“Abigail needs more security,” I said, getting straight to the point.
She laughed, closemouthed. “Abigail needs a lot of things. More attention isn’t one of them.”
I eyed the box I’d set on a gold-and-glass coffee table, preparing for Tansy’s arrival. I’d had a bereft hope when I called for Tansy that maybe I could convince her with a simple plea. Abigail kept her secrets in a box for a reason. She acted like she doesn’t want her mother’s approval, but it’s the one thing she wants above all else. If I told Tansy, I was betraying her.
I lifted the box for Tansy, filling her in on everything as Tansy flipped through it with bored disinterest. It was a betrayal, and I hoped it was worth it. The thought of what would have happened to Abigail had I not been there…
Tansy was quiet after she reached the bottom, her eyes ever calculating; then she spoke. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“No.”
Tansy nodded. “We can hardly afford any more bad press.”
It was moments like these I was reminded with a dousing of ice cold water to my spine how different I was. You could almost think you were like them, and then they said shit like this. I told her her daughter had been drugged, almost carted off to God knows where, and her mind was on shit like the press.
“Abigail needs more security,” I said again, trying to keep the venom out of my voice.
She flipped back through the photos. “Mmm…”
“You can afford a small army for your other children, but I’m here telling you someone wants to harm your youngest, and you don’t care?”
“Where were you when all of this supposed drama was happening?” She lifted her head, pinning me with her gray eyes, taking in the dried blood on my shirt, the bruise forming around my eye.
Tansy had never liked me.
She glared when I didn’t immediately avert my eyes. I exhaled, looking away. You’re not supposed to look a Crowne in the eye. It was the rule all servants followed on threat of punishment, being fired—or worse. Me? I’ve always been in the gray.
I wasn’t a servant when Abigail picked me up. Now… now I’m something in between.
Even Beryl Crowne didn’t always have me follow the rule.
Tansy smiled and went back to photos she’d already seen.
I should’ve ended it there.
“Are you going to be so calm when your daughter is raped and left for dead?”
She cut herself on the corner of a photo with a barely audible hiss.
Slowly her eyes landed on mine.
“Abigail is not the sweet girl you make her out to be, Theo Hound. I thought you knew that most of all.” She didn’t bother stopping the blood. It dripped onto the photos. “When she was eleven, she skinned her own knee to get my affection. When she was twelve, she bled through her party dress and started a scene. When she was fifteen, well…” Her eyes pinned me, Abigail’s fifteen-year-old attention grab. “What makes you so certain Abigail isn’t behind this?”
Tansy left me with that question; however, she took a few of the photos and notes. I stared at the closed doors, hoping she would at least look into it.
Whoever he was, he had money and power. This went beyond some crazed fan’s imagination. He had the means to make fantasy a reality.
The most chilling part about it was that every letter is signed off your beloved. The photos are written alongside letters as if he was there with her, two couples going shopping together, or going for ice cream on a date.
It’s clearly a love letter, so what will happen if he can’t make the fantasy a reality? If it all comes crashing down?
Abigail was already starting to sit up when I got back. I went to her side, pressing her chest and telling her to lie down.
She pressed a hand to her head. “What happened?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You were drugged—”
Abigail cut me off with a gasp. I thought it was about her being fucking drugged, but then her eyes widened on me, soft fingers coming to my split lip.
“Theo…” Her words were plush, almost as much as her touch trailing my cheek, down to the blood staining my collar. She tried to get up again, so I pressed harder on her chest.
She rubbed three fingers at my lip like she wanted to wash away the blood and pain. I shouldn’t like it. I definitely shouldn’t remember all the times she had washed away the blood.
“I don’t like you getting in fights,” she said, fingertips dancing lightly around the circumference of the bruise.
“Only for you, sweet girl.”
She lowered her hands, eyes down, working her now bloodstained fingers.
“Who was he, Abigail?” I asked softly.
