He spun around to see Jaya behind him. She held a small bag, and by its shape and heft, he could tell it held the velvet pouch that in turn held the necklace.
“Don’t… don’t jump to conclusions,” she said, edging forward carefully, as if he were a spooked horse.
“The conclusions have already been handed to me,” Grey said, pushing an agitated hand through his hair. “No jumping required.”
“Grey, what we saw doesn’t mean the pendant is cursed—”
“Then how do you explain it?” he asked, rounding on her. “Hmm? We were standing right there, Jaya.” He thrust his arm out toward the store. “You saw him apply the epoxy.”
She looked up at him, unflinching, her hair streaming behind her like a black silken flag in the cold breeze. “The epoxy was defective.”
“The tube was half-gone,” Grey said. “Silas said he uses it on all his projects. Don’t you think he would’ve noticed that before?”
Jaya didn’t say anything.
Shaking his head, he began to walk away, but Jaya put a hand on his elbow, stilling him. “Grey, please.” After a pause, studying his expression, she said, “I’ll put it away so you don’t have to look at it anymore. Will that help?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I want to see it every day. I need to see it right now. It’s in the darkest corners that things seem the scariest.”
“Are you sure?” There was a wrinkle of concern between Jaya’s eyebrows. “You want me to put it on right now?”
“Yes,” he said. “I want you to put it on right now.” Grey took a deep breath and turned on his heel, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “And I also want to get out of here.”
Jaya slid the pouch out of the bag and pulled the necklace out carefully. Grey held his breath. It twinkled at him, laughing coyly, darkly, under its breath as Jaya fastened it around her neck and put the velvet pouch away. “Okay?” she asked him.
“Fine,” he said curtly. There was the bitter taste of panic in the back of his throat, and he swallowed compulsively, trying to get rid of it. “Let’s go find the driver. He should be parked around the building.”
He took off down the sidewalk, hearing her footsteps as she hurried to keep up.
Jaya
Jaya was worried about Grey. She couldn’t help but look at him every so often as they walked along the sidewalk, toward the car. She could tell he needed air, and time to think. Yes, it was a little strange, what Silas had shown them. But… Jaya shook her head. There had to be an explanation of some kind. She glanced down at the pendant. It looked completely innocuous, like all her other jewelry. It was inanimate, powerless.
But she knew Grey was convinced, perhaps because of the messages he’d received since he was a little boy, that the curse was real. She remembered their conversation on the ski slope and her mind automatically went to the messages she and Isha had always received: Princesses are always polite. Princesses do what their families need them to do, not what they want to do. Women in royal families cannot be anything they want. Women in royal families must be quiet, virtuous, well behaved, and congenial.
She’d tried not to question them. If she ever felt doubt about any of it, she pushed those doubts away as quickly as possible, as if even thinking them was treason. So how was it fair for her to expect Grey to eschew what he’d always been told? And if she expected him to do it, then should she be doing the same?
Feeling discomfited, Jaya pulled her coat around her. It’s not your problem anymore, she told herself sternly. The errand is done. It’s time to let this go. Grey Emerson is simply an acquaintance from this point on, remember?
Jaya swallowed as they got to the car and the driver hopped out to open their doors for them. Yes, she remembered right then why getting close to Grey Emerson was a bad idea. The trouble was, she so often forgot when she was gazing into his blue eyes.
* * *
Jaya was dreaming. She was attempting to climb a very tall tree, some manner of pine, but she was a quarter of the way up and couldn’t find any more limbs to grasp. Appa was on the ground below her, yelling instructions. “On your right! It’s right there! Take it!”
“I don’t see it!” she yelled back down, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He looked livid, she realized, and suddenly she was so nervous, she was trembling. Her knees were knocking together, and the sound echoed through the forest.
Knock, knock, knock! Knock, knock, knock!
Slowly, she drifted into semiconsciousness.
Someone was knocking very insistently on her door. Jaya opened her eyes, which felt glued shut, and squinted in the bluish darkness at the clock on her nightstand. It was four in the morning.
