“I was merely following your lead,” he said, though he noted her preference for being on top. As pleased as he was to have been proclaimed her favorite person, not to mention a sex god, he remained dissatisfied with her explanation about the nature of their relationship. Were they friends with benefits, or were they, as she’d said, “more”? But he wasn’t going to press her. He didn’t want her to overthink things and end up calling it—whatever “it” was—off. So, with more difficulty than he would have expected, he changed the subject. “I could go across the hall to my brother’s room. He’ll have condoms.” He would, right? Max frowned. Hopefully Seb was using condoms.

“It’s hard to imagine your brother having sex. He’s so buttoned up.”

“It’s even harder to imagine him having sex with Torkel Renner.” Max still had not fully recovered from his shock.

“Who’s Torkel Renner?”

“The head of palace security.”

“The big beefy guy with the mirrored sunglasses?”

“That’s him.”

She whistled. “Well, he seems like he’s very good at his job. I’m sure he’s extremely competent in . . . other areas as well.”

“The thing is, I’m fairly certain they’re in love.” It was still so astonishing. But he supposed sometimes these things happened with no warning. He glanced over at Dani.

“Do you think Sebastien will come out?”

He thought back to Seb’s statement about not wanting to hide anymore. “I think he will.”

“How is that going to go over?”

“I don’t know.” He cast his mind back to his confrontation with his mother, which, remarkably, had been only an hour ago. “But I do know that things are changing around here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Have you ever thought about how in English, the word abandon has two vastly different meanings? To abandon someone is to leave them, but to do something with abandon is to really throw yourself into it?”

“Are they really all that different? If you’re doing something with abandon, it means you don’t care about the consequences. You’re leaving behind the consequences, in a way.”

“Hmm.” It was odd. If Max thought objectively about everything that was swirling around in his mind—the fact that he’d had sex with Dani, first and foremost, but also Seb and Torkel, Seb’s potential coming out, the idea of changing how he related to his parents, it should have made him uncomfortable. Hell, it should have made him panic.