On Repeat

When Katherine and Max made it back to her room, he waited at her door to keep guard while she went inside to prepare for the announcement.

She turned on the shower in her attached bathroom and yanked her clothes off as she waited for the water to warm up.

As the humidity of the warm water filled the space, Katherine opened the glass door to the shower and walked inside before shutting it behind her.

She walked into the stream of water and relaxed her body as the heat comforted her like a hug.

As much as she did not want it to, the conversation she had with Marcus and Charles played over and over again in her mind.

Katherine was too angry at the time to process it, but now that she was thinking about it, Marcus had said something about the marriage not entirely being a lie. With her and Charles always showing up to meet Marcus hand in hand, of course he figured the two actually had romantic feelings for each other. So maybe it would be easy to convince Titanus that she and Charles were in love.

As long as Jasper did not believe it, that was all Katherine cared about.

Thinking about the arranged marriage had always made Katherine sad in the past, but now it just made her angry.

Not only that, but Marcus's comment about dressing nice so that people did not pity Charles had hurt her pride. It was no secret that the people loved Charles and hated Katherine, but she had never even thought about how their marriage would make the people hate her even more.

Not that she ever cared about what the people beneath her felt about her before, but she did want to help with the positive change that Charles was so passionate about. He had inspired her, and unfortunately for Katherine, it made that thought of her people pitying Charles because of her bothersome.

How would she prove herself if everything she did just made the people hate her more?

And it was not only the people that seemed to be upset with her lately. Even Charles had lashed out at Katherine during the meeting.

For once, he was not the caring and supportive friend that Katherine had come to admire, but he was someone who did not trust that she could do her job of convincing the people that she loved him.

She hated to admit it, but his lack of faith in her hurt more than anything Marcus had said to insult her. Charles had looked at her with such anger and sadness written on his face that it made Katherine's heart hurt. He was someone that for some reason, she really did not want to let down.

Their arrangement aside, he truly had been a great friend and support since the attack on her castle, and she would hate herself if she did anything that would compromise how close they had gotten.

She wondered how much of his anger was actually meant for her. After all, he had been upset by something that Marcus had said the night before, and even though Katherine had tried to talk to him about it then and this morning on the beach, Charles made it clear that he was not comfortable talking to her about it.

Katherine could feel her body tensing again thinking about all of this, so she put her face under the water and pictured herself washing her worries down the drain. She took her time washing herself, and did her best to not overthink the conversation that had left her unsettled.

When she was completely clean, she turned the water off and wrapped herself in a fresh towel. She walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom where she had left her bag that she had packed with haste the day before.

She shuffled through the bag and saw that she had only packed clothes like leggings, t-shirts, a pair of dress pants, and a button down. She did not have a dress, and she certainly did not have anything that would make her look like a blushing bride to be.

She sighed and sat down on the floor of the bathroom trying to think of a solution. With a slight hesitation, she picked up her phone and called the only person she knew would help her.

Charles answered with a frantic voice, "Kit? Is everything okay?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I realized that I didn't pack any clothes that would be fit for appearing on television, and I was wondering if you knew someplace I could find a dress?" she asked.

Katherine heard Charles chuckle on the other end. "You're never a bother, first of all, but if you walk over to the closet in your room, it should be packed with outfits for every occasion."

"Wait, what?" Katherine asked as she quickly stood and walked over to the walk-in-closet on the far end of the large bedroom. She opened the door and saw rows upon rows of clothes in every style. It looked a lot like Katherine's closet back home, and she felt her jaw drop.

"Whose clothes are these?" she asked as she grabbed a random shirt that was hanging up. Maybe they belonged to a girlfriend of his, she thought to herself before she looked at the tag and saw that it was in her size.

"Remember when we talked about you coming to Eos to go visit the people in one of the cities?" Charles asked her. "Well, I called home and had them stock a closet for you so that you wouldn't have to worry about packing all of your things, or in case there was something specific you needed that you might have forgotten to bring with you."

"All of this is for me?" she asked in disbelief.

"Yeah. I hope you like at least some of it. I kind of had to guess on what to get you," Charles replied.

Katherine had no idea what to say. Once again, Charles was showing just how good of a person he was to her. She continued to look all around and admire every dress, pair of shoes, and bag that was handpicked for her.

"Wow," was the only thing that she could think to say. "Thank you, Charlie," she quickly added.

"Anytime, Kit-Kat," Charles said, and Katherine could hear the care in his voice. She knew he must have had that shy smile on his face that he wore whenever Katherine said something nice about him.

"Was there anything else?" he asked after they were both silent for a while.

"No, no. That was all, thank you," Katherine said.

"I'll see you soon, then."

"See you soon," Katherine said before she hung up the phone.