“What the hell?” she muttered to herself as she rolled out of bed and padded to the door in her thin nightdress. Surely Amma would understand the need for foul language at a time like this.
Grey stood on the other side, backlit by the light in the hallway. He wore a tight white T-shirt and plaid pajama pants. His hair was mussed; he looked like a big bear who’d just finished hibernating. Sexy was the word that popped into Jaya’s mind as she took in his well-defined pecs, those enormous biceps that strained against his shirt. Naturally, she banished the word from her mind instantly.
“Grey?” she said instead, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Her voice was a croak. “Is everything okay? It’s four a.m.”
“I know.” He paused, his eyes taking in the silk of her nightdress before he cleared his throat and looked away. Jaya felt an answering warmth seep through her. “Can I come in?”
“Oh. Yes.” She waved him in, and he lumbered over to her window. “Look!” he said when she shut the door and just stood there, still sleep-dazed. His voice shimmered with a barely suppressed energy. “You have to see this.”
Jaya pulled herself forward, wrapping her arms around herself. It was freezing. “What do you want me to see so bad—oh. Oh my.”
The world had turned a soft, glowing white. Heavy curtains of snow were falling from the sky, the flakes thick and white and fluffy. The school grounds were already covered; the tree boughs bent and dipped. Jaya’s windowsill had racked up a thick layer of snow, like cake frosting.
It had been a week since they’d picked up the necklace at Silas’s. While Jaya had fully intended to devolve their interactions to mere acquaintance level, somehow she’d found herself unable to. She’d made rationalizations and justifications for her weakness—now that Caterina had Daph’s text confession, surely she’d focus her energies on that and not on Jaya; she was just being kind to Grey because he was taking the news from Silas so hard; what was she supposed to do, admonish him like a stray dog when he walked with her after class?
And yet, through the mist of excuses, Jaya knew the truth. The more she saw of Grey—the real Grey, the one who made jokes and sarcastic comments and spoke about his fears of the curse—the more she liked him. Truly, truly liked him. And she hadn’t been brave enough yet to contemplate the implications of that for her, as a Rao heiress, or for her parents, back home.
Sometimes she thought of the plan she’d first formed when she’d found out he attended St. Rosetta’s. Whenever she did, shame threatened to engulf her. A few times, she’d considered telling Grey the truth about it all. But then she realized he wasn’t the kind of person who’d take the news well. He was already so guarded, so expectant that the world would hurt him, and she didn’t want him to retreat back into his ten-foot-thick shell. She was enjoying being the person he told when he made an A on the biology test he thought he’d failed. Was there really any point to telling him about the plan? What good would it do, really? She just wanted to put it behind her. Let the past be the past. Grey already had so many things on his mind.
“The first snowfall,” Grey said, as if to her point. His voice carried a thread of so much poignant pain that Jaya was struck speechless for a moment. Her hand flew to her pendant in the next. Two more rubies had fallen in the night, leaving only ten rubies. “I wanted you to see it with me.” H
e glanced down at her. “I know that sounds silly, but… my birthday’s only a month away now.”
“It’s not silly,” Jaya said, taking his fingers in hers and squeezing them just once and very briefly, knowing physical touch unsettled him. But when she began to let go, he tightened his fingers around hers slightly, and so she held on, her heart thudding in her chest. They were holding hands. Grey wanted to hold her hand.
They looked at each other in silence.
“Time’s passing so quickly,” Grey said, turning back to the glass. “Too quickly.” After a beat, he added, “This snow feels like a harbinger of something.”
“Then it must be a harbinger of something good,” Jaya said firmly. “This is… magical,” she added in a whisper, her breath fogging the glass. Jaya turned to him in the dim glow of the moon reflecting off all that white sparkling snow. “Thank you for waking me.” As she spoke, the strap of her nightgown slipped down over one shoulder. She pushed it back up, her cheeks warm.
Grey’s eyes were hooded in the darkness. “Will you go for a walk with me?”
