Carla’s Prince

“I met someone in the U.S.,” he started.

“You…you have never told me anything about your many girlfriends.”

“One, I don’t have many girlfriends. I don’t have any girlfriend and two, there is never anything to tell.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Seriously, Isabella.”

“Then maybe I should tell you that your non-girlfriend Stephanie Tempest is here,” she said matter of factly.

He raised an eyebrow over the other.

“Stephie’s here?” he echoed and Isabella nodded. “As in at this funeral?”

“Yeah, but it should not be such a big deal, right?”

He did not have an answer. He exhaled loudly and looked around wondering if Stephanie was anywhere close to them. He was wrong earlier. Being here, being Prince Cristoff, was not the worst thing that could have happened. Being in the same area code as the woman who was the poster child for every woman he had dated was the worst thing.

“This day just keeps getting better,” he muttered and Isabella looked into his eyes.

“What is going on with you?” she asked. “I thought you were done with Stephanie.”
He nodded.

“I am. But she was always a little dramatic and I cannot deal with her drama right now and her being here is no coincidence.”

“How so?” his sister asked.

“Father and Uncle have been insisting that it is time for me to marry and their ideal choice was Stephanie.”

“Yeah, I heard that but I always thought it was a stupid rumor. I mean, you detest Stephie even though you dated her.”

“I went on a few public events with her. It was all for show. Surely, you know that.”

Isabella nodded.

“I do but you also seemed to be happy sucked in that world,” she said.

“I was happy for a minute. The prospect of being in a normal relationship for once, with a person who actually understood what this life was about, was great. But as soon as I saw her for who she was…I didn’t want her.”

Isabella smiled.

“Don’t worry. I will be your buffer. Besides, we are only here for six hours,” she said in a soft voice. “So, tell me, who is this person you met in the United States?”

He smiled at her.

“A woman. A girl at heart really but she has the maturity of a woman. Carla,” he said in a soft voice. “Carla Gibson. The woman I want next to me when I take the throne.”

Isabella raised an eyebrow over the other.

“Would I know who this Carla Gibson is?” she asked. Cristoff forced out a laugh and shook his head.

“No, Carla does not run in our circles. She is just a young woman who lives in an apartment with her best friend.”

“Would you tell me everything already? This information you’re giving in small doses is not working for me, Cristoff,” she said.

He took a long, deep breath.

“I walked into an office and she was there. I looked at her and saw the one thing I had not seen in a long time, honesty. Pure, sheer honesty that I could never find in the likes of Stephanie Tempest and I had her. For the briefest moment, I had her, all of her and then I lost her.”

Isabella put a hand on his.

“What do you mean when you say you lost her?” she asked in a whisper.

“She won’t talk to me. She won’t even see me,” he explained.

“What did you do?” Isabella asked.

He looked at her and his lips parted for a second. He wanted to say something. Tell her everything he had done but he was speechless. He did not have the right words to explain just what he was thinking or feeling. He was for the first time, speechless.

“Could it be possible, Cristoff, that you are in love?” Isabella asked as she looked at her brother.

“In love?” he echoed.

He could not see himself as a man who loved anyone. He had never really felt love for anyone. It was like he was born with a hollow part inside him. Born without a heart for he had never felt anything for any woman he had ever met. The only person he had ever felt affection for was Isabella and if that was love, then, she was the only one he loved. Until he met Carla and now, it was quite possible that she had his heart and he could not really undo anything.

“I can’t,” he said in a whisper. “I have never been.”

“There is a first time for everything, brother,” Isabella said in a soft voice.

“I cannot be…not with Carla. I do not even know her. I mean, all we ever did was talk about work and then there was that one time I invited her to the orchard….”

“You invited someone to the orchard?” she asked, her hazel eyes wide with surprise. “Even I have never been to the orchard.”

“That’s because you like it here, in Europe. You have been to the Spanish orchard though.”
Isabella rolled her eyes.

“It’s different and you know it. The American orchard is your sanctuary. No one has been there.”

He nodded.

“I know…I know. But this thing I feel. This emptiness I have inside me…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it is but I have been feeling it since…since the last time I saw Carla. I don’t know what it is.”

“What happened when you saw her last?” Isabella asked.

He shrugged.

“I said something to her…and I made her cry.”

“What did you say to her to make her cry?” she asked and he shook his head.

“I don’t want to repeat it. I don’t want to repeat because it will just remind me what I felt when I saw her cry, Isabella.”

Isabella put her hand on her brother’s and smiled at him.

“Cristoff, you might be the only person who has never known what a broken heart feels like. But what you are feeling right now. The empty feeling you are talking about, that is what a broken heart feels like.”

“Well, I hate it,” he retorted silently.

Isabella laughed. “I know. We all do.”

“So, what do I do now?” he asked.

“You go back to her and tell her what you have told me.”

Cristoff shook his head.

“She won’t hear me. She won’t give me a chance.”

Isabella signaled a waiter and turned to her brother.

“You have to make her listen to you. I mean, if she is truly the one as you say, then she is the one who is going to sit next to you when you take your oath as king, then, you have to make sure she hears you.”

“It is not easy…I think, her not being of my world…she is showing me things that I did not know about myself and I am afraid to even think about it.”

“So, you mean she does not tolerate you?” Isabella asked.

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

“Oh, come on, Cristoff,” she said as she took two glasses from the waiter before he walked off.