Westley du Lac? He hid his poison beneath kind smiles and volunteer duty, while being worse than the rest of us. It was always a mystery how the du Lac family could make someone as sweet and pure as Charlotte, and then a dude like West.
“I’m not worth anything to you unless someone else looks at me first,” Snitch continued. “You’re all speculating on fool’s gold. Gray might be cruel, but you’re poison.”
She spun, then stopped abruptly, almost slamming into me. In the split second she was shocked to see me, I saw all of her. The pain, the tears about to fall. My anger rose and rose.
I was ready to break his nose just for those unshed tears; then he smiled, vicious. Smug. The fuck did he have to be smug about? I fisted and unfisted my hand as West gave me the look like, Let’s fucking do it.
Story quickly swiped her tears away and walked by me.
Fuck.
I went after her.
“Let’s try this again. How do you know West du Lac?” I called to her back.
“Let’s try this again. Why do you care?” she snapped. “Why?”
Our furious footsteps went plunk plunk plunk on the dock. Above us the sky was black, too many blinding lights.
“I don’t need you fucking up my relationship again by fucking her brother.”
“Are you jealous?”
I laughed.
No. Yes. Fuck.
“Jealous of West? He jacks off to the sound of his own voice.”
I swear I heard her laugh, but it was impossible to be certain with the music from the yacht and beach clashing together.
“What was that?” I asked, chasing after her. “Don’t give me bullshit about being friends.”
She was silent, ignoring me.
That pissed me off.
“Did you love him?” I goaded at her back. “Was I just witnessing a lovers’ quarrel?”
She stopped. “Yes.”
That hit me like a fucking arrow to the gut.
Love? She fucking loved him?
I dragged my hands through my still-wet hair, salt burning my nose. Why the fuck did that upset me? Story started walking again, faster, almost at the beach.
Fuck this. I never chased after girls. After anyone.
Yet I ran for her.
“You lied about your uncle too,” I said. “What other shit are you keeping hidden away?”
She tensed, then spun on me. “I didn’t want you to hurt him!”
I scoffed. I would never fucking hurt Woodsy. Ever. I never fucking did any of the shit I was accused of doing. People thought I got my guard deported because he looked me in the eyes. That dude saved my life and they thought I deported him? He was living out his dream of having an animal sanctuary somewhere in Brazil.
“So, what, you and West had some great fucking love affair? West du Lac?” I laughed. “You can look him in the eyes, but did he look back?”
Her glare sharpened. “You don’t think someone like me can be with someone like West?”
“I thought you said you knew your place, Snitch?” I countered.
“I said I know my place. I didn’t say that made you better than me.” She took a step to me. “You were born above me. I was born below you. That’s fact. Pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make you enlightened or woke. But it doesn’t mean you’re better than me.” She looked away and said the next part so quietly I barely heard her. “That’s the part everyone always forgets, anyway.”
Sadness swamped her, stole her breath, her energy.
I knew I should be fucking livid. She lied about her uncle. There was something weird going on with her and West, the fucking brother of the chick I was trying to win back, but the abject look on her face made rational thought fly out the window.
I pulled her to me with one arm, anchoring her against my wet body.
She tensed. “What are you doing?”
“Right now…you’re just Story, and I’m Gray.”
Story stayed tense, like she wanted to pretend she was fine, but my body was cold with the ocean, and her hot tears branded my skin.
When I pulled back, she moved to completely separate, but I kept her still. Our chests touching, my arm anchoring her shoulder blades, the other at her jaw, lifting her eyes to mine.
Her eyes were sad and hardened, a stone in the water. Then she sniffed, and fuck, my entire chest caved. Why is she the one I want to comfort? The one whose tears boil my blood?
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to kiss that trembling bottom lip she keeps trying to hide.
Why can’t Lottie see me? Why does it have to be her? She’s the one who hugs me. Who isn’t afraid to ask me questions. Who isn’t afraid to acknowledge my scars. Who looks at me like she understands them.
But she isn’t the one I love.
She isn’t the one I’m marrying.
Why her?
“Why you?” I growled, bruising her chin with my finger. “Why is it you?”
Her bright, pained eyes looked at me through thick lashes, and I dragged her closer. I wanted to taste the lips I knew I shouldn’t. Kiss her until I swallowed all the salty tears on them. Until we both forgot the reasons we shouldn’t.
“Why you?” I said softly, our mouths so close I could taste her breath.
Then the fireworks popped, and we separated.
Twenty-Four
STORY
* * *
Why you?
Grayson said it over and over again with anger, then despair, and nearly kissed me after that sudden shocking hug. I know he did. The possessive, burning look in his stony blue eyes has left claw marks in my gut.
I keep ruminating on what it might mean, and coming up empty.
It was another night and a stiff tension between Grayson and me in the dark. I’d been mentally kicking myself for hours. First, for letting way too much slip. Second, for West. I’d fallen for the unattainable. A boy who only wanted to play a prank on the silly maid.
Was I doing the same thing? Doomed to make the same mistakes.
