He grinned wide. “If you’re asking questions, you should ask me, Angel.”
“As if you’d answer my questions.”
He dragged my chin closer, lips heating mine. “Try me.”
My glare deepened. “Where are you sleeping?”
He flashed a crooked smile. “Do you want me in your bed?”
I ignored that. “Why can’t you go to Scotland?”
“Because this is Crowne territory.”
Crowne territory?
“Then why are you here?”
Something flickered in his eyes, but all he said was, “I already answered that, Angel. It’s the last place he’ll look for you. Any more questions?”
Why did you stop her from hitting me?
Why are you answering my questions?
Why are you nice sometimes?
“Shouldn’t you be with your fiancée?” I’d still yet to see her or hear any mention of her.
The humor in his eyes died. He blinked, and dropped me, standing to his feet. I watched him, curious, as he walked around my room, touching the bare accoutrements. He stopped at the window, fogged from the morning’s light rain.
“When will I meet her?” I prodded lightly.
He dragged his finger down the ancient glass, creating a clear line in the condensation to reveal dewy green.
“Do I know her?”
West laughed lightly. “It won’t work.”
“What won’t work?”
He turned, back to the glass, eyes narrowed on me. “Why don’t I give you a tour of the grounds? You told me this was where your uncle wanted you to be—” My brow furrowed. I did. “Maybe getting out of this room will show you why.”
I glared. It didn’t sound like an act of kindness, it sounded calculated. West wanted something, I just didn’t know what.
He shrugged. “I’m not going to force you, I just thought you might want to. There are many poems here. I know you shared your poetry with him.”
The first poem I ever shared with my uncle, was the first I ever wrote.
A poem I wrote and sent West.
Stop letting him get into your head.
Pain hit me sharp like an arrow and I spun away from West.
“Stop it,” I gritted. “Stop fucking pretending you remember. You wouldn’t remember the first thing about what my uncle wanted,” I whispered. “About me.”
A warm, sticky beat of silence passed, then West spoke softly. “Put my heart in a cage and treat it like a songbird.”
My heart stopped beating, the soft sounds of leaves rustling in the wind died. My breath was a hollow echo in my lungs. I was certain I’d heard him wrong.
“What did you just say?” I asked, barely louder than the breeze.
“Open old bone doors so my heart can sing,” West continued.
I spun around, heart in my throat, in time to see him kick off the window, eyes locked on my lips.
Put my heart in a cage and treat it like a songbird.
Open old bone doors so my love can sing.
Put my heart in a cage and treat it like a songbird.
Close the door, my love will settle back on its perch.
My song will wait until you return.
Stupid, lovesick words said by a stupid, lovesick teenager.
West didn’t stop walking until I was flush against the bed.
He leaned like he was going to kiss me, but stopped, breath feathering my lips. “My song will wait until you return.”
I sent West so many poems that went unanswered. I told myself he never got them. All this time he’d fucking read them?
“The bird fucking died waiting, West.” I straightened my back off the bed, meeting him eye for eye. “Someone else fed that bird. Someone else listened to that song.”
Maybe I wrote that poem for West, but it never felt more like it was meant for Grayson than in this moment, while I was caged, waiting to return to the true love of my life.
West’s eyes flashed to my collarbone, and before I could stop it, he fisted the locket Grayson gave me in his hand.
“You still seem confused about what you’ve agreed to. You don’t belong to him anymore.” His grip tightened, the chain biting into my neck.
“I will always belong to him. He’s mine, and I’m his.”
West ripped the locket off my neck. I felt the tear like it were a piece of my aorta ripping off. I stared at the dangling gold chains on either side of his fist.
“Bruises fade. Necklaces break.”
West turned, leaving and slamming the door shut.
My legs gave way beneath me, in stunted, gasping bursts. I gripped the silky bedspread so I didn’t slam to the ground, then fell, head in my hands.
Fuck.
This was the opposite of convincing him to trust me.
I guess if Grayson’s fatal flaw was not letting go, then mine was wearing my heart where everyone could see.
Where anyone can rip it from my neck.
Soon, the only sound was of rain tapping against the windows. It was soft and melancholy. For a while I sat like that, my head in my hands, then I remembered the phone. I quickly grabbed it from where I’d stashed it.
The blue light was glaring. Only at forty-eight percent now.
I couldn’t write Grayson directly, but I could log in to my secret Insta. Maybe if I whispered him direct messages, and I yelled the world my thoughts…he would hear one of them.
I know it was a long shot.
He was Grayson Crowne.
He didn’t check his DMs, but it’s all I have.
Four
Dear Atlas,
I don’t know if you’ll ever see these letters, but I pray you do. I’ve never been someone who prayed before, who put their hopes in the hands of fickle gods, but I’ll pray to every god living and dead because I don’t want you to worry. I can’t breathe if you think I abandoned you.
Or worse.
I’m safe. We’re both safe.
