I looked at him, eyes wide.
“Read it,” was all he said.
I don’t know why my fingers shook as I read the first message. Maybe it had something to do with Grayson, whose deep blue eyes seemed to reflect wildness outside. Or maybe it was the millions of butterflies flapping inside my ribcage.
Dear little wife,
I think it’s important you know these letters are the only thing getting me through this prison. I’ve turned on my notifications, and every minute my pocket buzzes.
It’s never you.
You lied to me.
I’m in my bed and the sheets don’t smell like you. I’m looking at my empty floor, remembering the first night you filled it.
When you filled me.
I never told you, but I stayed up that night. All night. Watching you. That night, to me, you were like…some dangerous colonist who wandered onto my untouched island. So I stared at you, waiting for you to do what everyone did. Lie. Steal. Destroy.
Then you shivered.
I guess I wanted you to know.
You lied.
All I fucking care about is that my floor is empty.
I’m empty.
My sheets don’t smell like you.
I took a breath, and when I looked up, Grayson was watching. I felt like I should say something, but I had no words.
He stepped back to me, thumbing tears I didn’t realize had fallen.
“Do you want to keep reading?” he asked.
I rolled my lips, nodding.
There were more letters, so many more. So Grayson thumbed my tears as I continued to read.
Dear little wife, every secret I keep from you builds a new thorn around my heart.
They piled higher and higher until I couldn’t breathe.
Dear little nun…no poetry today, I wish I could have told you how pretty your smile was today. It was gone too quickly.
I wanted to read them, right this moment, but there were hundreds. I skimmed to the last one, a response to my letter about West, when I’d said: I don’t want to keep you from someone who can love you without mistake.
He’d replied:
Dear little wife,
Love is the most singularly human event in human existence.
But to err is human.
So then, love must be imperfect.
To love wholly, without limits, until death and beyond forever, our love must be riddled with mistakes.
Give me your imperfect love.
Everything else is just…fantasy.
Grayson knew my words when he’d said those horrible things to me earlier today. His real truth was waiting here for me this whole time.
And the tears fell harder.
“I had to use his words against him,” Gray said. “He was never going to believe you if I didn’t. I’m sorry, little wife. I’m sorry I had to lie. That I had to hurt you.”
All this time, Grayson had been listening to my fears, bleeding with me. He’d always been protecting me. Always been looking out for me. Trying to lift the weight off my shoulders as I tried to do the same to him.
“How long have you known?” I asked.
“Since right before you came back.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? If all this time you knew I was writing you?”
He arched a brow. “Why didn’t you?”
I worried my lip between my teeth. “I didn’t realize until just today how many secrets I’d been keeping. It didn’t start out this way. I messaged you when I had no other option in Scotland, but then I discovered some truths are easier to say when I thought no one was listening…and then the secrets started hiding from me. I hope you don’t think I didn’t want you to hear them, I just didn’t know how to say them out loud yet.”
A soft smile speared his lips. “I know, little wife.”
I swallowed. “All of my…”
My shame. My doubt. All the insecurities that made me feel less than…Grayson Crowne had been there, and he’d been holding my hand the entire way.
He lifted my chin, my blurry vision colliding with his. “You watch me when I’m not looking, Snitch? I listen when you think no one can hear.”
We moved closer, our lips a thread width away, squashing the dark night between our chests.
“I should have torn him off you that first night. I never should have let him crawl back into your chest.”
“He was always there…” I breathed, steaming our lips.
“Rusted,” Grayson broke off, his bloody hand sliding over my heart. “No more, little nun. I’m not letting that happen again. I will cut him out of you. I will cut anyone who even tries to get you again.”
His voice dark.
His promise darker.
A single second stretched, then he crushed his lips against mine and gripped the back of my neck, ripping a groan from my throat.
“Fuck me,” I begged. “Please.”
I didn’t care we were outside, I could fuck him right here on the beach. He held my lip captive, eyes burning. Without responding he slammed his lips back into mine.
He was on the edge.
So close.
I knew what he wanted, what would push him over.
Holding on to his arms for stability, I fell to my knees. He caught my arm, trying to keep me from falling.
“Please.”
Cradling my head in his hands. “Little wife.”
“I don’t want sweet, Grayson,” I whispered. “I don’t need sweet.”
I saw the defeat waffling in his eyes. The clench of his jaw, the flare of his nostrils.
He dragged his knuckle down the side of my face. “I’ll take care of you, little wife, but let me take you home first.”
I looked over his shoulder, at the black spires of Crowne Hall.
Home?
Was it finally home?
He gently grasped my chin, pulling my gaze back to his. I let him lift me off the sand, and with his bloody hand entwined in mine, we walked hand in hand to Crowne Hall.
Fifty-Five
GRAY
Story kept giving me fuck-me eyes. Wide, begging eyes, her stony hazels aglow like the sunset, telling me she’d let me do anything to her.
Dangerous.
I don’t want sweet, Grayson. I don’t need sweet.
I adjusted my cock and her eyes dropped to the action, licking her lips.
I couldn’t make her bleed while she was pregnant with my child—but there was something dark and twisted about her begging me to hurt her while she carried my child, and it was twisting something inside me that was wrong.
But so fucking right.
We were back in my wing, she was in my bed, and I still couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t over. My blood zinged with it, like a wire left in a puddle.
Every time we got close to happiness, something ripped it away.
“Let me clean you up.” Story’s raspy voice brought me back to her walnut eyes. “I’ll go get a wet towel.”
“Nah. Then I’d have to let you go.” I lifted our entwined hands.
She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, cheeks heating.
“Oh fuck, Snitch, I missed that.”
I thumbed her tear-stained cheeks. I wanted to wash away all those stains. To eradicate anyone who had ever put them there.