Grayson rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “Little wife…”
Maybe he didn’t realize he was keeping secrets.
Maybe he was keeping them from himself.
How do you tell someone a secret you can’t even say out loud?
“You asked me why I kept doing this to myself. Why I stayed with my uncle, why I chose to stay with West. Why I kept playing the victim. I was born poor, to a disloyal mother, so I didn’t have many choices in my life, but I can choose what kind of person I am. I could choose not to be her. I could choose to be loyal. I could choose to be strong. I could choose to be good.”
I looked down at my fingers. “I didn’t realize how easy my choices had been, until I had real temptation to be disloyal. Weak. Bad.”
Nostrils flared, he grabbed me. “Tell me more words—all of them.”
I opened my mouth, desperately wanting to give him what he sought, but I didn’t know what to tell him.
What more secrets to give him.
“I…I don’t know what else to tell you.”
His eyes narrowed, but he just spun me around, holding me back to chest, wrapping his arms around my body.
“Do you know how fucking sexy you are right now?” Grayson’s voice slid through my bloodstream. “You look like my little nun again. My pregnant nun. For the first fucking time, I want you wearing tight clothes.”
I nearly said something about West—he’d notice my absence soon.
Stop warning me, Snitch. I know the consequences.
I melted into him, resting my head on his chest so I could see him upside down.
“There’s my girl.” His lip tilted up. “Please tell me your words.”
He trailed a soft touch along the side of my face, across my cheek, and under my eyes.
I wracked my brain for something—then it slammed into my head without consent.
That night when he came in the room, your eyes grew in the way I’ve dreamed about for years.
Grayson must have seen the change on my face because his gentle touch turned bruising, his breath heavy.
“What?” he growled. “Tell me.”
“Earlier today…” I didn’t know where to start, or how to get the words out. I’d been trying to bury the night, and West shone a spotlight on it. “West taunted me with the night of the masquerade and I felt… I don’t know what I felt. He reminded me that he came inside me—”
Grayson went rigid, stepping off me.
My back was cold without him.
“Don’t ever feel bad about that night, Snitch. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not, though. That night—”
“I should have pulled him off you. I thought it was my punishment, I thought I deserved it, and because of that…This is all my fucking fault, that’s the end of it.”
It wasn’t.
There was this feeling inside of me, this briar. I didn’t know how to tell him. I don’t even know where to start.
I feel…twisted.
“But—that night…the night I slept with West—”
“Was my fault,” Grayson cut me off.
My brow furrowed. It wasn’t his fault, not by a long shot. “It wasn’t your fault, Grayson.”
“I pushed you to that point. I shoved you into his arms, and I didn’t drag you out.”
“But—”
“My. Fault. Move on.”
The silence that spread between us grew sticky, like old oil. I rubbed my arm. White sun drenched the hallway in slats. Out the window, you could faintly see the garden…
“Oh! Oh my God!”
Grayson looked to me, brows lifting.
“Um…I think I know where the coin is.”
As my smile grew, so did his, and I felt like my limbs had been filled with melted butter. His smiles are so rare, too rare.
“I think my uncle might have been talking about the graveyard. There are so many poems out there…and it’s the perfect place to bury something. I didn’t tell West, but how are we going to search without him?”
“Didn’t tell me what?” West’s voice was ice water down my spine.
Grayson’s gaze slid over my shoulder, cold.
I didn’t want to tell West.
I tried to think of anything else I can tell West.
“About…” I squinted my eye, thinking. “How I talked to the triplets.”
He exhaled a sigh. “I’m disappointed, I thought we were a team, Angel. So, you think the coin is in the graveyard?”
“If you heard me, why did you fucking act like you didn’t?”
West tilted his head. “I think you know the answer to that.”
I folded my arms, pissed.
“Let’s go now.” I stared at Grayson. Urgency like hot peppers in my blood.
“Sure,” West laughed. “That won’t be fucking obvious.” As if on cue, workers walked in the window behind West, to attend to Josephine’s grave.
“Then when?”
“New Year’s,” West said.
My shoulders dropped. “New Year’s? That’s so far away.” And so…morbid. Digging up a graveyard while fireworks popped overhead.
“My father will be gone by then, and Tansy has her firework show. Everyone will be distracted.”
Grayson had been uncharacteristically quiet during this entire conversation. I looked to him, eyes wide and pleading.
“That works,” he gritted.
West threw his arms around Grayson and me, squeezing us close. “Look at us working together. We should come up with some kind of special team handshake. Maybe we spit on our fingers, and together shove it up—”
Grayson stepped out of West’s hug and I put myself between them before he could make true on the threat in his eyes.
“We just have to survive it,” I whispered, gripping Grayson’s suit lapels.
“And then what, Snitch?” he growled. “What will become of us after we’ve survived?”
Fear clogged my throat. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing.” He looked away, taking a step back. My fingers slipped from him, holding on to air.
West laughed at my back. “Come on, Angel. We still have a few nights before the new year.”
I took a step toward Grayson, but his eyes stopped me. “Go, Snitch.”
My. Fault. Move on.
As West led me away, I couldn’t help but feel that night had become something…another thorn on the vine weaving us together, thick and bloody, and the more we acted like it didn’t exist, the deeper those thorns dove.
The harder it would be to pull them out.
Thirty-Three
Dear Atlas,
I remember that night in flashbacks of sensation.
Sometimes it’s sound. Your voice, an arrogant, sweet echo.
That night when he talked, it was your voice I heard, sliding down my marrow.
Or sometimes it’s the sounds I made.
The whimpers, the groans.
I made new ones for you but I never destroyed the old ones.
When I groan, do I want him? I don’t know how I can, when I only want to give my sounds to you.
I need to give them to you.
But they came from my body and they went into his.