All Chapters of Puck Me, One More Time: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Eric's POVI had been carrying what I saw at the seaside for two days before I decided what to do with it.Now, it was two days of turning it over … the image of the two of them, the way they had been standing, the kiss that had been unmistakable from the angle we had on them before they heard us and ran. Two days of sitting on information that I understood, even before I had fully worked out what to do with it, and I have come to make peace with the fact that it was worth something significant to the right person.Prince Ken had made me look like a fool in that space. He had stood over me with a baton and delivered a lesson in front of my own people, in a space I had thought that I already owned, and had walked away from it like it was nothing. And Liam Carson had been at the centre of that, the same way Liam Carson was at the centre of everything that had gone wrong for me since the semester started.I was not the kind of person who let things like that pass, you know.I had done my

Prince Ken's POVI had heard Steph say his name… Liam’s name, and right then something in my chest had reacted before I could manage it. It was that specific and involuntary response of a person whose body has stopped pretending about something even when their mouth has not caught up yet.I kept looking at the table and she continued on with what she had been saying after it must have seemed to her that I had no response to the question she had asked me."I know why you transferred to Pathway," Steph said, and her voice was not unkind. It was the voice of someone who had decided to be honest because the alternative was a waste of both their evenings. "I know what the arrangement is all about. And I am not saying this to be difficult." She gave a pause before she continued. "But Liam … he is the one you danced with in the middle of a ballroom because you could not let him ask me instead or better still, because he could not let you ask me instead."That one landed with more weight than

Liam's POV"I thought you wanted me to forget it." I said it directly, after he had asked the question, 'does that mean nothing to you?’ …which I took some time before I replied to him. After all, there was no point softening something that had been sitting in my chest since the library corridor and so I added. "With your action of snubbing me bluntly right in front of Steph like I was nobody standing right there."He opened his mouth."You have been avoiding me," I continued, "ever since I was thrown into that cell. My grandma had to bail me out. And I hear you loud and clear even without you having to say it to my face." I looked at him directly. "It is obvious that you want to end things between us."The last word landed and I pulled my hand back in the specific motion of someone withdrawing from something they had decided to stop reaching for.I turned to move away."No." His voice came immediately, and the word had something in it that was not the composed prince register. It cou

Liam's POVKen had gone still beside me and to think that it was the specific stillness of someone who had too many thoughts running at once and was finding it difficult to locate the one that would produce a useful response… made me feel really bad about everything that was going on.The cameras were still flashing. The microphones were still pointed. And the reporters seemed as if they had no more important place to be than here.The fact was that somebody had to say something.So, I stepped forward."That's none of your business," I said, and I kept my voice flat and my face straight in a way that my eyes were on the reporter who had asked the last question … the one about sleeping together — with the specific energy of someone who was not going to give them the reaction they were fishing for. "And stay away from my house."The reporter did not step back. You know, they rarely did when they are this desperate to get more."Prince Ken." A different voice came though but still one of

Liam's POVEverything had moved too fast for me to fully process any single part of it.One minute I had been standing on the steps of my grandmother's house with cameras in my face and reporters asking questions that had no good answers. The next, I was in a car headed to a palace with the Queen of Bahamas sitting in the front and Ken beside me in the back, and nobody had said very much because I guess there was not a version of the conversation that could happen with the driver and the guards present.I had spent the ride thinking about how underground this whole thing had been. The ‘news’ breaking online that fast. The press ‘arriving’ at my house … my house specifically, an address that was not public which must have required someone to have specifically provided it — before either of us had even had time to think clearly about what to do.I could beat my chest that someone had orchestrated this from the inside.The palace appeared through the car window … I had seen photographs a