Stolen Soulmate

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  “I do,” I cried.

  “If you did, you wouldn’t have lied about this.”

  “When I started, I thought it was just a crush and it would go away—”

  “So you were fine with hurting me?”

  “You were fine with hurting me! I was looking out for myself, same as you. It was clumsy and ugly. I was trying to protect myself from you, who I thought you were, who I’d heard you were, who I’d only ever experienced you as.”

  He dropped me, turning to leave without another word.

  I grabbed him. “Wait. Wait. Then I got to know you, and…you’re so much more than I should ever deserve. I didn’t realize how much my lie would hurt until it was too late.”

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. A vicious look flashed across his face that only pissed me off. “Just look what you’re doing to me! You all want my heart, but no one wants to protect it.”

  “Are you comparing me to him?” It came out on a growl.

  I raised my chin, eyes burning. “How are you different? You keep me in the dark. You take pieces of me to build yourself up. You’re all the same. I’m sorry the lie hurt, but I’m not sorry I lied.” I slowly stood. “At some point this becomes about survival. You wrapped your heart in thorns, and I buried mine in secrets.”

  His eyes softened, and for a moment I thought he understood.

  Then he looked me up and down like dirt. “You’re just like every other whore looking for a piece of me.”

  “It’s not about you. You don’t get those pieces of me!” I screamed, throat and lungs and soul hoarse with the effort.

  He slammed his hands on either side of me. “I get all pieces of you,” he growled.

  He pressed me back against the wall, pressing his clothed body into my naked one. The molding bit into my back, and his silky sleep pajamas rubbed against my thighs. His eyes searched mine, furious, and something else…a dark, hidden need.

  “Is that why you’re doing this?” I whispered. “Because I lied?”

  Something flickered across his brow; then he stepped back, saying coldly, “Yes.”

  It didn’t feel right.

  None of this did.

  “I don’t believe you,” I whispered.

  It was his turn to shoot me an uncertain look.

  He wiped it away with his apathetic mask. But I saw through that now. Something was wrong. Something he wasn’t telling me. There was something weighing his shoulders to the point of collapse.

  “The contract is void,” he said coldly. “But I have the girl, so I’m feeling fucking generous. The rest of the money will be in your account tomorrow. Your job is done. Get out of Crowne Hall. Never come back.”

  “You know I can’t leave!” I yelled at his back. “My uncle is dying.”

  He paused. “You have no place here, Snitch. The cooks won’t take you. The maids won’t take you. Do you expect free room and board? There’s only one way you stay.”

  With each second that passed, the brittle wire protecting my heart snapped. I saw what he was implying, the ugly expectation.

  “No,” I whispered. “Don’t say it. I’d sooner rip out my heart, but…I’ll leave. I will. Just let me stay until Uncle p-passes. You won’t even notice me. I’ll live in my old room.”

  “That room is taken now.”

  “I’ll stay with my uncle. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  He shook his head.

  “Please, any other way. Please.”

  He rubbed his sinful, plump bottom lip, pulling it out. It was like I was begging at the feet of the devil.

  “Lottie needs a girl.”

  My heart plummeted. “Even you aren’t that cruel.”

  Lottie’s words echoed in my head, the ones she’d spoken when she’d discovered us. This is cruel, even for you.

  So, so similar.

  “Do you have any other option?” he asked, bored, lazy. “You need somewhere to work, right? I mean, it’s either work for her or keep working beside me. And that would raise questions, right?”

  “Do you know what you’re asking me?” Tears had entirely blurred my vision. “You want me to be a mistress or work beside your wife?”

  Hide forever. Keep it a dirty secret.

  “You know what the girl has to do on the wedding night.”

  His eyes flashed at my words.

  The Crownes have wedding rituals dating back centuries, before they even came to America, and the thought of what I’d have to do…see…made me want to vomit.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I whispered. “You’re doing the thing. The Grayson thing. You don’t think I’ll last a day as Lottie’s girl, let alone months. You’re hoping you can push me away. Push us away. That I’ll grow to hate you. And then it won’t hurt me when you have to marry her. It won’t work.”

