“Hi, Marisa. I’m your dad’s cousin. You remember me from the big boat party last summer? I snuck you a Coke? We promised not to tell your mom?”

She gave him an unimpressed look. Perhaps a lot of people snuck her Coke.

“Look, Marisa, I know this is a big request, but do you think I could have a page from your book there?” he asked, pointing at her coloring book.

She clutched the book closer to her chest and scowled.

“Clarke, what the hell, man?” his cousin muttered.

“Shut up, James,” he snapped.

He saw the little girl’s eyes go wide. “You’re not supposed to say ‘shut up.’ ”

He closed his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it, but I’m in a very big hurry to find someone.”

“Who?”

“My—”

There were no words to describe what Audrey was to him. His world. His everything. His best friend. His love.

“His princess,” Naomi said, stepping forward. “He needs to find his princess.”

The word worked like magic on the little girl, and after only a moment’s hesitation, she messily ripped a page out of the very center of her coloring book, and then, out of the tiny little purse draped over her shoulder, she fished out a handful of crayons. “What color?”

“Surprise me,” he managed on a laugh.

“Pink. Perfect,” he said, accepting the crayon and the torn piece of paper, and kissed the little girl on the cheek.

Then he kissed Naomi’s cheek. “Thank you.”

He reached out and spun Oliver around, setting the coloring book page against his suit jacket for a firm surface to write on.

Oliver, thankfully, stayed still, but Clarke didn’t need long. A few words to get the point across and a messy scrawl of his signature in pink crayon. “Here,” he said, thrusting the paper at Scott’s chest, because he was closest. “Give this to my father.”

Scott looked at the wrinkled, illegible piece of paper. “Does it come with a translator?”

“It’s my letter of resignation,” Clarke said, hearing Naomi’s sharp intake of breath as he said it. “I don’t want the company. Not like I want her.”

Need her.

He turned back to the two women who had made a pact to protect Audrey from Brayden Hayeses.

“Please,” he said quietly. “I’m not like him. I’m not Brayden.”

I was never a Brayden. I want to be the damned prince.

Clarke thought the prolonged silence would kill him, until finally Claire spoke.

“I think I know where she might be.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

SATURDAY, MARCH 28

If Audrey could have managed a smile, she would have. Not a happy smile—she was fresh out of those—but a smile at the cruel little jab of irony.