It was a lot of money for an uncertainty. I still wasn’t sure Abigail ate the last meal I sent her, but it was better than nothing. Every report I’d received from inside said she wasn’t attending meals.
I didn’t stop moving after Crowne Drive-In Diner. I hadn’t stopped since the ball. If I even so much as slowed down, I’d feel it all. Feel the poison still inside me from the thing I’d done. It was crippling.
The ugly fucking truth is all the while I’ve been trying to break Abigail, I’ve been the broken one. I love Abigail. I love her without walls and reason. I will always fucking love her. I’m the poster boy for unrequited love, and I have been since the first day I saw Abigail Crowne.
She abandoned me like everyone else, and the first chance I got to come back to her, I took. Because with her, the knife is in me, and I’m gutted, but without her, I’m bleeding.
There’d been a time when I had dreams, and I’d wanted to help kids like me. Now? The only reason I hadn’t completely faded away was the urge to keep moving for Abigail, to fix what I’d broken.
At least I could help make Abigail’s dream come true. Her dream college was one of the few who accepted fall applications late into August. Maybe that was fate. She was so fucking talented, and she deserved to follow her dreams.
I dropped off the application in the post, then met my next stop under the pier. He leaned against the wood column, on his phone, a hat shadowing his face, white designer sneakers digging into the sand.
He looked up, spotting me.
“You look like shit,” Gray said, shoving his phone in his pocket.
I don’t know if I’ve slept, really slept, since that night.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
I arched a brow. “Miss me, Crowne?”
I’d been staying at the one motel in Crowne Point, a little thing inland, up on a hill, with a view of the ocean. I kept saying I’d leave. This place was never meant for me. But every day I thought of something new Abigail needed.
“You’re the ant infestation I’ve been trying to rid us of for years. You’re almost gone. Just a few more bug bombs and your ass is finally out of our lives.”
He grinned, and, done with catching up with Gray fucking Crowne, I moved on with the point of meeting him. “Did you get the cake?”
“Yeah—”
“Presents?”
“Yeah—”
“And you went? All of you?”
“Yeah, but”—he snapped his fingers—“I think you’re forgetting something, dog.”
I pulled out the last of my cash and shoved it at Gray’s chest. “That’s the last of my savings.” Gray scrambled to keep it from blowing away in the salty air. “You make her feel like a fucking princess. A real one.”
Gray arched a brow without looking up, counting the cash I gave him. “You’re a thousand short.”
“Something came up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a lighter. He put the flame to the green corner of the stack.
Nineteen thousand dollars. All the money I’d managed to save working under Crowne.
Gone in an instant.
The last of it fluttered in the wind, glancing my cheek like butterfly wings.
“I didn’t even want this,” Gray said. “I just wanted to see the look on your face. It’s… underwhelming.” He sighed like I’d put him out.
Prick.
Whatever. Whether he wanted to use it, burn it, or shove it up his ass. It had served its purpose. At least I was done with him. I turned, not wanting to stay another second longer than I had to with Gray Crowne.
“Why are you doing this?” he called to my back. “You lost. You’ll never be one of us.”
Leave it to Gray to assume that was why I was ever here.
Someone had to stand behind that girl. Someone needed to be her dog.
Thirty-Two
ABIGAIL
They were making my birthday up to me.
Up to me.
A Crowne didn’t apologize, let alone make amends. It was so surreal. They’d rented out the pier so we could have a family day, and I wondered if I’d stumbled into an alternate universe, one where my family members loved me more than Theo Hound. My mother even let me wear the Crowne tiara and would join us soon.
The wooden railing was decorated beautifully with white satin ribbons. We had balloons, and they’d even washed and repainted the wood.
We fed swans off the pier. Most people thought of swans as freshwater animals, which was another reason our swans are so popular. It was one of the only places you can regularly see swans swimming in the ocean.
In the right light, it looked like magic.
So of course my sister and brother were on their phones, bored.
I had everything I’d ever wanted. My mom’s affection. My sister and brother not being total a-holes. The fucking tiara. Yet I looked around me, as if the sunny beach air would suddenly explain to me why I still felt so empty.
When I’m finished with you, will you be lost forever, Abigail?
The words Theo said to me the night of the Swan Swell slammed into me and I dropped an entire slice of bread into the ocean.
Commotion sounded by the pier’s entrance—paparazzi. They were vultures, scavenging anywhere we went. We had guards stationed to keep them out, and I noticed my mom had finally joined us, almost at its mouth.
“Maybe it’s the dog,” Gray said. “Back to give us more money to love you.” Gray lounged against the pier railing, looking casually unaffordable in a thousand-dollar white shirt, jeans, and limited edition sneakers.
“What?” I lifted my head. “Theo gave you money? When?”
“Take a wild fucking guess. Do you think we all volunteered to play happy family for your birthday?” He lifted his arm slightly off the railing, looking disgusted at something I couldn’t see. “I fucking wish there was money involved today.”
I looked at my sister. “Gemma?”
“I said I would go if Gray promised to let me see the look on your face when you found out.” At my face, she quickly added, “This was before you started being cool again!”