  I didn’t see him bend down until my chin was in his hand, grip vicious. “Oh, you see me so well, Snitch.” His words were cutting, mocking, cruel.

  Then he tossed me back to the ground like trash. I threw out my hands to keep from hitting the floor.

  “You think you’ve figured me out?”

  “I see you, Grayson Crowne,” I said through tears. “I see you. Don’t let this ruin everything. You can’t rip us out. You can’t make it disappear. I love you. That doesn’t just go away because you want it to.”

  The pause he took to speak was so long I thought he’d left.

  “Me or Lottie, Snitch.”

  I swallowed. “Lottie.”

  “Then you’re welcome. Lottie only pays a little bit less than us.”

  Fifty-One

  GRAYSON

  * * *

  You wrapped your heart in thorns, and I buried mine in secrets.

  By the time I made it back to my wing, Lottie was curled up on my couch, head on her knees, staring out at the ocean.

  She must have heard me come in, because she said, “So this sucks.”

  I laughed. “Yeah.”

  Awkwardness swamped us. Lottie or my mother had opened the doors to the beach, and chilly fall air numbed the room. But it was better—better than lingering in the stale sadness.

  “You never allowed anyone in here,” she said musingly, “but you let her in here, and even now I’m forced upon you. I think they’re hoping by forcing us in close proximity we’ll have no choice but to like each other.”

  I came around to see her, and her eyes were swollen from crying. In her red eyes I saw Woodsy’s words.

  Your father tried that.

  I’d loved two girls.

  I’d ruined them both.

  “I want to hate you,” she said quietly.

  I looked up. “You don’t?”

  “I do…Because I love you,” she whispered. “I hate you for making me love you, and then changing your mind. I hate you for choosing her.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Lottie…”

  “I hate that you chose her…and I hate that I’m happy it didn’t count. I hate that I’m turning into this person. A vicious person. A greedy person. Someone who’s willing to take what doesn’t belong to them anymore.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said.

  “It’s my fault. I thought maybe when you started liking someone else, my dad would stop trying to force me on you, but when I told him, he called your grandpa.”

  It all made so much fucking sense now.

  I shook my head. “Nah, it’s my fault. I had a thing for you, I pursued you. You have no blame, Lottie. It’s my fault we’re in this.”

  More silence, the melancholy sound of cold ocean waves. The whole place was muted by the overcast sky. There was one more thing I had to take from Lottie. One more thing I had no right to ask

  “I need to ask one more thing from you.”

  Her dark-brown eyes found mine.

  “I need you to take her on as your girl.”

  “You want her as my girl?” Lottie’s face caved. “
The rumors, Grayson. People are already talking. After what you did at our engagement party…We may have stopped print, but you know we can’t silence the internet. Not for long. Do you know what they say about her? About me? I’m a laughing stock. No, worse. I’m pitied. You turned me into everything I was trying to avoid.”

  “It won’t last,” I said. “She won’t last a week.”

  “I can’t think of one reason why I should do it.”

  “I can’t give you any,” I said.

  She pursed her lips. “I have a feeling the reason you’re doing this isn’t out of cruelty.”

  Maybe. Maybe Snitch hit the nail on the head, and I was trying to push her away. Make it easier for her. Make her hate me.

  Or maybe I just couldn’t fucking look at her anymore. It was selfish.

  Lottie sighed, a broken sound. “Just promise me you won’t sleep with her. Ever again. As long as we’re together. Please. I know what I said before. I know I said you could get it out before marriage, but please don’t even look at her.”

  “I won’t.”

  She put her cheek on her knees, like the weight of her emotions was too much. “We’ll be married before the month ends. Does she know?”

  I shook my head. “She’ll be gone before the month.”

  “What if she isn’t?”