She rolled her lips, eyes finding a gold-encrusted clock. “I need to get ready for France.”
“Paris? That’s what you’re worried about?”
“And Spain. Switzerland. I’m worried my siblings are packed and ready to go, and my mother is once again going to point out I’m not.”
I let her stand.
She walked around her room in a wrinkled party dress, clearly still disoriented. It tugged on my chest, and I wanted to help her.
I tangled my hands in my hair. “Who the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know. I was drugged, remember? Have you seen my suitcase?” She exhaled. “This isn’t my job… where the fuck is Story?”
“I know you’re lying.”
No one batted an eye when he had Abigail on his arm. There weren’t a lot of rules at those parties, but one was written in stone: only the invited were allowed. Some average loser fan wasn’t going to weasel his way in.
Everyone knew everyone, so Abigail knew him.
“Why won’t you just fucking let me in?”
She froze, looking over her shoulder at me with a wrinkle in her brow.
There was no reason for her to let me in, no reason for me to want it. Not anymore. Yet my chest still pounded with almost losing her, and I couldn’t get what she’d said to me on the boat out of my head. It was rough and raw in my voice.
She looked away and continued packing.
I fiddled with the bracelet in my pocket. Abigail said I broke her heart, but she left me. She ditched me after taking me in and making me think I belonged somewhere, finally. For no fucking reason. One minute she was kissing me, the next I was gone.
I’d remember the day forever. When I learned I was being sent away, I figured a few thousand miles was nothing.
I’m going to California, Abigail.
Good. Don’t ever fucking talk to me again.
Then she slammed the door.
She’d made me feel safe, she’d made me feel like I could let down my walls, and then she’d gutted me.
Anger rose hot and acidic up my throat.
“I don’t know what the hell you think happened, Abigail.” I tossed the bracelet on the stand. It landed with a clack. “But you abandoned me.”
15
THEO
The Crowne family jet was just one of many they owned. It was over $500 million, paid for by Crowne Industries, and used mostly for shit like this—holidays. Every summer after the Fourth of July they went on vacation, ending with a few days with their grandfather in Switzerland. It used to be Abigail’s favorite time of the year; now she looked at the massive plane with melancholy.
A pang of guilt hit me.
“You’re late,” Tansy said, arms folded, standing at the foot of the grand staircase leading to the open doors of the plane. The ocean was a steely-blue line beyond the emerald manicured lawn and tarmac that was the Crowne Hall landing strip.
Abigail sighed, not bothering to explain herself, following her mother up the steps.
Inside, Gray had already kicked up his feet, remote in hand, video game on one of the many razor thin televisions inside the plane. Next to him, a girl sat, hands in her lap, eyes down.
Abigail zeroed in on her, jaw dropping like she was going to do a classic Abigail outbu
rst, but then Tansy stepped in the way.
“I’m sure I don’t need to worry about you this time,” Tansy said, eyes thinning to a glare. Abigail closed her mouth, nodding, and Tansy headed to the master bedroom in the back, where she would take a cocktail of pills and wake up when we landed.
I briefly wondered what had happened when I was away to make Tansy say that.
Abigail sat down, eyes on the girl next to Gray. Though she was vaguely familiar, she didn’t look like Gray’s usual conquests, with their professionally blown-out hair and even more blown-out lips. Nearly every inch of her cocoa skin was covered in fabric, from her wrists to her neck, like she’d stepped out of the Victorian era. Her curly hair was done up in a bun, but stray spirals fell in a halo across her face.
For some reason, Abigail fumed.
“Did she break your heart too?” I asked.
Abigail flinched, then turned her attention to a huge round window. There were many like it on the plane, letting in bright-white light. I drummed my fingers along my knee. Sunlight was an ethereal line along her profile.
I knew I should let it go. She was just trying to get under my skin the way I’d been getting under hers.
“How exactly did I break your heart?” I prodded.
