Four
Dear Atlas,
I don’t know if you’ll ever see these letters, but I pray you do. I’ve never been someone who prayed before, who put their hopes in the hands of fickle gods, but I’ll pray to every god living and dead because I don’t want you to worry. I can’t breathe if you think I abandoned you.
Or worse.
I’m safe. We’re both safe.
It was never supposed to happen this way, Atlas. This static, dead silence between us like the rustle of leaves on an empty autumn day. You are my heartbeat and you’ve been ripped from me. When I put my palm to my chest, it’s blank. Two weeks is nothing in the blink of eternity, but it’s everything in the slow ache of heartbreak.
Are you bleeding?
My secrets and thorns hurt and I lie awake wondering about yours. I’m alone in this room that feels older than poetry itself. It smells like night rain, and the stars are hidden beneath the dark, somber clouds. I only have a single, waxy candle for blurry light.
And also, I guess, the light of this bright, blue phone which really feels out of place here, Atlas. Like I should have found some old parchment to write you with. I guess then we could really be like the poets we spoke of, sending illicit letters with fire-marked edges.
I keep thinking about the first thing I want to do when I see you again.
Kiss you. Hug you. Leap into your arms. Really, I just want to talk to you. You’re the only one I ever could talk to, the only one who ever listened.
And then my heart breaks because…I won’t be able to talk to you.
Because…Atlas, I lied.
Is this how I tell you? Like a coward?
I need a coward’s courage to tell you. You’re thousands of miles away, a continent is between us, and there’s no way for me to see the ache in your eyes.
It’s a selfish confession.
All of the weight gone, none of the consequences, because I don’t know if you’ll ever even see it. You are Grayson Crowne, after all. You have tens of thousands of people sliding into your DMs. Why would you notice me?
I’m on the hard floor, Atlas. The old planks creak every time I slightly move. I don’t want to get in bed. I don’t want this night to end, because if it ends, that means tomorrow will come.
One step closer to being reunited with you, but also…one day closer to him. To them.
Because I lied to you, Atlas.
I’m not his wife.
Not anymore.
I’m his mistress.
In so many other instances, that would’ve been less complicated. One less thing tying me to Westley du Lac. But you know my past, and I know yours. So I’ll be honest—there’s a briar growing inside my chest.
Every day I remember how he felt inside me.
But now it’s both nights.
Both times.
The night I didn’t choose, and the night I did.
And now I can’t differentiate them inside my head.
And I hate myself.
A deep, gnawing cavern of self-loathing.
For liking it.
For muddying the waters further. For having no one to blame but myself. I need him to be bad. A villain. But he isn’t, not always. That night is a briar inside my chest, and my heart is twisting it together, wrong, tangled, and cutting.
I wish I’d told you the truth. I wish I’d let you take me away.
It would have been easier than this.
Five
STORY
The days blurred into one long, rainy song, sung outside my window by the unseen birds. Soon the week was over, and I had written to Grayson every day. Until my eyelids were heavy, until the words in my head settled into an ache in my chest.
Every morning, I felt little stirrings in my gut. I was connected to Grayson on butterfly wings, like our child was trying to reach him too.
My only relief was that West never came back. Every morning, vitamins were waiting on my nightstand, like the kind Grayson had left, but West was never there.
It was just me and the cruel Madame.
Thwack.
“That fork is for—”
“Dessert,” I cut off.
Thwack.
I breathed through my nostrils, focusing on the dinner of some thick, red soup. All the food here was overly fancy and it made me miss Grayson more. I missed him knowing exactly what food I craved.
Now, I craved the sugar on his lips.
At least this room had become some kind of comfort. It was older than even Beryl’s grandfather, I’m sure, and every day I found something left behind. One of the four posters of my bed was carved with the scratched-out initials J.C., directly below them, the wood was engraved with J.S.G.
I tried to imagine the girl before me, and I felt a little less alone each day.
It’s beautiful too. Pale white wallpaper with gold leaf damask covered the walls, and as I’d looked closer, I’d discovered faint lines of poetry. All different lines from different poets. I’d never seen something like that anywhere in my life.
Buried beneath a poem…
There was no way, right? My uncle had never left Crowne Point.
Thwack.
I yanked my hand back.
“What was that for?” I snapped.
Thwack.
“You were daydreaming. You must always be present—”
She shot to her feet, so fast the chair scraped across the hardwood. “Mr. du Lac—I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”
“I thought I made my feelings on that ruler clear.” West’s deep voice drifted over my shoulder.
She shuffled past our little table, behind me. I stayed sitting, staring at the fine gold-inlaid porcelain. I knew I would get another thwack later for not standing and greeting him as I properly should—regardless of his feelings.
“Two weeks is not enough time,” I heard her whisper, low. “She won’t be ready.”
Whatever West did next, it made her leave, because I heard the antique door creak shut.
The silence grew like a thick heat.
I stared at the table until my vision blurred.
Until knuckles glanced beneath my chin, and I found warm brown eyes. “Did you get enough to eat?”
My hand still throbbed from the thwacking I got during dinner. I barely touched my food. I craved suckers. French fries. Things he could never give me.
“Yes.”
West probed me, his brown eyes too sincere. He’d taken my locket, I reminded myself, and for all I knew he’d chucked it into the nearest marsh.
But I was curious why after a week he was suddenly here, and as silence continued to thicken, so did my nerves tangle.
“Miss me?” he asked, lips curved.
There was no right way to answer this. I wondered where West went during the week, briefly, but not enough to say the words aloud, worried I’d jinx it. Break my luck, and he’d come back more often.
“You must have more questions,” he said.
I was overflowing with them, but not enough to talk to West.
“In a few days you won’t have a voice, Angel. You might as well use it now.”
That hit me, as though someone cracked my ribs with a baseball bat. I met his eyes, and I swear I saw pity. I looked away, looked at the floor.
West stood up, clearing his throat. “I think you’re overdue for a tour, Angel.”