I dropped them into my mouth.
Everyone at our old school had been on some kind of prescription, usually doing a combo of the Holy Trinity: Xanny, Addy, and Oxy. Gemma’s drug of choice was Xanax.
It took a moment for the pills to kick in. When they did, the pain was still there, the constant ache, but it was dulled, fuzzy around the edges, not cutting into my heart so much.
Suddenly I wasn’t dreading another forgotten birthday, but I was hungry.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten… maybe two days ago, when the mysterious food from my favorite Crowne Drive-In Diner appeared. I couldn’t imagine Mom bringing that to me, let alone going to a drive-in diner.
When I came downstairs, there was a party.
A fucking party. On my birthday. That was just too much. Everyone was present: my family, the Harlingtons. The only one absent was my fiancé.
Pity.
My eyes zeroed in on Gemma.
Her hair glowed under the chandelier lights, her smile was radiant, and she laughed with Gray and our mom. I couldn’t take it.
Even on my birthday it was about her.
I wasn’t trying to be sneaky; it was just that everyone’s eyes were on Gemma all the time. Even with four certified bulwarks surrounding me, they focused on her. I grabbed a pair of scissors off a table filled with presents and approached Gemma.
I grasped a chunk of Gemma’s hair. The hair Theo’d probably tangled. The hair that lay on the same bed—
And cut off a chunk.
I could almost hear the party come to a crashing halt as eyes landed on me, my sister’s hair in my hands. Her flowing rose gold hair, the hair synonymous with being a fucking Crowne, and once voted most likely to drive a boy insane in boarding school, was now dead in my fingers.
Gemma’s hands flew to her head, feeling the empty space once filled with luscious tresses.
Gray laughed.
Mom looked at my ripped dress, my unwashed hair, still messy from the way Theo had tangled his hands in it, and the hoodie I wore over the bespoke dress, culminating in what I was calling broken-heart chic.
Her eyes narrowed on me, focusing on my probably glassy eyes.
My mom’s smile was tight when she spoke. “Abigail, are you unwell?”
That was Crowne for Are you fucking high right now?
Gemma had been asked that a few times too many. Gray occasionally.
I looked at the rose gold strands glimmering between my fingers. I felt empty. This didn’t erase what happened. Theo had still chosen her over me, like everyone else.
“What…the…fuck?” Gemma finally screamed, coming out of shock. Her hair fell from my grasp, fluttering to the floor.
“You take everything from me,” I yelled at her. “My family, my love, my own birthday.”
I didn’t care Mom was watching, or that I was confirming who Grandpa had accused me of being. I was Abigail, the fire starter, the worst of them all.
All I could think about was her fucking hair in his hands.
She never even looked at me funny, never even looked slightly guilty. I wasn’t insane enough to expect an apology, but it was like I’d imagined it all.
So I lunged for her, my fingers tangling in her now unevenly cut hair. We were barely at each other for a few seconds before the men at my back pulled me away, and the men at her’s did the same.
“You idiot!” Gemma’s crudely cut blonde hair was mussed. “This was for you.”
She waved her arm around, at the smashed cake. At the champagne fountain, smashed to crystalline shards on the floor, leaking gold to the marble.
Then I noticed more little details. A table of presents with my name on it. The dining table had a name card for me between my mother’s and Gemma’s. This was the birthday I’d always dreamed about.
The cake was so smashed the letters now read appy irt day gai.
“Surprise.”
Hours and a few more pills later, I found my sister in her room.
“Gemma,” I said.
“If you’re here to cut off more of my hair, could you wait until the mask I’ve put on sets.” She eyed me from the oval mirror set in gold in her vanity. “I’m deep conditioning.”
I sobbed. I fell to her floor in a heap and sobbed, sobbed, and sobbed.
I’d meant to come up here strong, but the minute I opened her door, every goddamn thing I’d been trying to ignore flooded me, and my knees gave out.