Abigail stood abruptly, not bothering to look at me. I quickly followed. She walked past Gray playing his video game. Gray yelled when she blocked his view. She walked through the dining room, past Gemma on her phone and Horace picking something out of his nail, until she reached the bathroom.
She held the door open, glare sharp. Behind her vanity lights were hot white and a marble countertop held every assorted accoutrement the rich could possibly need.
I placed my hand on the doorframe. “What the hell do you think happened? What story have you been telling yourself?”
“I have to pee.” She slammed the door in my face, forcing me to jump back.
Abigail was in the bathroom for an hour, until Gemma knocked to be let in. I leaned against the opposite wall the entire fucking time, grinding my teeth.
“What did you eat?” Gemma yelled, slamming her fist.
The door flew open as Gemma was about to slam her fist again. Gemma fell forward, stumbling and almost falling on white marble just as Abigail walked out.
“There are other bathrooms,” Abigail snapped.
“This is my part of the plane,” Gemma huffed, fixing her blonde waves.
Abigail walked by me like I was nothing more than a painting or the on-plane fireplace they lit during the winter.
“Abigail—”
“It’s in the past. It’s over. Stop bringing it up.”
“God fucking dammit, just stay still.” I slammed my hands, bracketing her. Next to us, a vase of freshly cut flowers shook. Too hard. Too loud. Gray shot us a barely curious look, and the girl he was with did too, but she quickly averted her eyes.
I lifted my hands.
“I saw you with her,” she said. “After I kissed you, you told Gemma you loved her, just like everyone else.”
She saw that?
But I didn’t have time to dwell, because Abigail was on the move again, determined to walk all six thousand square feet of this fucking plane.
I caught up to her, whispering low as we passed Gray, “It’s not what you think.”
“I heard you say I love you!” she yelled, spinning on me. “You can’t trick me on this, Theo.”
So fuck being private?
Gray threw his remote to the side, crossing his arms overhead. “Okay, this is way more interesting than demolishing eleven-year-olds.”
Abigail shot Gray a look, then kept walking, picking up the pace.
“Stop, no, come back,” Gray said without any vehemence, grabbing the controller out of the girl’s lap.
“I wasn’t saying that to her. I was saying that about you.”
Abigail stopped in her tracks and I nearly ran into her shoulder. I thought I was about to get through to her, but then she steeled herself again, shooting me a glare.
“How dumb do you think I am?”
“Abigail—”
“Tea?” A stewardess appeared with a plate of small, steaming cups and rolled white cotton. “Or towel?”
Are you fucking kidding me? I nearly dragged my hands down my face.
Abigail affected a smile. “Thank you.”
She took a cup of tea and headed back over to the couch Gray was sitting on. Gray eyed Abigail before going back to his video game. There was an unwritten rule on the Crowne jet: all of the Crownes kept to their own section of the plane.
I stood between the fully stocked bar and a couch, watching Abigail just a few feet away. I was at an impasse. All this time, all this trauma and trouble, was because she’d overheard that night I went to Gemma?
There was a part of me, a very ugly, jagged, and calcified part, that said to ignore it, to continue on as I had. It didn’t erase the years of heartbreak. It didn’t erase what she’d done—she’d sent me away without bothering to ask my side of the story.
But I also couldn’t ignore what it did do.
It gave me a reason. All this time I thought she’d abandoned me for nothing.
Abigail used Gray as a shield. It was already hard enough ripping my heart out of the concrete vines it grew. If there was one person in this world I didn’t want to watch, it was Gray fucking Crowne. The guy thought I was worse than gum beneath his shoe.
I dragged my hand through my waves. “I knew we couldn’t be together.”
At my voice, Abigail looked up from her tea, surprise written across her features.
“A guy like me, with someone like you, Abigail? I was your dog. I was only good enough to sleep at the foot of your bed.”
“Yup,” Gray said, without taking his eyes off his video game.