It was never supposed to happen this way, Atlas. This static, dead silence between us like the rustle of leaves on an empty autumn day. You are my heartbeat and you’ve been ripped from me. When I put my palm to my chest, it’s blank. Two weeks is nothing in the blink of eternity, but it’s everything in the slow ache of heartbreak.
Are you bleeding?
My secrets and thorns hurt and I lie awake wondering about yours. I’m alone in this room that feels older than poetry itself. It smells like night rain, and the stars are hidden beneath the dark, somber clouds. I only have a single, waxy candle for blurry light.
And also, I guess, the light of this bright, blue phone which really feels out of place here, Atlas. Like I should have found some old parchment to write you with. I guess then we could really be like the poets we spoke of, sending illicit letters with fire-marked edges.
I keep thinking about the first thing I want to do when I see you again.
Kiss you. Hug you. Leap into your arms. Really, I just want to talk to you. You’re the only one I ever could talk to, the only one who ever listened.
And then my heart breaks because…I won’t be able to talk to you.
Because…Atlas, I lied.
Is this how I tell you? Like a coward?
I need a coward’s courage to tell you. You’re thousands of miles away, a continent is between us, and there’s no way for me to see the ache in your eyes.
It’s a selfish confession.
All of the weight gone, none of the consequences, because I don’t know if you’ll ever even see it. You are Grayson Crowne, after all. You have tens of thousands of people sliding into your DMs. Why would you notice me?
I’m on the hard floor, Atlas. The old planks creak every time I slightly move. I don’t want to get in bed. I don’t want this night to end, because if it ends, that means tomorrow will come.
One step closer to being reunited with you, but also…one day closer to him. To them.
Because I lied to you, Atlas.
I�
�m not his wife.
Not anymore.
I’m his mistress.
In so many other instances, that would’ve been less complicated. One less thing tying me to Westley du Lac. But you know my past, and I know yours. So I’ll be honest—there’s a briar growing inside my chest.
Every day I remember how he felt inside me.
But now it’s both nights.
Both times.
The night I didn’t choose, and the night I did.
And now I can’t differentiate them inside my head.
And I hate myself.
A deep, gnawing cavern of self-loathing.
For liking it.
For muddying the waters further. For having no one to blame but myself. I need him to be bad. A villain. But he isn’t, not always. That night is a briar inside my chest, and my heart is twisting it together, wrong, tangled, and cutting.
I wish I’d told you the truth. I wish I’d let you take me away.
It would have been easier than this.
Five
STORY
The days blurred into one long, rainy song, sung outside my window by the unseen birds. Soon the week was over, and I had written to Grayson every day. Until my eyelids were heavy, until the words in my head settled into an ache in my chest.
Every morning, I felt little stirrings in my gut. I was connected to Grayson on butterfly wings, like our child was trying to reach him too.
My only relief was that West never came back. Every morning, vitamins were waiting on my nightstand, like the kind Grayson had left, but West was never there.
It was just me and the cruel Madame.
Thwack.
“That fork is for—”
“Dessert,” I cut off.
Thwack.
I breathed through my nostrils, focusing on the dinner of some thick, red soup. All the food here was overly fancy and it made me miss Grayson more. I missed him knowing exactly what food I craved.
Now, I craved the sugar on his lips.
At least this room had become some kind of comfort. It was older than even Beryl’s grandfather, I’m sure, and every day I found something left behind. One of the four posters of my bed was carved with the scratched-out initials J.C., directly below them, the wood was engraved with J.S.G.
I tried to imagine the girl before me, and I felt a little less alone each day.
It’s beautiful too. Pale white wallpaper with gold leaf damask covered the walls, and as I’d looked closer, I’d discovered faint lines of poetry. All different lines from different poets. I’d never seen something like that anywhere in my life.
Buried beneath a poem…
There was no way, right? My uncle had never left Crowne Point.
Thwack.
I yanked my hand back.
“What was that for?” I snapped.
Thwack.
“You were daydreaming. You must always be present—”
She shot to her feet, so fast the chair scraped across the hardwood. “Mr. du Lac—I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”
“I thought I made my feelings on that ruler clear.” West’s deep voice drifted over my shoulder.
She shuffled past our little table, behind me. I stayed sitting, staring at the fine gold-inlaid porcelain. I knew I would get another thwack later for not standing and greeting him as I properly should—regardless of his feelings.
“Two weeks is not enough time,” I heard her whisper, low. “She won’t be ready.”
Whatever West did next, it made her leave, because I heard the antique door creak shut.
The silence grew like a thick heat.
I stared at the table until my vision blurred.
Until knuckles glanced beneath my chin, and I found warm brown eyes. “Did you get enough to eat?”
My hand still throbbed from the thwacking I got during dinner. I barely touched my food. I craved suckers. French fries. Things he could never give me.
“Yes.”
West probed me, his brown eyes too sincere. He’d taken my locket, I reminded myself, and for all I knew he’d chucked it into the nearest marsh.
But I was curious why after a week he was suddenly here, and as silence continued to thicken, so did my nerves tangle.
