Alex arches a brow. “You sure about that?”

“Listen, maybe if Richards had more time to sow those seeds of doubt, but I don’t think we’re there. Maybe if it were 2016. Maybe if this weren’t an America that already elected a woman to the highest office once. Maybe if I weren’t sitting in a room with the three assholes responsible for electing the first openly gay man to the Senate in US history.” Alex whoops and Luna inclines his head and raises his beer. “But, nah. Is it gonna be a pain in your mom’s ass for the second term? Shit, yeah. But she’ll handle it.”

“Look at you,” Luna says over his beer. “Answer for everything, eh?”

“Listen,” his dad says, “somebody on this damn campaign has to keep their fucking cool while everyone else catastrophizes. Everything’s gonna be fine. I believe that.”

“And what about me?” Alex says. “You think I got a chance in politics after going supernova in every paper in the world?”

“They got you,” Oscar says, shrugging. “It happens. Give it time. Try again.”

Alex laughs, but still, he reaches in and plucks up something deep down in his chest. Something shaped not like Claremont but Diaz—no better, no worse, just different.

* * *

Henry gets his own room in the White House while he’s in. The crown spared him for two nights before he returns to England for his own damage control tour. Once again, they’re lucky to have Catherine back in the game; Alex doubts the queen would have been so generous.

This particularly is what makes it a little funny that Henry’s room—the customary quarters for royal guests—is called the Queen’s Bedroom.

“It’s quite … aggressively pink, innit?” Henry mutters sleepily.

The room is, really, aggressively pink, done up in the Federal style with pink walls and rose-covered rugs and bedding, pink upholstery on everything from the chairs and settee in the sitting area to the canopy on the four-poster bed.

Henry’s agreed to sleep in the room rather than Alex’s “because I respect your mother,” as if every person who had a hand in raising Alex has not read in graphic detail the things they get up to when they share a bed. Alex has no such hang-ups and enjoys Henry’s half-hearted grumblings when he sneaks in from the East Bedroom right down the hall.

They’ve woken up half-naked and warm, tucked in tight while the first autumn chill creeps in under the lacy curtains. Humming low in his chest, Alex presses the length of his body against Henry’s under the blankets, his back to Henry’s chest, the swell of his ass against—

“Argh, hello,” Henry mumbles, his hips hitching at the contact. Henry can’t see his face, but Alex smiles anyway.

“Morning,” Alex says. He gives his ass a little wiggle.

“Time’s it?”

“Seven thirty-two.”

“Plane in two hours.”

Alex makes a small sound in the back of his throat and turns over, finding Henry’s face soft and close, eyes only half-open. “You sure you don’t need me to come with you?”

Henry shakes his head without picking it up from the pillow, so his cheek squishes against it. It’s cute. “You’re not the one who slagged off the crown and your own family in the emails that everybody in the world has read. I’ve got to handle that on my own before you come back over.”

“That’s fair,” Alex says. “But soon?”

Henry’s mouth tugs into a smile. “Absolutely. You’ve got the royal suitor photos to take, the Christmas cards to sign … Oh, I wonder if they’ll have you do a line of skincare products like Martha—”

“Stop,” Alex groans, poking him in the ribs. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“I’m enjoying it the perfect amount,” Henry says. “But, in all seriousness, it’s … frightening but a bit nice. To do this on my own. I’ve not gotten to do that much, well, ever.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “I’m proud of you.”

“Ew,” Henry says in a flat American accent, and he laughs and Alex throws an elbow.

Henry’s pulling him and kissing him, sandy hair on a pink bedspread, long lashes and long legs and blue eyes, elegant hands pinning his wrists to the mattress. It’s like everything he’s ever loved about Henry in a moment, in a laugh, in the way he shivers, in the confident roll of his spine, in happy, unfettered sex in the well-furnished eye of a storm.

Today, Henry goes back to London. Today, Alex goes back to the campaign trail. They have to figure out how to do this for real now, how to love each other in plain sight. Alex thinks they’re up for it.

FIFTEEN

nearly four weeks later

“Let me just get this hair, love.”

“Mum.”

“Soz, am I embarrassing you?” Catherine says, her glasses on the tip of her nose as she rearranges Henry’s thick hair. “You’ll thank me when you’ve not got a great cowlick in your official portrait.”

Alex has to admit, the royal photographer is being exceedingly patient about the whole thing, especially considering they waffled through three different locations—Kensington Gardens, a stuffy Buckingham Palace library, the courtyard of Hampton Court Palace—before they decided to screw it all for a bench in a locked-down Hyde Park.

(“Like a common vagrant?” Queen Mary asked.

“Shut up, Mum,” Catherine said.)

There’s a certain need for formal portraits now that Alex is officially in “courtship” with Henry. He tries not to think too hard about his face on chocolate bars and thongs in Buckingham gift shops. At least it’ll be next to Henry’s.

Some psychological math always goes into styling photos like these. The White House stylists have Alex in something he’d wear any day—brown leather loafers, slim-fit chinos in a soft tan, a loose-collared Ralph Lauren chambray—but in this context, it reads confident, roguish, decidedly American. Henry’s in a Burberry button-down tucked into dark jeans and a navy cardigan that the royal shoppers squabbled over in Harrods for hours. They want a picture of a perfect, dignified, British intellectual, a loved-up boyfriend with a bright future as an academic and philanthropist. They even staged a little pile of books on the bench next to him.

Alex looks over at Henry, who’s groaning and rolling his eyes under his mother’s preening, and smiles at how much closer this packaging is to the real, messy, complicated Henry. As close as any PR campaign is ever going to get.

They take about a hundred portraits just sitting on the bench next to each other and smiling, and part of Alex keeps stumbling over the disbelief he’s actually here, in the middle of Hyde Park, in front of God and everybody, holding Henry’s hand atop his own knee for the camera.

“If Alex from this time last year could see this,” Alex says, leaning into Henry’s ear.

“He’d say, ‘Oh, I’m in love with Henry? That must be why I’m such a berk to him all the time,’” Henry suggests.

“Hey!” Alex squawks, and Henry’s chuckling at his own joke and Alex’s indignation, one arm coming up around Alex’s shoulders. Alex gives into it and laughs too, full and deep, and that’s the last hope for a serious tone for the day gone. The photographer finally calls it, and they’re set loose.

Catherine’s got a busy day, she says—three meetings before afternoon tea to discuss relocating into a royal residence more centrally located in London, since she’s begun taking up more duties than ever. Alex can see the glint in her eye—she’ll be gunning for the throne soon. He’s choosing not to say anything about it to Henry yet, but he’s curious to see how it all plays out. She kisses them both and leaves them with Henry’s PPOs.

It’s a short walk over the Long Water back to Kensington, and they meet Bea at the Orangery, where a dozen members of her event-planning team are scurrying around, setting up a stage. She’s tromping up and down rows of chairs on the lawn in a ponytail and rain boots, speaking very tersely on the phone about something called “cullen skink” and why on earth would she ever request cullen skink and even if she had in fact requested cullen skink in what universe would she ever need twenty bloody liters of cullen skink for anything, ever.

“What in the hell is a ‘cullen skink’?” Alex asks once she’s hung up.

“Smoked haddock chowder,” she says. “Enjoy your first royal dog show, Alex?”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Alex says, smirking.

“Mum is beyond,” Henry says. “She offered to edit my manuscript this morning. It’s like she’s trying to make up for five years of absentee parenting all at once. Which, of course, I love her very much, and I appreciate the effort, but, Christ.”

“She’s trying, H,” Bea says. “She’s been on the bench for a while. Let her warm up a bit.”