It didn’t bother me my family had lied about their intentions. It would have been weirder if overnight they’d suddenly become good, caring people who loved me. Being bribed made the most sense and was still, in a twisted Crowne way, some kind of affection.
What had my heart hammering was Theo’s inclusion in all this.
“Dear,” my mother’s trill voice called out.
“Someone tell me what the fuck is going on,” I said.
“You didn’t kick your dog hard enough, sis,” Gray said. “He’s following you around, biting all the bad guys at your heel… which maybe isn’t such a bad thing.”
Gray frowned at something over my shoulder.
It wasn’t the ocean in my ears; it was blood. Rushing, pounding blood.
I chewed my lip until I tasted blood. “Am I the only one who hasn’t seen Theo since my engagement party?”
Gemma raised her hand. “I haven’t. Gotta leave ’em wanting more.” Gemma smiled, batting her eyelashes at me. I rolled my eyes.
Theo had been behind the scenes, making sure I had a happy birthday. A wrinkle formed on my brow as I thought about the lie. None of it made sense.
My mother grabbed my elbow, spinning me away from my siblings. “Have you gone deaf?”
Beyond her, Ned stood beneath a white-and-gold balloon arch.
My gut dropped.
I’d had a week-long respite from Edward Harlington, and I almost believed he didn’t exist anymore. My mother left me to grab him, set him next to me, and lift my chin, elongating my neck.
“You disappeared before we could get a proper photo,” my mother said, referring to the engagement party when I’d stumbled down the steps brokenhearted.
She situated us next to each other like dolls.
“Is this why you let me wear the tiar
a? The family… all of it… were you even making my birthday up to me?”
“Making what up, Abigail?” She put his arm around me, on my fucking shoulders. “The cake you smashed all on your own, or the hair you cut from Gemma’s head? Which part of that should we make up?”
Before this summer, that would have destroyed me. Before Theo, I would’ve thrown myself at her feet for approval.
Theo always poked the sorest parts of my soul. The parts of me I didn’t want to acknowledge. My mother didn’t love me, or, worse, no one can love me. He made me look at those parts and question why the wound existed and who had put it there.
It was cruel and horrible, but the thing is, if you didn’t acknowledge a wound, you can’t heal. It sits there and gets infected. It grows and it takes over. A wound on your soul changes who you are. If you didn’t love yourself first, you can’t love anyone.
I thought my grandpa loved me. It had taken one word from Theo to change it.
That isn’t unconditional.
Theo was cruel and heartless, and somehow the only one who loved me unconditionally.
I shoved her off, stepping far, far away from her and Ned.
I rolled my lips, focusing on breathing through my nose and not the ache in my chest.
“Do you even care the man you want me to marry has been stalking me for over a year?” I asked, for the first time genuinely curious.
Was I going to live like this forever? With a man who thought I was his property, with a mom who saw no problem selling me to him, and whose affection hung like the sword of Damocles.
Ned shifted, smile tight on the press approaching.
Gray and Gemma had put their phones away, watching us. Though my and Gemma’s relationship was better, and Gray had been decidedly less of a dick, I still didn’t trust it. Old fear scraped at my gut, worried at how they might use this information against me. At the same time, I wasn’t going to let it stop me.
I was done hiding, through pretending, finished caring more about reputation than well-being.
“You know who he is. You’ve seen everything. The evidence—you saw how he treated me. Is our name really that important?”
“Where is this coming from?” Mom asked through clenched teeth.
I saw my future crystal clear and blinding in my mother’s tight smile. Loveless, cold, married to a name not a man. Children who fought for scraps of affection. If I was lucky, I could hold on to the memory of Theo.
“He drugged me. He drugged me, and he probably would have raped me if Theo wasn’t there.”
“Always with the melodrama,” my mom sighed.
Just a month ago I would have given in to this marriage, given up and into a life that was less than in so many ways.
“Nothing I do will ever be good enough for you,” I whispered. “For this family.” She probably couldn’t hear it above the seagulls and crash of the waves, but it was more to myself than her.
Because that was when I finally understood she would never love me the way I needed. None of my family could. We were all too fucking broken. We were jagged facsimiles of a family. When we tried to love one another, we cut.
Tansy Crowne honestly didn’t see the problem with marrying me to someone like Ned for the rest of my life.
It was what she’d had to do, after all, what we all were expected to do.
But that was the moment I did.
“Fuck you all.” I tried to rip the tiara off, but it had been bobby pinned to the point of superglue. I yanked and yanked until my hair ripped out. “Fuck this family and fuck you.”
If I could’ve thrown the tiara at Ned, I would’ve.
In the end I walked away, tiara still on but lopsided, my head aching.
I ran past the paparazzi clamoring for a photo. I ran and ran, under the pier and down the beach, until my heart would give out, but eventually I escaped them, hiding behind the pier’s wooden columns. I watched as a few vultures sprinted by me, assuming I’d gone toward Main Street.
When the last of them had disappeared down the street, I turned to go somewhere else—anywhere else—and ran headfirst into someone’s chest. He was already walking in the opposite direction down the sandy shore when I looked up. Even far away, even with his back to me, I knew him too well. His tall, slightly slouched shoulders. The sheen on his wavy chestnut hair.