  Fifty-Two

  STORY

  * * *

  As the month passed, though I kept my head down, whispers surrounded me like thick fog.

  I was Grayson Crowne’s mistress.

  I was his wife’s new girl.

  Strange how I could be Grayson Crowne’s mistress, when for a month Grayson hadn’t so much as looked in my direction. Each time I saw him in the halls and he walked by me like I was air, another piece of my heart crumbled. I was a ghost again.

  August had flown by, and we were now in September, the leaves changing. Soon they would dot a colorful mosaic on the white sand beach. The Crownes’ annual opulent Labor Day was just around the corner, and I was back on the side I belonged: servant.

  At least Lottie was a lot easier to work with than Abigail had been, though it was more than awkward. Dressing her for public dates with Grayson. Getting her prettied for photo ops. All the while not acknowledging the elephant in the room.

  They’d separated his massive wing, so Lottie had one side of it and Grayson the other. Two bedrooms and bathrooms for Lottie, and two for Grayson. It was about the same size as Abigail’s now.

  “I’ve drawn your bath, Ms. du Lac,” I said. The water was a subdued aquamarine with floating roses, only candles to light the bathroom.

  “Will you stay?” she whispered.

  We rarely said anything to one another. So when she asked me to stay, I nearly did a double take.

  “Uh…Of course.”

  Candlelight flickered against the matte white walls, and her shadow was superimposed against them. She placed her chin in her hands, head out of the tub. I tried not to gawk at her naked body, but she reminded me of the goddesses depicted in oil paintings. She was beautiful, so much more perfect than me.

  “Grayson Crowne was my first kiss, and I was his first kiss. We were twelve, I think. Maybe younger.” She scrunched her eyes, as if remembering. “He was always a good kisser, even when we didn’t know what we were doing. Is he still a good kisser?”

  Yes. He was the most perfect, heart-scarring kisser. Passionate. Gentle. Tender. Biting. He kissed with his entire soul. Lips that branded and hands that bruised. Every kiss was an occasion, a memory, a phenomenon.

  And he’d been my first kiss too. How messed up is that?

  My throat closed up.

  “I—you—you haven’t kissed him?”

  She shook her head. “We fooled around that night…” She met my eyes, and I immediately knew what night she meant. “He didn’t kiss me. Now that I think about it…I’ve been kissing him.”

  Tears fell like perfect pearls down her cheeks, so silent I didn’t notice at first. When I saw, I immediately grabbed a cotton handkerchief, bending before her and blotting her eyes.

  “I’m so, so sorry Ms. du Lac.” I kept repeating it over and over, like it could wash away the stain.

  “Lottie, call me Lottie,” she rasped.

  Eventually her tears stopped, and I sat back.

  “Crowne Hall is huge, and I don’t have any friends here,” she said. “Back home I had friends, and the servants look us in the eyes, and it’s just…warm. Here it’s so cold.” Her pretty dark-chocolate eyes wandered to the window, to the dark night.

  “I can be your friend,” I blurted, before realizing how absurd that was. Of all people in the world Lottie would want to be friends with, I was probably the last.

  Her gaze snapped to mine. “Even after my friends treated you so badly?”

  “I haven’t been a very good friend either.”

  We balanced on such a precarious needle.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, saying the thing that had been weighing on me every time I did her hair or helped her into a dress. “I wasn’t supposed to be in that room. It should have been you. None of this should have ever happened. It’s all my fault.”

  She chewed her lip, looking distant. “Maybe. Or maybe it was fate.”

  “But you love him,” I said.

  “I do,” she agreed. “I love him more than I thought I could. As much as I know it hurts you, I can’t wait to be his wife. I can’t wait for the wedding night. I can’t wait for him to be mine.”

  Our eyes locked. Remorse rippled in her dark irises, but she wasn’t sorry. It was the same way, though I was sorry I’d stolen him, I wasn’t sorry for loving him, the same way I wouldn’t be sorry if I could trade places with her.

