Shit.
I dragged my hands through my hair. She needed a girl. And guards. And fucking thousands of things. Thanksgiving? The holidays? She didn’t have the wardrobe for that. Was she going to show up like a fucking nun at the most important Crowne event of the year?
I’d love it, but I’d be the only one.
The event organizer called for a photo op, and I quickly walked over to the terrace to join Story before the rest of our group.
Before my wife.
Before her husband.
“Who’s going to the doctor’s appointments with you?”
“Shh!” Her eyes grew to saucers.
“Is it West?” I continued, unperturbed.
“West doesn’t know, so obviously not.”
“You need someone to go with you.”
“I’m perfectly capable of going on my own.”
“You don’t have anyone. Not really.”
A look of pain flickered across her features.
“I’m the only one who knows.” Something about that, knowing it was only I who had this secret, filled me with intense possession. It made me want to keep her more, to keep us safe.
I’d missed sharing with Story, missed our rare connection, and as long as we had this, she couldn’t disappear.
“You only have me, Snitch,” I said softer.
We only had each other.
“Maybe I’ll tell my husband…” Story’s eyes drifted to West, heading from across the terrace to join us for the photo. “I could tell anyone. You’re not special.”
Dark, angry energy filled me at the thought of her doing that. This was for us.
So I did what I always did when the pain got too much.
I laughed.
“This secret belongs to me just like everything else about you. You can say you didn’t want me to know, but we’re bound and tied together by it. It was meant for me.”
Something flickered in her eyes, something distant and foreign.
“I want to be there for y—for the baby. I want to be there for the doctor visits.”
“You didn’t choose me, Grayson. You don’t get to choose me now.”
I grabbed her bicep, turning her so she faced me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to yell it out.
I did. I did choose you. I will always choose you.
I blew up and will blow up this world for you.
But Grandfather, everyone, fuck…Every time I do something for someone else, the only one who remained unscathed was me.
Hell, we had a whole wing dedicated to it.
The one where Story slept.
“You have a bad habit of touching my wife.”
I clenched my jaw as she ripped her arm away, wrapping it around West’s. I let Lottie wrap hers around mine.
Together we faced the paparazzi for another photo.
Twenty-Three
STORY
* * *
With my third sucker for the night tucked deep between my lips, I stayed up with Grayson’s poetry like an addict. I knew I should let him go…close this book and forget about him, but it was almost like I was asleep with him and he was next to me.
* * *
I own all the luck in the world, but none of it belongs to me.
* * *
I took my pen, writing alongside his green ink.
* * *
Dear Atlas, if my hate for you was a secret, then love would be the reason I kept it.
* * *
I stashed his journal in my nightstand like a beating heart, and pointlessly tried to fall asleep. As the night stretched long and lonely, my thoughts crept.
I don’t even know how to keep my world afloat, and there’s something growing inside me that will be entirely dependent on me. I don’t have any answers. I keep making the wrong choices. I always said I wouldn’t become my mother, but she’s my only role model. What if she bled into my very being?
I heard the door creak open. I knew he was in the doorway watching me, so I pretended to sleep.
“I know you’re awake, Snitch. You’re a terrible fake sleeper.”
With an exhale, I rolled over, glaring at Grayson. He leaned in my doorway, two bags in his hand.
His eyes wandered my room. “You’re not sleeping in the same room as him.”
“I have a cold,” I lied.
A cocky smile quirked his lips, but it dropped as quickly as it came.
“The fuck are you wearing?” He took in my pajamas, my short cottony pants and loose tank, jaw clenched.
I had hot flashes in the night. Apparently that was a thing that happened during pregnancy.
I folded my arms. “Why are you here?”
“It’s night,” he said simply.
Anyone could walk in.
A servant.
My husband.
Grayson looked around, taking in the guest wing in Crowne Hall.
“Do you keep your windows locked?” He went to the window, testing it. When it opened, he made a noise in his throat and shut it, locking it.
“We’re two stories above ground.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he gritted.
I steeled my voice. “Why are you here?”
“I told you.” His blue eyes found mine, somehow brighter in the dark. “It’s night.”
His eyes throbbed with meaning.
“We don’t do that anymore.” I looked away. “Go back to your wife.”
Instead of listening, he sat on the foot of my bed, placing the bags next to him.
“I brought you peanuts and spaghetti. I wasn’t sure if you were craving anything else.”
“Just looking at that makes me want to throw up now.” It was horrible and true; my favorite foods had turned on me. The smell was invading my nostrils, and I wanted to hurl.
Grayson froze, his hands in the bag, and his face caved. “What can I get you?”
The earnestness, the sincerity in his words, gutted me. How dare he come to my room in the middle of the night and act like this?
“Why aren’t you with your wife?”
“Because you’re—” He broke off on a curse. “I’m trying to be a good man, Story.” He craned his neck so he was looking at me, blue eyes staring and beseeching down the length of the bed.
