he was that drunk, I just let him be to his own devices. He knew how to destroy himself more than my words ever could, so I just thought of my comebacks in my head and relished the fact that I didn't get hit because of it.
He might have thought that he broke my spirit, but that was the farthest thing from the truth. After all of the death I'd encountered over my short seventeen years of life, I knew that it took more than a few harsh words and a couple of beatings to break a person's spirit, let alone my own.
"What did you say?" he asked me, his dark brown eyes cutting to mine from the recliner that he was sprawled out across.
"Nothing," I responded, keeping my head down and made sure not to make eye contact with him as that only fueled the fire that roared underneath the surface of his cold, dead eyes.
I had tried to fight back the first couple of times it had happened, but it didn't really work out in my favor. I ended up missing an entire week of school nursing my bruises under my clothes and the fat lip I sported for a while.
The dim light from the flickering yellow lamp in the corner outlined his body that was once healthy but was turned into a shadow of what he once was from all of the heavy drinking and garbage that he shoveled down his throat on a daily basis.
He used to be sweet, nice enough to me when he first married my mom three years ago. And then when Daniel died he pulled away from me, probably not sure how to handle my own grief.
And then the Grim Reaper just had to visit me again, taking my mother with him that time. And that was when he really lost it.
He said it was my fault that my boyfriend died overseas in a war that was completely out of my control, he said death followed me and that was how I took my mother away from him.
I yelled at him and told him he was insane, that he needed to get help and was being delusional. How wrong was I to say such things to him, he fed me and gave me a roof over my head and clothes on my back, his 'logic' always seeping into me like black tar goo from the pits of Tartarus.
He didn't mention that he'd stolen all the measly wages I'd made at the diner that I worked at on the weekends and after school every day of the week.
He didn't know I kept my own stash somewhere safe so I could run far, far away from him and this place once and for all.
Living in a small town in a middle state in the US was hard enough, but it was all made even worse when someone went through a tragedy, and then they were the talk of the town.
My 'friends' pulled away from me after my boyfriend died two years prior. They told me I was too emotional and sad for them and that once I 'fixed' myself, then they would be my friends again.
I was only fifteen at the time, and Daniel and I had only been together for nine months after he enlisted and was sent to basic training in the army. I was sad when he left but I never thought that he would have been deployed as quickly as he was.
He was eighteen and my mom wasn't necessarily happy that I was dating an older guy but she understood the appeal.
Six foot one, light blonde hair and hazel eyes, he was the definition of a heartthrob in the small little town of Hayes, Arkansas, and every girl in my grade was jealous of me.
That is, until his family was notified that he had passed away. I didn't get anything, no explanation for what happened, just an invitation to his funeral. That was what hurt the most.
His family and I were close, and they didn't even have the decency to call me or to tell me themselves that he had passed away. Just an invite to my dead boyfriend's funeral in the mail and I was left to rot in my own grief.
His loss was something unfathomable at my age, and I cried myself to sleep every night but day after day it got easier, the weight of his loss pulling me down less and less as the days passed.
But then my mom was hit by a drunk driver and my whole world shattered with one tiny phone call.
It was like my emotions were on hyper drive, and I couldn't shut them off. The pain was unbearable. My mom, the woman who molded me into the woman that she always wanted me to be, was gone. The woman who tucked me in when I had a nightmare, who held me as I cried over Daniel night after night after night, was never coming back.
After that, there was no fixing my heart, it was shattered and cracked far too many times to be put back together again, but I rather liked it that way.
If I was 'fixed' then where was the proof that they had ever truly been real in the first place? All I had was the pain of their loss to keep me going and it was all I could do to remember them each and every day in their own way.
"Are you listening to me girl?!" he demanded of me in his gruff southern accent and I could smell the whiskey on his breath even from across the tiny living room.
He'd spiraled, that was for sure.
Robert Carmichael, once prominent in the oil industry in Texas, reduced to whiskey and gambling debts in our small single wide mobile home out in the deep south, living off of the wages of his step daughter instead of working himself.
"I'm sorry," I simply said, not bothering to explain myself.
He sharply stood up from the wool tartan patterned recliner and set down his bottle of Wild Turkey, obviously about to punish me for not listening.
He didn't even bother hitting me this time, just grabbed me up by my hair and threw me down onto the ground, the familiar stinging pain of my scalp comforting me. I remembered it, savored it, catalogued the feeling so I didn't panic as it was happening.
I relished the pain. Call me a sadist or a masochist, but it was the way I survived his torture.
And then the phone rang.
"We're not finished," he croaked out sullenly and one look into his flaming gaze and I believed him.
"What?" I heard him answer the phone gruffly.
"Ain't no girl live here," he shouted into the phone and I wondered who it could be. Suddenly I saw a flash of fear cross his features and then the phone was on the ground.
He bolted across the room faster than I'd ever seen him move in my entire life.
He ran into my room and I followed behind him. I watched as he flipped up my mattress and found the stash of my cash that I'd hidden from him. He'd known all along where it was.
I felt tears creeping up in my vision, scared of what was happening. Was it someone calling to collect on his gambling debts and they'd threatened me? They wouldn't get anywhere by doing that, I was only a cash cow to him, nothing worth saving in his eyes.
"Where's the rest of it?" he demanded and I cowered back from his predatory stance.
"What? The rest of the money? That was all I had!" I shouted at him, not caring that he might punish me for doing so.
"You lying bitch!" he screeched, back handing me across my face causing me to collapse on the floor in agony.
"You'll pay for this!"
He was suddenly hovering over me, his foot kicking my side over and over again until I was numb. His foot got a few good kicks into my face, my stomach. I would surely have internal bleeding and damage, if it didn't kill me.
I saw the blood on the ground but I didn't register whose blood it really was. Who else would be bleeding at that moment, certainly not him.
Unless the cacophony of shots ringing out in the air had something to do with it. It was a lot of blood. What was happening?
"Don't worry, you're safe now, don't worry," I heard a soothing voice say out into the night air.
I was confused as to who was talking, it didn't sound like Robert's voice, no, his was always gruff or annoyed or angry, not ever soothing.
I was about to ask what was going on before a calming light appeared in front of my eyes, white and bright, and I started to fade into it, the pain that came with my life going with it.