Royal Dilemma

Chapter 35

(Caleb's Point of View)

Charli walks up and leans against the seat opposite me, sighing.

"Long day?" I ask.

She nods. "Long week." She pulls out her phone and looks at the screen, a corner of her mouth pulling down into a frown.

"Bad news?" I guess.

"Another rejection email." She sighs again.

"For what?"

"A scholarship I applied to."

I thought she already had a scholarship.

"You applied to some scholarships?"

She nods. "I lost mine last minute for no apparent reason. So I'm fucked now."

My eyebrows pull together in the middle. "Wow, that really sucks."

She shrugs. "I guess I'll just have to pay off loans until I'm retired like everyone else."

I tap my finger on the table, the gears in my head spinning.

Does the royal family have a scholarship?

"You can't get another one?"

She shakes her head. "Most of the application dates have passed. The rest I've been rejected for. I'm just going to have to give in and take out loans."

Well that won't do.

Charli changes the subject to a book she just started reading and I try to pay attention to what she's saying but my mind's elsewhere.

Paying for someone's college is no small amount of money which is why after I'm done eating at The Pearl I drive over to The Capital Building.

I came to see Levi but he's in a meeting so I ask his secretary if I can just wait in his office and she lets me by. Levi's office is spacious and regal with a large wooden desk in the center of the room that's cluttered with thick file folders and loose papers. There's two comfortable-looking leather chairs in front of his desk for visitors to sit in so I take a seat there and wait for him to come back.

When Levi walks in a half an hour later he doesn't look surprised to see me so I assume his secretary already told him I was here.

"I have an hour until my next meeting," he says, taking a seat at his desk. "What do you need help with?"

I straighten in my seat. "How do you feel about starting a scholarship?"

"A scholarship for what?"

"I don't know, academics? I have someone in mind."

Levi's eyebrows shoot up. "You want me to give one of your friends a scholarship?"

"Sort of." I shrug.

Levi leans forward, putting his forearms on his desk. "Do you know how unethical that is?"

I lean back in my seat and sigh. "Can I make, like, a donation?"

"Who is this person to you?"

The woman I'm in love with.

"She's intelligent and she deserves this opportunity."

Levi studies me for a moment then sighs. "If I do this for you, you need to do something for me."

"Anything."

"I want someone to play tennis with."

I groan. "Fine."

Levi says we're not allowed to call it a scholarship because Charli didn't do anything to earn it, we're just giving it to her. He also didn't really want to advertise the royal family is doing this and I don't want Charli to know I'm involved, so he didn't put the donor name as The Royal Family the way he usually would. He put The Society for Academic Success instead which doesn't really mean anything because technically it doesn't exist.

"You never told me why we're doing this," Levi murmurs, as he looks at his computer screen.

I'm leaning over his shoulder looking at the screen as well. "She lost her scholarship."

Levi turns his head to look at me. "Yeah, but who is she? I didn't even know you talked to anyone outside the family."

I lick my lips. "It's kind of complicated."

"Meaning?"

"She works at a restaurant I go to sometimes, we talk there a lot."

"What's the complicated part?"

"I can't tell you."

Levi stares at me and I stare back.

"Did you do something stupid, Caleb?"

"Yes."

"Then you should do whatever it is you need to do to fix it."

I shake my head. "I don't know how to fix it."

Levi turns back to his screen. "You're an adult. Figure it out." He clicks a few things on screen. "Mila is my favorite person in the whole world. If I messed up I would move mountains to make it right."

"But what if you're pretty sure she won't forgive you?"

Levi glances at me. "If you respect someone then you should respect them enough to tell them the truth, the whole truth."

Should I tell Charli I'm really CJ?

If I tell Charli the truth I could lose her for good, but Levi is right. I should respect her enough to tell her the whole truth.

If she ends up telling me to get lost then at least she knows the truth, she deserves that after all of the lying I've been doing. I suppose I haven't directly lied to her face but I think with the Shirashio in mind I've taken lying by omission to an entirely new level.

Charli means so much to me and I've been so incredibly selfish at every chance. Every decision has been about helping myself when I should've been thinking a lot more about her feelings and how my actions are affecting her.

Getting involved with her again after the CJ fiasco benefited me and only me. She doesn't even know who I really am, the extent to which I know her or how I've hurt her. I broke her heart and I'm sitting in a booth casually talking about movies and video games once a week.

I suck.

I want to do better, I want to be better. I want to do things that help the people I care about, not hurt them. I want to be a good man.

Telling Charli the truth will be a step in the right direction.

Plus, Levi's right. Of course, Levi's right. If I messed up with Charli I should be moving mountains to make it right, not cowardly approaching her from another identity.

She fell in love with CJ but that was me, she fell in love with me. Maybe if I just come clean we can somehow come to an understanding and find a way to put all of this behind us. Maybe she can find it in her heart one day to forgive me.

But none of that is ever going to happen if she never knows the truth about who I am to her. If I don't tell her the truth there is zero chance we will ever be together but if I come clean there's a slim chance we might be one day. I'll take a slim chance over zero any day.

I love Charli and I will grasp at any straw I can to save this sinking ship. I'm sick of standing by and waiting, what am I waiting for? I'm just wasting time. The longer I wait the worse this looks for me. I should've came clean ages ago, before she even found that vial in my pocket.

What was I thinking?

I'm going to tell Charli the truth, it's what she deserves. If she's going to leave me behind I want to go out treating her the way she deserves to be treated.