I just needed a minute to myself.
“I think that’s all of it.” She swiped the cake from her hands on her pale gossamer dress.
I’m going to get in a lot of shit for talking back to them. If anyone was going to throw a fit, it would be Aundi and Pipa.
As if Lottie read my mind, she said, “I’ll tell anyone who questions that I said you could talk. So…don’t worry.”
“Why are you friends with them?” I asked the question that had been burning my tongue for months.
Lottie’s brow wrinkled. “I mean, I don’t really get a lot of options for friends. You don’t really get options for…anything. This is who your friends are, this is who you’ll marry, and if you disobey…” She swallowed thickly, then blinked, like coming out of a dream. “Do you ever feel like this is the most you’ve ever needed a drink, but once again, fate is giving us the middle finger?”
She leaned back, elbows digging into the sand, one hand on her rounded belly.
I leaned back, doing the same. “Yup.”
We sat in silence, with only the sounds of the crashing waves. Lottie picked at her thumbnail.
“I feel like I should say something to you,” she said softly.
I laughed jaggedly. “Please don’t.”
“I just want you to know the world doesn’t believe you, my parents will lie and pretend they don’t believe you…but I do.” Her eyes slowly drifted to mine.
Tears clogged my throat again, and thankfully, Lottie looked away. After a minute of grinding my teeth and forcing the tears down, Lottie spoke again.
“Why were you yelling?”
I contemplated lying. I contemplated putting up a wall. I felt like Lottie and I were connected, and like how it had been with Grayson, we were the only ones who understood each other. I didn’t sense any malice from her, and I hadn’t for months. We were both stuck on this vine together, forced to poke each other with thorns when we would have rather cut the vine. Because sometimes, in life…we don’t get many options.
“Do you ever…” I stared out at the black ocean waves crashing on the sand. “Do you ever have deep fears that you’re afraid to say aloud? But once you speak them…it’s like…” I struggled to find the way to explain it. “It’s like saying Voldemort’s name. When you don’t say them, they fester inside you, and they get bigger and bigger, but when you finally speak them… It’s so silly, but oh my God. I feel so much better.”
Lottie was silent for a while. The music from outside bled through the hedges and into our air. When she spoke, I almost mistook it for the party.
“I have something inside me.”
I turned my head. “A fear?”
“A secret…and a fear,” she whispered.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you screamed it out loud.”
Her brow wrinkled, and she stared at her stomach, when Grayson’s pained yell tore our attention backward.
“Story!”
Behind us, Grayson stood on the empty beach, one foot forward as if about to sprint to me. The breeze spun his white shirt, giving a devilish glimpse of his golden abs. His rose gold hair whipped wildly around burning blue eyes.
I was standing before I realized it, my walk turning into a run. The minute I stood, he was already running to me, and we met in the middle. He crashed me into a caged hug.
After a moment that lasted too short, he gently pulled my face back, examining me.
His face bled emotion. First, relief, then fury—at the cake Lottie had barely managed to clean.
I couldn’t handle sympathy, not when I was struggling with the feeling in my chest. This badness. This wrongness. Those people on the internet were right. I was wrong. I was fucked up. I was sleeping in the bed of the guy who did me wrong, and I don’t know why I couldn’t just say he was bad, when I was staring my Prince Charming in the face.
I tried to pull my face back, but Grayson’s grip dug into my chin.
“Please,” I begged.
His eyes hardened, thumb digging into the flesh. “I was the villain until you made me the hero in your story. You saw me before anyone else, before I saw myself.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
His words came over my bloodstream, soothing the bubbling acid burning through my veins. How did he know? How could he possibly know? How could he read the words in my head like he could feel the heartbeat in my chest?
Tears marbled my eyes. Could he read the words inside my head? Or had my heartbeat become so loud it was Morse code, betraying my feelings to him.
His grip slipped from my chin, sliding to the back of my neck to push our foreheads together. His other hand slid from my back to my stomach, and then the first beautiful thing since this awful day began happened, she kicked—with her father.
Our eyes collided.
Hope.
He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple lurched.
With his palm digging into my stomach, Grayson continued, “I don’t know what you see in him. But I know it’s your curse to see what others can’t.”
I wanted so badly to kiss him in this moment.
Didn’t he see? This was why I could never let him go.
Forty-Four
GRAY
Didn’t she see? This was why I couldn’t let her stay. This was my hell, and I never should have dragged them in.
“What if we don’t find it?” Her fear came out a strangled cry. “I can’t lose you.”
“You’ll never lose me, Snitch.”
Her eyes searched mine frantically. “You said something similar when we learned I was pregnant. I don’t want a life of you watching me a thousand miles away. A life where we never see you.”
She tried to pull back and I gripped both sides of her face, thumbs digging into her cheeks—
“I should have known I’d find you with him. You really are quite unfaithful.”
Our little bubble popped as West came stumbling out of the hedges onto the beach, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
I put Story behind my back, shielding her from West. He scoffed, taking a drink straight from the bottle.
Behind us, Lottie all but waddled up from the shore, a hand on her lower back. “West? Are you drunk?”
“Off his ass,” I gritted.
West laughed. “I’m just here to collect my fucking mistress. I think I’ve been really goddamn lenient. Do you know the rules she’s broken? The things I could have done—”
“Can’t you just go away?” Lottie yelled, cutting him off. “Why are you ruining things even more? It’s shitty enough having our parents; why are you trying to become them?”
West paused, then stumbled down the beach, grape vining on the sand.
“I’m the bad guy in the play.” He didn’t speak to any of us, he slurred a whisper into his drink. “I’m the one the crowd boos when he enters the stage.”
He swayed back and forth.
Suddenly, he jerked to Lottie. “But what about my sister?”
She sucked in a breath, backing up at his attention. I stepped in front of her, putting both Story and Lottie behind me.
West waved the champagne bottle in her direction. “My sister,” he continued. “So obsessed with not becoming our mother, so scared to marry a man who didn’t love her, she gave up everything else about her. Her purity. Her kindness. Her wholesome heart. Everything that makes Lottie, Lottie. And why?” He grinned into the bottle, eyes flickering to me. “She was hoping you’d love that instead.”