“Theo?”
He paused, then kept walking.
“Theo, wait.”
I was propelled after him, latching onto his bicep. He turned around, and when he did, I nearly lost my breath. His stare was harsh, his jaw hard. Those green, green eyes were so pained. With the sunlight behind him, he looked like a fallen angel.
“You were just going to keep walking?” All the strength in my voice was gone. “Like you’d never seen me before?”
The words my family had said were fresh in my mind. Theo was down in the most deserted part of the beach, and there was no reason to be here. But above us, I could see the black satin elbows of my brother’s bomber jacket, my sister leaning over the edge, lips twisted in a bored pout.
Has he been watching me? Following me? Taking care of me?
He leaned forward, and I closed my eyes foolishly, breathing him in, as if he was going to kiss me.
There was too much water between us.
I couldn’t trust him, but I couldn’t hate him either.
A salty, breezy moment passed before I opened my eyes. He was feeling the sharp point of my tiara. So sharp it had cut many maids. His eyes were on me. Soft. Sad. So not the boy who’d broken me just a week ago.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
Theo knew better than anyone this was my dream come true. My hair was messy from trying to rip the fucking tiara off my head. I’d been all but forced into the shower yesterday. Ned was above us, hidden from view like the cockroach he was. Each second another piece of my heart sloughed off like papier-mâché.
I’m sleeping with the light on again.
“Yes,” I lied.
The one time I wanted him to catch me in a lie, he just nodded to himself.
“Your party, it was good?” he asked. “You got the presents?”
“I didn’t get a chance to open them,” I admitted.
He pulled his hand from the tiara until he was almost touching my cheek. I could feel the whisper of his fingers on my skin. I just needed to step forward and he would caress me like he had a hundred times before.
Why did you lie to me?
Why did you leave me?
Why won’t you come back?
“Truth or promise, Theo?” My words were barely a whisper.
His brow furrowed. I was sure he would say no, leave me dangling on the spiderweb of lies and half-truths we’d built.
“Truth,” he said.
“Did you lie to me when… at the ball?”
Theo clenched his jaw so hard the muscle twerked, watching me with a such a painfully intense stare my belly ached, and then his fingers brushed my forehead. I closed my eyes again as he pushed a strand of hair behind my ear with a tenderness so opposite the tension in his body.
“Yes,” he finally said.
I opened my eyes. “Why?”
“It’s my turn.”
“I don’t care. Why?”
“It was the only way I could think to protect you.”
Frustration built, water rising and stuck in a fire hydrant. What did that even mean? How did this protect me? Then I thought to the four mysterious guards who appeared overnight. The new alarm. The conversation I thought I’d dreamed up between him and my mother.
I knew my mom was involved somehow. She’d been the one to assign the guards, to have the new alarm installed. Our love lay brutally massacred, and her fingerprints were all over the crime scene.
I just didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, and I didn’t want to believe it, that Theo could have stomped my heart into a hamburger for something so pointless.
“Did you even think about what it woul
d do to me? Did you care? Four guards…” I tried not to laugh, to ease the bitterness blacking out my heart. His touch was light on my neck, and it would be so easy for him to grab my neck, crush me to his lips. “You’re better than any number of guards.”
His fingers tightened. “It wasn’t just guards, Abigail.”
I stared into his eyes, trying to figure out what would have made Theo tell such a horrible lie, all in the name of protection. What could my mom have offered him?
In the end, I couldn’t think of anything.
“I don’t know what trade you made, but it wasn’t worth it. In every scenario, you’re worth the risk.”
His grip tightened on my neck, pulling me until our lips were so close to colliding, but there was no heat in his eyes.
“I’m not worth it, Abigail,” he gritted. “I could never ask you to risk your life for someone like me.”
It was a while before I responded, the wind blowing.
“I know,” I whispered. “You would never ask.”
He searched my eyes, then dropped me.
My skin was colder than before he’d touched me. I could too clearly remember the heat of his touch, his breath warming my lips. He exhaled with so much force his shoulders moved, and I knew he was going to leave. Going to God knows where. I didn’t know when I was going to see him again.
“Truth or promise,” I asked. “Do you still love me?”
His eyes were hard. “I’ll never stop.”
My eyes were watering, his image blurring. No matter how much focus I put on keeping my chin up, my back straight, I couldn’t keep the tears away.
“T-Truth or promise.” My voice was shaky with unshed tears. “Would you do it again?”
Say no. Say you regret everything you did to us.
“Yes.”
His answer knocked the wind from me. I couldn’t stop him from leaving, too busy trying to breathe. So I watched him walk away, his footsteps disappearing in the tide.
I was desperate for anything to make him come back.
“Your mom,” I yelled at his back. “Um… I have her address… I know you don’t want it… but…”
He stopped. This was so not the way I wanted to tell him. I rubbed my forehead, anxiety spiking with each silent minute. The tide kept coming in and going out, washing the sand anew. Then he turned to face me.
Heartless Hero Page 26