I don’t know how long I was on the ground, but Gemma whistled when I was done. “You’re fucked up.”
“Why did you do it?” I lifted my head, looking up at her through bleary eyes.
“How high are you right now?”
A minute passed. I summoned enough energy to get to my feet. “Why did you have to sleep with him? You can have anyone you want. Why did it have to be him?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Theo!”
Guilt slashed her pretty face—I’ve never seen her look guilty—but all she said was, “Ew.”
I flew at her before I realized what I was doing, my hands sliding through the creamy conditioner in her hair, pressing her into her bed. She yelled, trying to shove me off. All I saw was white hot rage.
“Get off me.” She elbowed my stomach. “I don’t like him.”
“That’s worse you sociopath!” I got her on her back, arm pinned behind her, using the move Theo taught me. I pressed her arm down and she yelped.
“I had no choice!”
I didn’t let her go, but I eased up the pressure on her arm.
She huffed, turning her head so she could somewhat catch my eyes.
“Do you want me to say sorry? That I felt bad? I didn’t. I didn’t think about your feelings, like you didn’t think about mine when you had Horace’s tongue in your throat and hand up your leg.”
Shame swamped me, and I slowly got off her. She climbed up, sitting against her jewel-toned satin pillows, her long, elegant legs stretched so they nearly met me at the foot of her bed.
“We didn’t have sex, Abigail.”
I glared, wiping my nose. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Kind of.”
She climbed atop her pillows at the look on my face. “Did you actually see us fucking, Abigail?”
“I saw your dress. I saw your lingerie. I saw you kissing. I saw the photo and the marks you left on him. I saw the condom. Don’t fucking try and say that wasn’t something.”
She paused, like she was struggling with something deep, but all she said was, “We promised not to talk about what happened, but I didn’t have sex with him.”
He’d made a promise with her? I didn’t know my heart could break anymore, but I felt some last clinging edge chip off, crumbling to ash.
“I don’t believe you.” Still, doubt sewed its way into my mind.
She threw up her hands. “You got me. I’m secretly in love with Theo Hound. Tonight I’m going to confess my love for him at a Walmart or something.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It is, because it’s so ridiculous.”
“I can’t believe you, Gemma, because what does that mean? He left. He… he fake fucked you, and he left. After obliterating me with a lie for no reason.” It didn’t make sense. Why would he lie? Why would he say he slept with her when he didn’t?
“Sister, the day I have sex with someone like Theo Hound is the day this family is really and truly fucked.” Gemma stared at me with her bright blue eyes, unblinking.
A Crowne didn’t lie… at least, a good Crowne didn’t. Gemma was a good Crowne. Not like me, who got so messed up and tangled in her lies she could barely see the sunlight beneath their wicked, curving branches.
I fell to her bed, the truth sinking in.
That was so much more terrible.
She went through that night from her perspective. Theo had approached her, and she’d suggested a trade. They’d kissed, gone up to that room, where she’d changed into s
weats, and then she’d given him her dress.
“What did he give you? What could he possibly have given you?” Theo was nowhere near the street kid I’d found years ago, but Gemma was a Crowne. She had everything. If she didn’t, she’d buy it.
What could he have traded her?
She grew quiet, twisting her oversize sleep shirt between her fingers. The front of the white shirt read in black, blocky letters:
NO SOCIALIZING,
NO PANTS,
NO SHITS GIVEN,
GIRL’S CLUB.
“I have a debt,” she whispered. “I’m trying to repay it. Theo had what I needed.”
“But—”
“That’s all I’m saying!” Gemma went to her drawer, pulling out a jar of pills and a bottle of tequila. “Pick your poison.”
I pointed to the tequila. She raised a brow and shrugged.
“I think I preferred it when I thought it was real,” I said. “It was cleaner. I don’t know what to do with myself now. It still feels the same. There’s still a hole inside me. I still can’t trust him. But now those feelings feel wrong.”