“I know you’re awake, Snitch.” Grayson’s trademark bored grit wove into the darkness.
I understood why his fans were so obsessed with his apathy. I’d had a taste of the other side of Grayson, of his depths of passion deeper and hotter than the earth’s core. Now that I’d had a taste of it, I found myself wanting to do anything to hear it again.
The growl.
The heat.
The bite.
I knew it meant nothing. It’s just, in a twisted way, I was the only one he can trust. Our truth bulwarked by deals, and more secrets, and contracts. It wasn’t how it’s supposed to go, but in Gray’s life, it’s insurance.
When I didn’t immediately respond, he said, “Your thoughts are almost louder than your constant shifting.”
“What did you mean earlier when you said I’ll be gone soon?” I asked the dark.
He didn’t respond.
I shifted again.
“What did you and Lottie talk about?” I tried instead. I had no right to ask, I never did, but the darkness peeled away our caste.
“What did you and her brother talk about?” he countered.
Silence pervaded.
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t tell him everything…I just couldn’t. But maybe if I opened up a little, he would share a glimpse of himself.
“He made me think he loved me and then ghosted me,” I said. “As part of a bet.”
I could physically feel the silence between us.
“Come up here.” His cool voice drifted through the dark.
I know I shouldn’t. I’m falling harder than I ever did with West, and the crash would obliterate me. There won’t be enough tape in the world to piece me back together.
“Snitch—”
“I can’t come up there,” I whispered. “I can’t do it. I can’t wake up in the morning and go back to being nothing.”
The thunderous roar of waves amplified the silence. I figured he had droppe
d the matter, and I let my vision blur in the glimmering crystals of his art deco chandelier above.
Then he spoke. “I can’t wake up tomorrow and not smell you in my sheets, Snitch.”
My breath caught.
Silently, I crawled up, making sure to stay on top of the sheets.
This thing between us in the dark was more dangerous than anything that he did to me in the light. These moments we snuck in the dark felt like our little secrets from reality. I studied him, shirtless, arms folded behind his neck, making his biceps and triceps pop.
“Something on your mind, Snitch?” He slowly turned to me, a look in his eyes that said he knew I’d been watching.
This time, I didn’t look away.
“I was wondering the same,” I whispered.
His brow furrowed, but he said nothing.
“Did you always dream of being the CEO of Crowne Industries?” I asked.
Grayson laughed bitterly. “Did you always dream of being a servant?”
My heart pinched. “You can do anything. It’s not the same.”
He rolled his neck, staring back at the ceiling. “I’ve been working at Crowne Industries for as long as I can remember. For my seventh birthday, Grandpa had me fire an employee before their forty-year anniversary, to teach me about the importance of losing deadweight. On my thirteenth birthday, Grandpa wouldn’t let me go to bed until I’d secured the votes for a hostile takeover. From the time I was seventeen, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s were all dedicated to the Crowne.”
He said it without any emotion, and that made it so much sadder to me.
I scooted closer, entranced. Until I could see how his knuckles were abraded—blood had crusted on the back of his hand.
From when he’d punched someone.
For me.
“What did you want to do?” I said quietly. “Before you had no choice?”
“Too young to remember.” He turned his head, blue eyes catching mine. “What about you, Snitch?”
“I wanted to be a poet,” I said. “I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to have a voice. I wanted to be seen.”
His stony blue eyes cracked and filled with so much emotion that I had to look away, down at the silky black sheets that barely separated us.
Sheets he’d said he wanted to smell like me.
“I like you in the dark,” I said quietly. “Away from everyone else. Why can’t you always be like this?” The quiet engulfed us. “I’m starting to think we have more in common than either of us wants to admit,” I whispered, looking up.
He arched a cocksure brow. “Oh yeah?”
“You’re born to be seen, and because of that, you hide your heart. I was born to be forgotten, and because of that, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I don’t think it’s working out so well for either of us.”
“Why do you keep fucking talking to me like this?” he asked. “Why is it only you?”
I sucked in a breath. “Everyone’s too afraid.”
“You’re not?”
“I am.”
Before I could blink, he was on top of me.
Grayson Crowne was on top of me. His arms caged me, holding his weight. A satin-pajama-clad knee separated my thighs, and his shirtless abdomen was a hot weight against my belly.
He traced my lips and every breath vanished. “These fucking lips…witchcraft.”
It was too much to focus on. Grayson’s hot, carved eight-pack only separated by my pajamas, his cock growing harder against my thigh. Caged by him, spelled by his dark, possessive eyes. The soft pad of his finger caught the ridges of my bottom lip, pulling, tugging.
“Please don’t make me leave Crowne Point,” I breathed against his finger.
His eyes softened. “You’ll go back to your world, I’ll go back to mine. That’s all, Snitch.”
Things must have gone well with Lottie then. I opened my mouth to ask, but he pushed the finger tracing my lips into my mouth, and all thoughts vanished. At my sharp inhale, his eyes flamed, then flashed down to my breasts, back up to me.
