Chasing His Kickass Luna Back Chapter 377

Karl

The cool evening breeze hits my face as I lean over the stone balcony looking out at the gardens below.

I’m still in utter shock. To think that all of this might be mine someday is… a lot to process.

Suddenly, as I’m leaning here, I hear the sound of footsteps approaching. I look up to see Reginald—my father—walking toward me with two cigars in his hand.

“Sorry,” he says, stopping in his tracks. “If you wanted to be alone, I—”

“It’s alright.” I move to the side a little to give him room. “It’s nice out.”

“Sure is.” Reginald sidles up next to me and leans on the railing. He holds one of the cigars out for me, and I take it. As he lights it for me, puffs of smoke billow out around me.

We smoke in silence for a couple of minutes, just listening to the distant sounds of the ocean, before Reginald turns his head to look at me. “I hope that my letter this morning wasn’t too imposing,” he says. “I just figured that Abby might want to see that space.”

I shake my head and flick the ash off of the end of my cigar. “Not at all. She actually loved it.”

“Really?” Reginald cocks his head to the side. “I’m glad. Does that mean—”

“We’re not sure yet,” I interrupt, maybe a little more abruptly than I mean to. I quickly clear my throat and straighten, composing myself. “I mean, I think we’ll need a little more time. We’ve both got responsibilities back home.”

Reginald is silent for a moment, regarding me in the dim light that’s spilling out from the room inside, before he nods. “I understand.”

There’s another quiet moment between us as we continue to smoke our cigars. My mind is anything but silent, though, and I have countless burning thoughts swirling around. Finally, I draw in a sharp breath and turn to face him.

“I understand why you needed to send me away,” I find myself saying. “But I fail to understand why a political marriage with your second wife is important enough to send your toddler off for eighteen years. Why did you have to stay with her?”

Reginald stares at me for a moment, unblinking. During that moment, I think he might scold me for speaking in such a way to a king.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he sighs and exhales a puff of cigar smoke as he leans over the railing.

“I’m a coward, Karl,” he murmurs. “I may be a king, but my family—our family—has lived in the lap of luxury for generations. And I… I figured it would be easier to stay with Julia, to keep our political connections secure, than to stand up to her and keep my son around.”

I sigh and look away. His words should make me angry, but they don’t. I can’t blame him. Maybe I’ve been a coward in a lot of ways, too.

“I’ll be honest,” he continues. “It wasn’t just Julia that made me decide to send you away.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.” Reginald lets out a heavy sigh and hangs his head slightly. “Every time I looked at you—even now—all I saw was your mother. I couldn’t bear it. And I suppose, along with that, I thought that you would be better off not growing up here.”

“Better off?” I ask. “How could I possibly have been better off growing up believing my family had abandoned me on a doorstep?”

“Because,” Reginald says, straightening, “you would have led a childhood of constant training here. Combat, etiquette, politics… I didn’t want that for my son. Alessandra didn’t want that for you, either.”

I don’t know what to say. Reginald’s words make sense, but they seem far away to me right now. I can’t decide whether to be angry or understanding. And I know I said I would forgive him, and I intend on it, but it feels like a distant waypoint right now.

“Listen,” Reginald says, turning to me suddenly. “I won’t force you to stay here, to become king. If you want to continue your life the way it is, then I will support you in that endeavor. Hell, if you want to part ways and pretend we never met, then I will support you in that as well.”

I swallow. “I just want to do what’s best for my mate,” I find myself murmuring. “And our child.”

At the mention of mine and Abby’s child, I can’t help but notice how Reginald’s eyes seem to soften a bit. Maybe he sees a bit of himself in us. Maybe he wants to make things right for our next generation.

“That’s all I could ever ask for,” he says softly. “Is for you, your wife and your child to be—”

“She’s not my wife,” I blurt out without really meaning to.

Reginald furrows his brow. “Pardon?” he asks. “I thought you said you had an arranged marriage.”

I swallow and shake my head, running a hand through my hair as I let out a wry laugh. “It’s… It’s a long story,” I admit. “We were married once, but got divorced. Divorced because…”

My voice trails off, my eyes widening. I realize it now; how I was a coward once, too. How I ended a beautiful relationship with the woman I loved because of my own cowardly insecurities.

I don’t want to let that happen ever again.

Slowly, I pull it out of my pocket—where it’s been nestled right beside my pocket watch this whole time.

The ring.

I open the box and hold it up to the light, watching as the moon reflects off of the diamond’s surface. “I want to propose to her again,” I say softly. “But I have to admit, I’m not sure how.”

Reginald holds out his hand. “May I?” he asks. I nod, and he gingerly plucks it out of the box, turning it this way and that in the moonlight. “It’s a beautiful ring,” he says. “She’ll love it.”

“I think she will.” I take the ring back and put it back in the box, then slip the box back into my pocket. “But it’s a bit awkward, asking someone to marry you for the second time around.”

Reginald chuckles. “You want to hear a story?”

I nod. Reginald continues, “Even though my marriage to Alessandra was arranged, we still went through the motions. I still had a formal proposal planned. And I… I messed up.”

“How so?”

“Well,” he says, “I had a whole night planned. Dinner, a ride along the beach, wine, the works—followed by a string quartet beneath the moonlight. That was the night that I found out about your mother’s penchant for riding horses at breakneck speeds.”

I can’t help but laugh. “What happened?”

“Well, she was a better rider than I was,” he says with a chuckle of his own. “She kicked that black horse of hers and took off along the beach. I had been planning on nothing more than a pleasant walk, and so I wasn’t prepared. My horse took off after hers, and I fell.”

“You fell?” I ask, still laughing. “You, the king, fell?”

Reginald smirks, his face reddening slightly. “I did. She reined her horse back around, and the next thing I knew, I was looking up at her as she stood over me. She had the ring in her hand. It had slipped out of my pocket during the fall.”

“When I told her about all of my grand plans,” he continues, “she rolled her eyes and just put the ring on her finger. She said that it was pointless, seeing as how we were already engaged to be wed thanks to our parents. But I saw the way her cheeks turned red.”

“So she liked the ring, I take it?” I ask.

Reginald nods. “She never admitted it, but I know she loved it. And neither of us ever grew tired of telling the story.”

After he finishes, we fall into another long silence. I slip my hand into my pocket as we stand there, the last of our cigars turning into red embers in the dim light, and thumb the velvet box containing the ring. Finally, I turn to my father and nod at him.

“I think I’d like to propose to her tonight,” I say quietly. “But, dad… I don’t know how.”

Reginald grins. “I’ll help you. And this time, don’t mess up; for the both of us.”