Cherry.
It was cherry.
“Taste how badly you need my cock.”
He gagged me with it until tears fell, but through them I saw his blazing blue eyes. He tore the sucker from my lips, tossing it to the ground, ripping my lips to his for a swift and brutal kiss.
Over too fast.
“Every time you eat a sucker, any time you watch me eat one, know I’m thinking of fucking you.” He cupped me and I swallowed air. “Of eating your cunt.” He slid one finger inside me, and out too quickly. “But I won’t.”
Forty-One
GRAY
The months passed by sluggish. February into March, and March into May. Every day it seemed like my mother and Lynette came up with a new fucking way to celebrate Lottie’s pregnancy. Today it was the ephemeral cherry blossoms in her garden—and us, our budding newborn.
Snitch was eight and a half months pregnant, and just as fucking stubborn. She was determined for us to have a happily ever—but at what fucking cost?
Something came in the mail for her this morning, something I’d barely intercepted before it got to my mother. I had no fucking idea how to get it to her, or how to help her.
Helpless.
Again.
I was getting real fucking tired of being helpless.
In a few weeks, she would give birth. Story could only wear flowing dresses because she’d grown so big. Every fucking day it was a lesson in self-control not to pull her against my chest, to hug and kiss her. Like today, as she stood beneath the silky petals, all I wanted to do was sit her down and rub her swollen ankles.
Instead, I stood next to my mother.
“Why are they back?” My mother exclaimed, pulling my attention from Story. She pressed a hand to her chest, staring at Charles, Keller, and Jo on spring break and standing beneath a cherry tree, as though they were locusts descending on her crops. “Their mother is dead. What reason do they have to be here?”
“Maybe they want to know why their mother is dead.”
That their mother was murdered. By my grandfather, maybe because she was about to tell me something important.
“What are you implying, Grayson?”
“Nothing, of course. I’m sure they only wanted to attend the shower.”
She made a sound in her throat. “Them and everyone else in the world.” She lifted her chin, trying to get a better look at them.
“You could always go and ask them,” I said.
“Why don’t you go ask them?” she countered.
For the same fucking reason you won’t.
My grandfather was in Switzerland, as far as I knew, and everything was back to normal. Except, Josephine was still in the fucking ground, those three kids’ presence a jarring reminder that everything was not normal.
My mother made a noise in her throat, turning away from them as if mortally disgraced. “Your wife is alone.”
Lottie was supposed to be sat on a silky, turquoise chaise beneath a cherry blossom tree, but she was standing—fawned over by socialites and reporters.
“And?”
My gaze shifted back to Story. She watched me with wide, walnut eyes from beneath pale pink cherry blossoms. Her eyes landed on the sucker stem in my lips, and she shifted, swallowing.
I grinned.
My mother patted me on the shoulder. “You know you really are becoming a lot like your father.”
I paused. There it was, the manipulation I knew so well. I was starting to think my mother had hit her head or something.
“Around the eyes, of course. You’ve always had your father’s eyes.”
“Of course,” I said.
My mother left me to join a conversation with some woman with a permanent frown. Story had looked away, lip tucked between her teeth.
The breeze kicked up, and pearly pink petals swirled in the salty air. Snitch laughed, smiling as the petals brushed her cheeks and swirled around her curls. I realized it had been too fucking long since I’d seen her laugh. And damn, it was almost like fate designed that moment for her.
“You ever wonder how you can switch between my sister’s villain and her hero so easily?” West asked, sidling up next to me, pushing a cherry blossom branch out of the way. “What made you so lucky?”
He was goading me.
Baiting.
I eyed him. Worse than the West who constantly held Story at his side and shoved it in my face, was this one, the man who felt comfortable enough to let her wander the garden or leave her alone with me in the morning.
He thinks he’s won.
Every night, I lay in bed and picture ripping her out of West’s bed by her fucking hair. But I knew she would take scissors and cut the locks.
There was a showdown waiting between West and me. The only reason I hadn’t broken his face yet, was for Snitch.
He tilted his head, like he could read the words in my head.
“Brother.” At Lottie’s voice, we both turned. She was close to having the baby—our baby—so like Story, all her dresses flowed like water.
West’s brow furrowed. “You should be sitting.”
She raised her hands. “What do you want me to say? Mom told me to come get you. Apparently she needs help inside.”
He exhaled. “Fine.”
She watched him walk away. “My mother doesn’t need him. She went to the restroom to drink something harder than wine. She’s been weird all day…mad about something in the papers.” Lottie slowly turned toward me. “Anyway, he’ll be gone for at least thirty minutes.”
“Why did you do that?”
She tilted her head. “Did you want to keep talking to him?”
I still don’t know what to do with Lottie. I don’t think she was like her mother or father. As the months progressed, we hadn’t become friends, but neither had we become enemies. We existed in a space of nothingness.
“You really should be sitting.” I wrapped an arm around Lottie, steering her from underneath the silky petals and vultures.
Oh, they make such a perfect couple.
Lottie said nothing as I moved her in the direction I chose. I placed Lottie on the chaise and she smiled wispily.
“Thank you.”
As I stared at Lottie, a plan started to form in my mind—a way to help Snitch.
“Will you pretend to faint?” I asked.
“When?”
I rubbed my forehead. How long would it take to pull this off? “Thirty minutes?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
Just like that, she didn’t even question it. Lottie stared at the lemony chiffon sun, a blank look in her eyes. I think this is the part where I was supposed to ask her if she was okay.
To check in, be better, not be her fucking villain.
Instead, I left her, to play the hero.
About fifteen minutes later, I wove through my mother’s garden to where I’d last seen Story, petals falling like fragrant snowflakes. It was an off-path section of the garden, hidden from view beneath the blossoms.
Story lifted her head, startled, but when she saw it was me, every muscle relaxed.
Fuck, just that reaction to me twisted me up inside.
I reached into my back pocket and handed her a wrinkled, official-looking envelope. “I managed to grab this before my mother saw it.”