It was wicked, and classic Theo. I could never be clear in the head, emotions simple and with a logical beginning, middle, and end. He had to step in the middle, throwing them to a thousand different beginnings and endings.
I’d told him lies to protect him—at least, that was what I told myself.
If Gemma was telling the truth… I took another long swig of tequila, relishing the burn and bite. Theo and I played our games of truth or promise, but with every truth, more lies bled, and our promises were made with fingers crossed.
Gemma and I drank and got drunker. I chewed on my hoodie string. It tasted like wool and faintly, so faintly, Theo. The part of the hoodie I’d spilled wine on was faint, but visible. I rubbed it, remembering him, his promises to me.
The drunker I got, the more mishmashed my emotions became, and the looser our tongues got.
“So, like… how does he fuck?”
“Gem—” I coughed on the tequila. “Gemma!”
Theo was safe. The reckless, exhilarating, freeing kind of safe that was falling strapped to a bungee cord or skydiving with a parachute. Even the night he destroyed me, Theo had been my safety net.
Sweet girl, that would break you.
I swiped away hot tears.
“Yikes, that bad?”
“No…” A jagged, cutting sigh. “That good.”
I focused on the blurry tequila.
“So we’re like friends now?” I asked, eyeing Gemma. This had been the most we’d talked to each other in years.
Gemma laughed. “Fuck no. But not enemies is a start. Maybe we’ll throw less food at each other.”
“No promises.” I paused with the tequila to my lips, a small smile escaping. “Not enemies.”
I handed her the tequila.
“Not enemies,” she agreed.
Something inside me slammed together at her words, tightening, fixing.
Your bracelet will break if you keep building it with brittle wire.
Theo had seen into me. He’d always seen into me, and he’d known I’d used corroded wire to hold my most precious feelings. Over and over it had broken, leaving me in shambles. But now one wire had started to heal.
Gemma shoved the tequila in my face. “You look like you’re going to cry. If you do that, I’m going to kick you out.”
I took the alcohol, focusing on the burning in my throat and not the constant burning in my eyes.
“So, look,” Gemma said suddenly. “Newt is a total dildo, and you deserve better”—I opened and closed my mouth in shock at the compliment—“but do you think you could give this all up? I know you like your dog—”
“Theo,” I all but growled.
She raised her eyebrows like okay, whatever. “I know you like him but, we have everything. Do you know how rare that is? We are above laws. We exist in a world only a few will ever taste. This is as close to paradise as anyone can ever know. Horace doesn’t expect me to be loyal. I don’t expect it of him. Nothing is going to change.”
Maybe that was the problem.
Eve had thought paradise was a prison, so she took a taste of something else.
“Not much is asked of us,” Gemma said. “We just have to marry. We can fuck whoever we want. You can live in an entirely separate part of the world from Newt so long as you play nice for parties. I don’t want to be like Uncle Albert. He has nothing. Do you want to be like that?”
Maybe… and maybe that wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
“It doesn’t matter,” I croaked. “Theo’s gone.”
Gemma rolled on her side, catching a strand of my hair and twirling it between her fingers.
“What if he came back and was all like”—Gemma lowered her voice, sounding like a caricature of a tough guy—“‘Babe, I made a mistake. Take me back?’”
“That impression is on the money, Gem.”
She paused, looking up at me. “You haven’t called me Gem in years.”
Weird, I hadn’t. The old name just slipped out.
I brushed past it.
“Theo and I are old tape. We come together, we fall apart fast.”
“Orrr…” She stretched out the word, taking a swig of tequila. “You’re two points of a rubber band, like… a…” She slammed her hand on her nightstand, rooting around until she found a bracelet, then she stretched it out, emphasizing her point.
“A bracelet! You come together, stretch apart, come together—but you’re always connected.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Since when are you this poetic?”
“I’ve always been this way.” She yawned. “You were too up your own ass to notice.”