“So be a good man. Go back to your wife.”
“She’s my wife, but you’re carrying my child.”
“I don’t need you,” I whispered.
The Neruda poem “I Do Not Love You” blasted through me. Grayson said he loved me.
But he only loved me as a dark, unwanted thing. In secret. In the cracks.
“You’ve got to be around six weeks along. You’ll start to show soon. How long are you planning to keep this charade up from your husband?” He bit out the words.
“Are you so certain we haven’t slept together?” I asked softly.
Grayson caged my feet at the foot of my bed, leaning forward until his chest nearly touched my legs, his hair wild and veiling his smoldering blue eyes.
His fingers fisted the fabric on either side of my legs. I felt like he was a second away from crawling up to me or yanking me down to him.
“If he touches you, I’ll kill him.”
I wanted to say something witty and biting back, about him having no right to say those things anymore. But his words, the growl he spoke them with, the look in his eyes…my throat dried. My skin tingled, my gut twisted, the excitement right before I was burned by a flame.
And then he stood up so fast, and suddenly there was an ocean of distance between us.
I looked away. “Does your wife know you’re here, in my bedroom, in the middle of the night?”
“I didn’t do anything a concerned brother-in-law wouldn’t have done.”
Brother-in-law.
Was that all we were now?
Fucking siblings?
I tore out of bed. “Leave.”
At my demand, Grayson glared and folded his arms.
The s
mell of spaghetti wafted stronger from this angle, making me want to hurl. Still I pressed forward. I shoved his chest, trying to force him out.
“I’ve hid behind sheets. Watched you get off your wife, watched you marry her. I’ve let you walk all over me. You can stay, Grayson. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’m going to my husband’s bed.”
I spun, but he grabbed my elbow. “Snitch, wait.”
Some kind of emotion throbbed in his eyes. Something powerful and deep…and secret. He kept so many secrets. I hated that there were things he wasn’t telling me.
The ocean between us was too wide.
I wanted to poke and pick at it, but the marinara was overpowering. I swallowed, trying to stop the inevitable.
Oh no. Oh no.
“Let me go.” I yanked my arm but he wouldn’t let go.
It happened so fast, the rising hurl.
“Let me just expl—”
I vomited all over his expensive pajamas.
GRAY
* * *
Snitch covered her mouth. “I told you spaghetti messes me up now.” She mumbled through her fingers.
I probably should have been mad, but after watching from the sidelines, my chest was full. I went to the adjacent bathroom, sliding out of my dirty pajamas. I rinsed them clean, hanging them to dry on the marble sink. I grabbed a clean washcloth, running it under warm water.
When I came back, Snitch’s eyes grew at seeing me in only my boxer briefs. I sat beside her, but she scurried up the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“You vomited on my pants.” I closed the distance she’d made, putting the washcloth to her face. She jerked away, mossy eyes filled with distrust.
“I don’t need you.”
But I need this.
I lowered the cloth to my lap. “Let me stay the night. Let me hold back your hair.”
“What about—”
“I’ll be gone before the morning.” I cut her off before she could say anything more about the wife I kept constantly failing.
This is what a husband—a father—should do.
Silence drifted between us.
“I read you’re more sensitive to smells in the first trimester. Sorry.”
“Grayson Crowne apologizing,” she whispered. “What a sight.” Our eyes locked. “You read?” she asked after a minute. “When?”
All I did now was read books. Books and articles. Studies. Anything I could get my hands on.
My thoughts were consumed with the fear I would be like my dad, my grandpa, anyone male in my family. A shit dad. And if it wasn’t that thought, it was the reminder that I wouldn’t even get a chance to fail.
Snitch would be on her own…and I’d be here.
That was the thought that kept me up the most.
“Fine,” she mumbled after a minute. “But you sleep on the floor.”
I pushed my tongue into my cheek to keep from smiling.
On the floor.
I settled on the floor, my head on my bicep. “I at least gave you a blanket.”
A small, raspy laugh trickled from her bed.
I watched her in shadowy glimpses. She was on top of the sheets, and I could see her bare arm and bare thigh. She turned on her side, and then I could see her face, her eyes.
Sideways.
A view I’d craved every day since it had left me.
Her shirt was loose, soft cotton draping over her breasts. They looked fuller with the pregnancy. It was the most tempting, devious distraction. I imagined running my hands—
“I made a promise to Uncle,” she said softly.
I dragged my eyes back to her gleaming, mossy ones.
“But I’m having a hard time fulfilling it. He wants me to write a poem a day.”
“Hold on.”
I stood up, going into the bathroom to fish through my wet pockets for the green pen she’d given me. The one I couldn’t not carry around. When I came back, I handed it to her.
“Try writing with this.”
Her eyes widened, and before she could comment on the fact that I still had it, or had it on me, I said, “I’m loaning it to you. I expect it back.”