“Miss me?” he asked, lips curved.
There was no right way to answer this. I wondered where West went during the week, briefly, but not enough to say the words aloud, worried I’d jinx it. Break my luck, and he’d come back more often.
“You must have more questions,” he said.
I was overflowing with them, but not enough to talk to West.
“In a few days you won’t have a voice, Angel. You might as well use it now.”
That hit me, as though someone cracked my ribs with a baseball bat. I met his eyes, and I swear I saw pity. I looked away, looked at the floor.
West stood up, clearing his throat. “I think you’re overdue for a tour, Angel.”
We walked outside among the gardens. These weren’t like Tansy Crowne’s measured grass and severed hedges; it was savage and green with overflowing wildflowers and stalks of grass blowing in the wind. Birds perched on crumbling cobblestone walls, their seraphic melodies like the dappled green and gold world around them.
“Some birds know up to two thousand songs,” West said.
I trailed my finger along the weathered and cracking stone, memories of my uncle overwhelming me. “My uncle used to tell me songbirds were the original poets. He would have loved it here—”
I broke off, hating myself for sharing the memory. When West ghosted me and I shared my first poems with my uncle, he’d started to encourage dreams I’d always considered fantasy. I remembered the words he’d said to me, the look in his eyes.
Hope.
I looked back, finding West was looking at me strangely. In his riding boots and pea coat, he looked like a rogue on the marshes. All he was missing was a cravat.
My brow furrowed. “Why do you care so much about my uncle?”
“I’m trying to win you back, Angel.”
I quickly shifted the conversation away from me, from anything personal. “What are you doing if you’re not here all day?”
“I’m still here. Working.”
“On what?”
He gave me a look. “Our happily ever after.” My gut churned. I couldn’t help the feeling that every time I spoke, no matter the subject, I was giving him what he wanted. I didn’t feel safe—at all.
He stepped toward me. “I think I’ve just had a breakthrough.”
I stepped behind the broken cobblestone wall, putting a barrier between us “And what did you find—”
West gripped my chin, dragging my neck over the wall, cutting me off. “When you’re alone with me, you can talk. Always. But when we are with company, you must never talk. Ever.” His grip bruised. “This is very important.”
His eyes traveled beyond me, where the du Lac servant with green eyes walked the fields. When she was gone, he let me go, spearing his pockets.
“What about…” I trailed off, taking my bottom lip between my teeth as the words those girls had spoken earlier spun in my mind.
Is it true you’re the Cinderella of Crowne Hall?
My—rather, our, all four of us—twisted little fairy had traveled the world.
“What about the paparazzi when I become your mistress? How are you going to explain that away?”
West straightened his shoulders. “What about the paparazzi?”
“The paparazzi will wonder. The world will wonder. I’m not just a nobody anymore.”
He laughed. “Any stories that got out about you, were only because I wanted them there.”
I opened and closed my mouth.
That couldn’t be true, could it?
“Even the one that got me attacked?”
Pain flickered across his eyes, almost making me think he was sorry, but it vanished in an instant.
“Yes.” His voice was stone. “Even that one.�
�
“You’re evil.”
His eyes flashed to mine, but he said nothing.
“You can’t silence the internet,” I gritted.
“Josephine used to be a famous model, she was on the cover of magazines, on runways, and at one point you couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing her name. Josephine St. Germaine was going to be the next Marilyn Monroe. Have you ever heard her name?”
I sucked in lungfuls of air.
No…I only knew her name because I’d worked at Crowne Hall.
“You’ll be forgotten too, Angel, because that’s what the internet does best.” He gave me a look of pity. “In a few months, something shiny will come along and everyone will forget about the Cinderella of Crowne Hall.”
I stared at the wispy, flowing grass. The sun was setting, lighting the green on fire in bursts of orange and white.
“Go to the police, and they’ll call us. Go to the media, and they’ll call us. Publish it online, and no one will see it. Yell at the top of your lungs, and no one will hear.”
A shiver raced down my spine.
“Grayson will hear,” I said softly. “Grayson will see me.”
West placed his phone beneath my eyes, already playing a video. It was the one Grayson had sent of us on his wedding night. The thing keeping us prisoner.
“I could ruin his life with the press of one fucking button, Angel. Grayson has no power. The hero you keep waiting to rescue you needs to be rescued himself. I could save you…” West sat on the cobblestone wall, spinning around until he was shoulder to shoulder. “If you let me.”
“And how would that work?” I hopped off the wall. “You would save me from yourself?” I swallowed my scoff. The only one who could save me is thousands of miles away.
I glanced at my finger…the bruise entirely faded from our secret wedding. The birdsongs echoed in the dying light of the sky, lonesome and lost.
“He won’t find it,” West said casually.
My heart hitched. “What?”
West hopped off the wall, following me. “That coin you’re looking so hard for. Grayson will never find it.”
My heart bottomed out.
As West strolled casually through the blades of Scottish grass, one thought spun through my mind, mixing with the birdsong.
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 3