Carla’s Prince

“How sure are you that I won’t hold up my end of the bargain?” Cristoff asked and Carla shook her head.

“Cristoff, please. We cannot talk about this right now. Or ever, really.”

He slipped his arm around her gently.

“Tell me why not.”

“You and I have a strictly business relationship, remember?”

“But what has just happened between us,” he started. “Surely things are different now and the case is almost over now. The business part of our relationship can be over too.”

She turned around and looked at him.

“We can never be what you want us to be, Cristoff. We are not meant to be.”

“And who is to say that we are not to be?” he asked and she shrugged.

“When you know, you know.”

“But I already know that I want to be with you.” She shrugged and shook her head.

“Yes, but I am just a black girl living an ordinary life and you are a fu*king prince, Cristoff. I will never fit in your world and you cannot be in mine. You don’t belong in it,” she said.

“Why the hell not?” he asked matter of factly.

“Because I am just a private investigator whose most interesting day is probably photographing a cheating spouse in action and you are supposed to take over a country.” She shook her head. “This cannot work even if we tried it with all the odds on our side.”

“Maybe we just need to try,” he said and she shook her head.

“And we are also not past the fact that you called me a gold digger,” she said bluntly.

Cristoff exhaled loudly.

“I know and I apologized for that.”

Carla frowned and pulled away from his arms.

“You know,” she started as she walked to the bathroom. “You do not get to call me that and come here with a box of chocolates and diamonds and expect to get a clean slate from me, Cristoff.”

“Wait, Carla…” he started as she came back out in a bathrobe.

“Maybe you are used to being this man who always gets his way because he wields so much power but it is just not going to work that way with me,” she said and he shook his head.

“I never said that.”

“Well, you insinuated it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And then there is the fact about me not knowing your culture. What the fu*k was that about?”

“I was just upset, Carla.”

“Well, in this country and generally everywhere else in the world, when you are upset, you talk about it rather than make wild accusations,” she said angrily. “I cannot be with a man who berates me the way you did.”

There was a long silence before he got up and walked up to where she was, not caring that he was flashing his junk at her.

“I hate that I hurt you the way I did but that does not mean that I still don’t want you in my life,” he whispered.

Carla shook her head.

“We shouldn’t have fu*ked,” she said in a low voice.

“We may have fu*ked but we also made love, Carla. Wild but passionate love,” he said as he looked into her eyes.

She was not sure what she was feeling at that moment. It was not regret but it was something close to that. Something she could not just understand.

“I should go to the drug store and get the morning after pill,” she said as she looked at him. “I think the best thing for me…for us, is for me not to find you when I come back.”

He shook his head.

“I would much rather wait for you here.”

She shook her head.

“Please, Cristoff. Don’t make it harder than it already is.”

She got a pair of sweatpants from her dirty laundry hamper and pulled them on.

“You are wearing clothes from the laundry hamper,” he said and she nodded.

“I know.”

She got a sweatshirt from the hamper and pulled it on before she walked out of the bedroom with Cristoff watching her. She had half a mind to turn around and talk to him but she was not so sure what she was supposed to say. She did not even know what she was feeling.

“This su*ks,” she thought to herself as she ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “This su*ks so bad.”