“I’m thinking I need to let you go, Snitch… There’s just one problem.” He dragged my lip out to expose my teeth, rubbing my gums. “I’ve also started thinking what happens at night doesn’t count.”
Then he slammed his lips against mine.
Grayson captured my face, biting and claiming my lips. I arched my back, and he freed a hand from my cheek, grasping the small of my back, sealing me against his body.
Every breath I took, he stole. Every movement, he corrupted.
It was like our first kiss, but darker, stronger.
More possessive.
“The bruises I’m going to give you, Snitch.” He groaned. “I’m going to cover you in them. No one will know.”
I gasped and he slanted his mouth, stealing it. I dragged my nails across his bare back. My heart pounded and ached and burned with his gentle kiss and brutal words.
I groaned his name.
“Fuck…” He dragged the fabric of my nightgown, exposing my shoulder, never leaving my mouth. “I’m going to make you scream that.”
He was still calling me Snitch, and a weird, twisted, dark part of me liked it. It was humiliating and savage and cruel, and combined with his attention it made my stomach ache in ways I didn’t know possible.
He bit my lip, and I tasted copper.
I hissed and he pulled back, watching me, waiting. I touched my lip, wet where he’d bitten.
“More.”
His eyes darkened, a strangled sound in his throat. When he dragged me back to him this time the fervor was doubled. Frenzied. Fire.
But my throat filled with cotton.
“I’m not going to sleep with you when you love someone else,” I gasped through kisses on my neck. “While you’re practically with someone else. I won’t be that person.”
Don’t make me that person.
He raked his fingers down my thighs, leaving a bruising trail, and with his ragged exhale, he stopped kissing me.
He lifted himself onto his elbows. “That’s going to be a problem for me, Snitch.”
Our eyes locked. Pulsating.
“You’re starting to take up too much space inside me. I don’t think there’s any other way to get you out.”
When he kissed me again, it was slow, gentle, languorous. My heart bled from the tenderness and the words I’d always wanted to hear, yet fate had given me a catch-22. His confession was wrapped inside barbed wire. Maybe he was starting to feel what I felt…but to him it was a tumor that needed to be ripped out.
Brutal kisses and gentle words, or gentle kisses and brutal words—I was learning there was no other way with Grayson. He never gave you both.
“I don’t want this to end,” I said against his lips. “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want you to forget me.”
Use me to forget me. Why did they always do that? Why did I always let them?
Grayson froze and pulled back, lips red and swollen from kissing me. Eyes stone and impenetrable.
“Forgetting you would be…” He trailed off for so long, that same distant stony look in his eyes. I wished I could drag it back, the bleeding part of me.
“It would be impossible,” he said at last, locking eyes with me, tone harder than diamond.
My heart cracked in uncertainty. Words I wanted to hear, but he looked so, so unhappy.
Then below us, the door slammed against the wall.
“Grayson!” his mother called.
Twenty-Five
GRAY
* * *
My mother waited for me in my foyer, always dressed like she was about to host some luncheon for the queen, even at three in the morning.
“It’s the middle of the fucking night,” I whispered.
My mother smiled with glee—fucking glee. The last time I’d seen that look on her face we’d learned Gemma was betrothed to Horace.
At the ripe age of thirteen.
“This can’t wait.”
I tangled my blond hair in my fingers, nerves on edge. “What is it?”
She pressed her palms together. “Next Christmas.”
Fucking Mayday.
“…Is another bullshit Crowne family holiday party?” I said, knowing it wasn’t, knowing in my gut what she was about to tell me.
“Is your marriage, dear,” she said lightly.
I walked away from her, to the desk pressed against the ocean window, and tore open the drawer that held my suckers. I grasped for a lemon one, ripping off the plastic and shoving it into my mouth.
“What happened to the ‘end of summer’?”
“We were worried you were getting too…distracted with extracurricular activities.”
My mother kept a warm tone, but her words were sharp.
I knew she wasn’t talking about fucking tennis.
I don’t want to go back. I don’t want you to forget me.
I could sense my mother at my back, her soft ivory hands no doubt clasped at her waist, waiting for my perfect response. The kind that she’d come to expect from me, the perfect son. For the first time, I didn’t want to give it. I wanted to pull an Abigail and revolt.
A loud crash sounded outside the door.
Snitch.
I turned to see Mother’s face instantly twisted in suspicion.
I jabbed the lemon sucker into my cheek. “Does Charlotte du Lac know about this?” I asked, quickly shifting her attention. “When I last spoke to her, she seemed pretty certain that the marriage was still just a possibility.”
My mother looked away, silence speaking volumes. I shut the door so Snitch couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation and gently guided my mother to sit on one of the couches in my foyer.
“Great. I can’t wait to wed a woman who can’t lift her veil because then everyone would see the running mascara.”
Mom laughed. “Give Charlotte some credit.” She narrowed her eyes. “We all thought you’d be happy. You’ve been in love with her since grade school.”
I narrowed my eyes on the shut door, dragging my hands down my face. “Call me old-fashioned for wanting her to like me.”
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