She rolled her lips, playing with the plastic.
“I’m leaving eventually,” she murmured. “I won’t be able to give it back.”
The thought of her leaving flashed through me hot. Cold. Hurting my chest.
“There you go again, saying stupid shit.” My words were rough, quiet. “When you leave, will you finally do what you want? Be a poet?”
Be free.
She went quiet. “You said someone like me could never be a poet, not unless you paid my way.”
Snitch changed me. Fundamentally. Chemically.
When I looked up, Snitch was lost somewhere in her head. Before she would have taken me there, let me wander the twisted pathways with her. But now? I was left on the outskirts.
Silence wafted over us.
A thought popped into my head. “Is anyone going to the doctor with you?”
“I don’t have a doctor…” she admitted.
“Let me take care of you. I’ll take you to classes. I’ll buy you new clothes.” I gripped her face. “If you need anything—”
“If I need a horse?” she cut me off.
I exhaled some of the tension in my chest. “Yeah…yeah, if you need a horse.” I thumbed her cheek, swiping the smooth skin I’d missed. It was a perfect, quiet moment in the dark. These moments I’d missed.
Then something dark flitted in her eyes.
She jerked her head out of my hold, and just like that, the moment shattered.
“You’re married,” she said. “I’m…I’m married.”
“And? I can be your friend.”
She laughed. “You could never be my friend.” She yawned into her shoulder. “You—”
I grabbed her hand, cutting her off. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk about this later.”
I settled back on the floor.
“Isn’t it uncomfortable?”
It was. “It’s not.”
But holding her hand in the darkness was worth it.
A few minutes passed, and I thought maybe she’d gone to sleep.
“Have you even had a real friend, Grayson?”
I had a best friend. Her name was Story Hale. But I don’t want to be her fucking friend. I want to be the father of her child. I want to be her lover, her husband.
Dudes complained about the friend zone, but maybe if I was lucky, if I tried really fucking hard, I could stay in Snitch’s friend zone.
Maybe that’s all we could ever have.
“I did. Once.”
STORY
* * *
I woke up rested and happy, my right hand warm. I looked over—Grayson held my hand. He’d held my hand all night? He was asleep at an odd angle. He hadn’t even rolled over to fall asleep. He’d just sat against the bed, holding my hand all night.
My chest ached.
Then, like he could sense I was awake, he stirred, and looked over his shoulder up at me. Blinking those beautiful blue eyes awake.
“How are you feeling?”
His voice was soft, eyes softer, and he still held my hand.
My heart cracked.
“It’s the first time she’s spent time with her father,” I said softly, unable to keep my feelings bottled.
His brow furrowed. “She?”
I quickly yanked my hand out of his, feeling too raw and vulnerable.
The first time the baby spent with her dad, and probably the last. I hugged my knees to my chest. Grayson slowly stood, rubbing his neck as though it had a crick in it. He looked too adorable, too sexy, rubbing the knots out as the sun illumined his messy bed hair.
He was still only in boxer briefs, the silky kind he always wore that left nothing to the imagination. True to Grayson Crowne, he was completely callous to the effect it had on me.
“The sun is up,” I coughed.
He closed one
eye into the rays. “So it is.”
“What are you doing here?”
He stopped rubbing his neck, eyes digging into me. I didn’t like that. I pulled the blanket tighter around my knees, a flimsy cotton armor.
“I’ll always be there for you, Snitch.”
No you won’t.
Anger swamped the sadness in my chest, allowed me to breathe. I threw off my blankets and got out of bed.
“Leave. Go back to your wife.”
He blinked like I’d slapped him.
“If you tell anyone—” I said.
His eyes flashed. “Everyone will believe me,” he growled.
“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped.
He flexed his jaw and turned to leave, as if he was just going to walk the halls of Crowne Hall in his underwear, the way only Grayson Crowne could, but he stopped in the doorway.
He was glaring at me, his anger obvious by the muscle popping in his jaw and the vein in his neck, but he just stayed in the doorway, arms folded. The clock ticked deeper into the morning.
“What?” I finally snapped.
“What is it?” he snapped back.
“Um, what?”
“You don’t eat peanuts or spaghetti. What do you like now?” He watched me with an annoyed glare that felt way too much like our first nights together.
Suckers.
I can’t stop eating them.
But he doesn’t get to know that.
Feeling petty, I said. “French fries, but only from France.”
He exhaled through his nostrils. “See you in a day then.”
I rolled my eyes. “Grayson, don’t fly to France.”
“Anything else?” he asked. “Would you like snails, maybe a baguette?”
I jumped off the bed, closing the distance and grabbing his arm.
“Don’t fly to France!” I couldn’t hold back my laugh, and a smile feathered his lips. For a few seconds, things had gone back to before. Before it all got ruined.
But then his smile dropped, and silence crept.
“Would you really fly to France?” I asked softly.
Forbidden Fate Page 16