“Theo—”
I waved a hand, silencing her. I had to get this out.
“You weren’t just my best friend, Abs. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t lose you… but if I loved you, I would. Every day with you I got closer to telling you the truth and ruining everything. When you kissed me?”
For a minute I’d let myself believe I was worthy of love.
Let myself believe she might not abandon me.
I exhaled, shaking my head at the memory. When I looked up, our eyes locked across the small space.
“I just wanted to go back to being your friend—needed us to go back. I knew if I told Gemma what I felt, she’d give me the truth. She might stand a chance of fixing what I felt before it was too late.”
“What did she say?” Her fingers clasped the porcelain cup, joints white.
“That I wasn’t worthy of thinking those thoughts about you, let alone saying them aloud. She was right. She reminded me how lucky I was to just stand next to you.”
Abigail opened her mouth, but it was my turn to leave. At least five miles in the air, I could be certain the man who wanted to harm her wasn’t aboard. In a plane bigger than most houses, I could keep my distance.
Even still, I made sure she was always in my sights.
Abigail was oddly quiet. Maybe thirty minutes passed, and she didn’t so much as grumble, even when Gray elbowed her as he played his game.
When Gemma came in from the back of the plane, Abigail tracked her. I could see the tension rising in her neck. Gemma went to the cockpit, probably to ask on flight time. She had a bottle of wine in one hand and glass in the other, laughing at something the captain had said.
“Why is Story with you?” Abigail sniped, eyes still on Gemma.
“Who?” Gray asked.
“My servant.”
That’s when I realized why she was so familiar. When I lived at Crowne Hall, I’d seen her around, though five years had shaved some of the youth from her features, and she hadn’t been Abigail’s girl then.
Gray glanced at the girl to his left like he’d just noticed her for the first time. At the attention, the girl’s eyes widened lik
e a bug under a magnifying glass.
“You took her from me. She doesn’t belong to you.”
Gray shrugged, eyes back on his video game. “Tell me her favorite food, and you can have her back.”
Abigail sputtered. “Are you kidding? Can you name any of your servants’ favorite food?”
Gray shook his head, an amused smile on his face. The girl rolled her lips, watching Gray.
“This is so. Fucking. Ridiculous,” Abigail practically screamed. She stood up, eyes still on Gemma, closing the distance between them.
I knew before she’d reached her, Abigail was going to explode, so I was already standing up.
“Bitch.” Abigail shoved Gemma. Gemma stumbled into the cockpit, hitting the back of the captain’s chair. The plane wobbled, the wine in Gemma’s hand miraculously unspilled.
“Take this out of here or we’ll have to land,” the captain said.
“What the fuck?” Gemma looked at Abigail.
“You ruin everything.”
The pilot said something again about taking it out of the cockpit, but Abigail was blind. She shoved Gemma again just as I reached her, grasping her by the elbow.
“What did I do to make you hate me so much?” Abigail demanded, tears in her eyes.
“Hi, stealing the words out of my mouth!” Gemma said.
Abigail lunged with so much force she slipped out of my grasp. They were at each other, tearing at their hair. I put myself between them, but they still managed to get at each other.
Only Abigail would start a catfight five miles in the sky.
Abigail slapped Gemma, knocking the bottle of wine from her hand. It flew in a spiral arc toward the front of the cockpit. In retaliation, Gemma threw her glass at Abigail. I blocked the brunt of it, so it got in my hair, stained my shirt and jeans. The captain yelled as the bottle finished its trajectory against the front of the cockpit, shattering against the window and spilling onto the controls, some even splashing back onto us.
“Abigail Genevieve!” Tansy yelled, and it all came to a stop.
Tansy stood in the doorway to the cockpit. It was one of the rare times you saw Tansy Crowne not entirely made up. She had an emerald silk mask around her neck, matching silk pajamas, and her hair tied in a scarf.
Vote Then Read: Volume II Page 196