  We were only sorry that our love had to hurt each other.

  “But my grandma always said our fates aren’t a mistake.”

  She placed her head against her shoulder, staring out the window.

  Fifty-Three

  STORY

  * * *

  My uncle’s condition was stable though not great. He was fading every time I visited him, and I kept wondering if each visit was the last. He kept talking about where he wanted to be buried. Here. At the grounds. I think he was starting to lose his mind, and it worried me. No servant had ever been buried at Crowne Hall. That was reserved for the Crownes.

  Lottie was too beautiful, too kind—it was impossible to hate her. She let me visit my uncle whenever I wanted. So today I went down to see him with his favorite treat of cookies, but I froze outside the door, a laugh stopping me.

  Grayson’s laugh.

  I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until it snuck into the cracks and crevices his absence weathered.

  “My niece is starting to think I’ve lost my mind, Mr. Grayson.”

  “You can tell her you’ll have a nice big plot of land, with a view of the ocean. Shit, we’ll get you a fucking mausoleum if you want.”

  “I have. She looks at me with pity. Pity for the old man dying of cancer, who’s losing his wits.” Grayson laughed again and my uncle said, “Who am I supposed to say is making this happen?”

  Grayson exhaled, and I imagined him stretching his long arms over his head. “My mother, of course.”

  They both laughed.

  My heart cracked, crumbled, disappeared into the wind.

  I stayed outside the room, holding the tin of cookies, for thirty minutes, maybe an hour. Just listening to him talk with my uncle, at the happiness in my uncle’s voice and the ease in Grayson’s. I hadn’t realized a smile had found its way to my lips until the sound of a chair scraping against the floor wiped it off.

  “See you tomorrow, Woodsy.”

  Tomorrow? How often did he come?

  Seconds later, Grayson walked out of my uncle’s room. It was only the back of him, but it was enough to send my heart into shock. In a brown leather jacket that brought out the gold in his messy hair. Grayson with dark-blue jeans that hugged his ass too well. Grayson with h
is big, messy heart.

  He kept walking, hadn’t noticed me or didn’t care. But I couldn’t leave it be. I set the tin of cookies down to come back to later.

  “Are you ever going to talk to me?” I asked his back.

  Gray froze, two heartbeats marking the hope I had that he would turn around; then he kept walking, heading for the stairs.

  “You promised!” I yelled. “You promised you wouldn’t ignore me. You promised you wouldn’t just disappear.”

  I followed him like the ghost I was, up the winding staircase the led out of the servants’ quarters.

  “I spend all day listening to how much your future wife loves you. How much of a good kisser you are. How much she can’t wait for her wedding night. I almost threw up.”

  We wound and wound, me at his back—all that was missing was a fucking candle in my hand.

  “You know what sucks the most? I can’t hate her. She’s too kind. Too beautiful. Too pure.”

  I slumped against the wall, falling down to the stairs.

  “Was I just a game to you too?”

  I put my head in my hands. Things I didn’t want to acknowledge surfaced, riding a merry-go-round in my head. A bet. Bragging rights.

  My hands were pried from my face, and I was staring into Grayson’s deep pools of blue. He held on to my hands, soft.

  I missed the way he held me. I missed the way his kisses consumed me. I missed the secrets he whispered in the dark.

  “I miss you,” I whispered, weak. “Your bruises have faded, Mr. Grayson.”

  For a single, shining second, Grayson was back.

  My Grayson.

  I don’t know why he’s doing this. I don’t know why we’re apart, but I see the crushing weight on his shoulders. I pried my hand from his, pressing it to his cheek.

  “My Atlas,” I whispered. “If your heart is stone, does it crack and weather?”

  His eyes cracked, and I saw everything, every emotion I thought I’d dreamed up.

  Then he dropped my hand, jaw hard, eyes harder. “I’ll never be able to give you anything else but this, Story.” He reached into his back pocket, pulling out a golden, heart-shaped locket.