Jaya studied his expression, so intense, so focused. She knew she shouldn’t go with him; there would be no easy way to return from where he was inviting her. If she wanted to draw a hard line, if she wanted to place her responsibilities ahead of her heart, now was the time to do it. Now was the time to remember herself. She could do this. She could tell Grey Emerson no.
“Of course I’ll go,” Jaya whispered, her pulse pounding a warning she was too far gone to abide.
CHAPTER 14
Jaya
They washed quickly and bundled up—Grey went to his room to do it—and stepped outside together. The world was asleep. It felt decadent, the air redolent with mystery, to be out at this time of night with a boy who felt like he’d stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale, whole and breathing.
Jaya tipped her head back and caught a snowflake on her tongue. “Yummy.” Her voice was muffled, like someone was holding a scarf over her mouth. “I love that,” she said, turning to Grey, who was watching her with a half smile on his face. “How the snow makes you sound quieter.”
“When was the last time you saw it? Before Aspen, I mean?” he asked, sinking his boots into a fresh pile of snow.
“Two years ago, when we were in a boarding school in Amsterdam. That winter, we went to Switzerland with my parents. We stayed in a really cozy Swiss chalet and read books the entire time. No phone calls, no meetings, no one we didn’t want to be around.”
It had been one of Jaya’s favorite holidays. Isha said the chalet reminded her of a gingerbread house. Appa was done with business earlier than he’d predicted, so they’d spent time together as a family for almost the entire two weeks they were there. Jaya remembered how, one night, their housekeeper had made them all creamy hot cocoas. The four of them had curled up in front of the fire and read their books in complete silence for hours. Jaya had never felt closer to her family, which was odd because they weren’t even talking. Still, she’d felt herself go soft and pliable, like her edges were melting into theirs, like they were all just one heart beating in symphony.
Jaya blinked away the memory, feeling a sudden pang for her family, for that time of innocence and happiness. What would they think of her now, outside in the middle of the night with an Emerson?
“That sounds really nice.” Grey looked at her, his thick, dark eyelashes dusted with snowflakes. The yearning in his voice was masked, but undeniable.
“I’m sorry you never had that with your father,” Jaya said, hesitating just a moment before putting a hand on his.
He didn’t pull away. “Thanks.”
Her heart thudded at the look in his eyes, at the silence between them. After a pause, Jaya took her hand from his and said, “You’re… different now.”
Grey began to press his boots into snowdrifts again. “Yeah.”
“What changed?”
He glanced at her, just for a moment. “You know what changed.”
“Telling me about the curse?” Jaya guessed.
“That. And…” Grey looked at her more fully now. “You’ve changed too,” he said frankly. They began to walk together, deeper into the trees. “After our blow-up in Aspen. You’re less… blinky.”
“Blinky?” Jaya said, raising an eyebrow. But then she knew in the next instant what he meant. He was talking about all her faux flirting before, when she was still executing her plan. Blinky. It was a less than flattering description. And not just that, but it made her feel… a little revolted at herself. She’d been trying so hard to “trap” Grey that even he’d felt it.
“Right,” she said, laughing a little to cover up her discomfort. Should she tell him the truth about everything? Now would be a good time. But he’d literally just told her he was changing because of her. How could she tell him she’d gotten close to him in the first place only because she wanted to completely shatter his heart? How would that make him feel?
A sudden wind tried to make off with her scarf. Jaya shrieked, but Grey grabbed it just in time. Turning to her, he slowly draped the scarf back around her neck, his blue eyes holding hers, her skin coming alive everywhere his fingers touched. They gazed at each other for a long moment, Jaya’s eyes falling unwittingly to his lips.
“Grey,” she said, her voice breathless as she looked up at him. “You know the one thing I’ve missed the most about snow?”
He shook his head, his hands still on her scarf. “No, what?” he murmured.
She could feel the wicked gleam in her eye. Bending down, Jaya rolled up a snowball with the speed of lightning and lobbed it at Grey’s torso. It exploded on contact, sending snow flying into his face and hair. “Snowball fights!”