I exhaled.
Maybe.
I closed my eyes, but Theo’s wicked grin from the week before slammed into me. The feel of his hands on my body, his warm breath at my ear, and suddenly it was like he was in the room. Most importantly, I heard him again, forcing me to promise never to love him, or anyone else.
He’d made a promise with my sister that day, too, and the truth was wrapped up in that promise. Maybe it would explain why all of this happened. It could alleviate this brutal pain and take us back to before. Or, more than likely, what was left of my brittle wire would crumble.
I lifted my wrist, staring at the bare skin.
“Bracelets can snap,” I whispered.
But Gemma had already fallen asleep.
I stumbled out of Gemma’s room, still drunk, and spotted Gray in the shadows of the hallway. He had his hand to the wall, arm outstretched, above Story. It looked like he was talking to her, though her eyes were on the floor.
I shuffled over, interrupting whatever they’d been talking quietly about.
“Why is she with you?” I pointed at the girl. “She’s my girl.”
“She’s my girl now.”
He stepped in front of her like he had the first time I’d spotted her. Had he been keeping her all this time? All the while I’d been looking for her? Drunken anger smothered and softened all the other nasty emotions pricking my heart.
I reeled. “What? Why?”
He smiled. “I don’t really think that’s any of your fucking business, Abby.”
I held out my hand to Story. “Do you want to come back?”
Story and I weren’t ever close, but I couldn’t imagine life with my brother was better than with me.
Story rolled her lips, then shook her head. “No, Ms. Crowne.”
I think that was the first time I’d ever heard Story speak. She had always been quiet as a mouse when attending to me. So of course, like every other person in my goddamn life, she was using her voice to leave me.
Gray grinned and turned away, but I grabbed his bicep, pulling him back to me. He hadn’t been expecting that. As much as a prick as Gray was, I rarely stood up to him. He knew just the right buttons to press to piss me off without taking it too far.
“I
think it fucking is, Gray.” I jabbed his chest. “You can’t just take, take, and take. You can’t just take pieces of me that don’t belong to you.”
I was tearing apart. I never stopped.
Why had Theo left me? Why? Why would he be so vicious? It didn’t make sense. The little hope I had that my Theo might still be out there somewhere was proving so much more eviscerating. It cut and it cut and I bled.
I shoved Gray with both hands. “You can’t rip parts of me out, act like you’ll be there to put them together, then fucking leave without warning. You can’t keep doing that. Why do I keep letting you?”
I hadn’t realized I’d been crying until I couldn’t see anymore. The hallway was a blurry, watery mess, like when it rained so hard the windows slammed with anger.
I passed a hand to my aching head. My lip was wet and warm—my nose must have been running.
Gray blinked, then shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t think that was meant for me.”
He waved a hand over his shoulder, motioning for Story to follow. She threw me a concerned glance, before looking at the floor and following Gray.
I fell to my knees.
Thirty-One
THEO
Abigail hadn’t left Crowne Hall in over a week. I couldn’t see what was going on inside, but I got snippets of information from certain servants. She had the guard, and Ned hadn’t been allowed inside Crowne Hall. Tansy was keeping up her end of the deal.
I kept hoping I could catch a glimpse of her.
“Welcome to Crowne Drive-In Diner. We hope you have a royally pleasant day. Can I take your order?” a scratchy voice said through the speaker.
I ordered a double cheeseburger with extra special sauce, fried pickles, and a drink. When the kid came out to hand me my meal, I told him I wanted him to deliver it.
“This is a drive-in diner,” the teenage boy said. “We don’t do delivery.”
I pulled out a wad of cash, counting as much as it would take to bribe him. His lips parted when he took the thousand dollars. When I told him where to take it, he stopped looking at the cash, raising both brows.
“Are you sure? It might not get through—”
“Go to the servant entrance and use this code.”
Heartless Hero Page 25