“Hey!” he said, his eyes going wide. While she was busy laughing at him, he dumped two entire handfuls of snow on her head. Big handfuls.
“What the—” she spluttered, caught completely off guard.
She heard Grey laughing, snow crunching under his boots as he ran. She blinked the snow out of her eyes. “You’d better run, Grey Emerson! Because when I find you—” A snowball hit her, squarely in the chin this time, ice-cold precipitation going down her jacket and the front of her shirt. More laughing from behind the pine trees up ahead. “Oh, that is it!” Jaya said, rolling a snowball of what could only be described as epic proportions.
She ran off into the trees to the right and took cover, scanning the darkness for movement. They were about ten feet apart now. There was a crunching sound and a flash of Grey’s red jacket. Jaya took aim and launched her snowball—catching him in the shoulder.
“Ha!” she yelled, triumphant. “Take that!”
Another flash of red, creeping closer to her. She rolled up another snowball and threw it, but it hit a tree. Jaya moved to another tree and silently picked up another snowball. Her heart was racing, her cheeks flushed with gleeful competition. Stepping backward, Jaya scanned the trees in front of her for the slightest movement, the sly snap of a twig or—
Grey grabbed her suddenly around the waist and bent down to speak in her ear. “Gotcha.”
Grinning, she spun around in his arms and ground the snowball into his beanie, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders, her fingers brushing the back of his neck. “I’m counting that as a hit,” she said. “Which means we’re now tied.”
“I guess so,” Grey conceded as Jaya leaned back against the tree behind her, her heart racing with exertion and… something else. He stepped forward, his arms still around her waist.
Jaya tipped her head back, both of them breathing hard. He tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her hat behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the spot just below her ear. A brisk wind whistled through the trees, making her shiver. Grey stepped closer still, blocking the wind, his body heat enveloping her.
Jaya’s smile faded as she saw the embers glowing in his eyes.
When their lips met, embers turned to flame. Jaya wrapped her arms around Grey’s neck and he pull
ed her taut against his broad chest. He hadn’t shaved yet that morning, and she felt his stubble scraping her lips, her jaw, her cheeks. Where before he’d been reticent and withdrawn, now he nipped at her lips with his teeth, pushing hard against her mouth, claiming her as his own in that wild, feral way. It was like every feeling, every hidden craving he’d kept behind his immovable mask was now out in the open, flooding every synapse. He’d finally lost control, and that knowledge drove Jaya mad. Their tongues clashed together, vying for control, two sworn enemies from feuding clans in each other’s arms, overcome with desire. Jaya’s blood sang, her body a symphony of longing. She was liquid fire, a drop of molten heat in his arms. In the darkness, with the snow swirling around them, she was sure she was on a tropical island, the sun blazing on her skin.
Grey
They both pulled back at the same time, their eyes wide. Jaya’s hand flew to her mouth as she stepped out of his arms, beside the tree. “I’m sorry,” she said. She took a step back closer to him, and he wasn’t even sure if she knew she was doing it. “I’m really sorry.”
He didn’t back away, like he knew he should. Like he’d done before, in the hot tub or the bookstore. This time, he wanted to feel her soft, warm weight against him. This time, he didn’t want to stop it. “Apology accepted.” They studied each other in the near dark.
Jaya inched closer, just a breath away from him now. Before he could process it, she had her arms wrapped around his neck and he was bending down to brush her lips with his again.
She began to hungrily deepen the kiss, her soft lips parting, inviting his tongue in, her quick, panting breaths mingling with his. Grey tightened his arms around her waist, wanting to get closer, tasting her, letting himself be lost in her.
Something buzzed between them, insistent. It stopped, then started again. Finally, Jaya pulled back. “Sorry,” she said, her voice husky, her lips slightly swollen from their kiss. “Let me just…” She pulled her cell from her coat pocket and looked at the screen. Appa flashed on the screen. Her father, calling so early? Jaya frowned a little. He must be confused about the time change.
Of Curses and Kisses Page 21
