His eyes burned with something that looked a lot like love.
Moments afterward were still. Unaffected. Tender.
“Get up here,” he growled.
I crawled up him, and when I was in reach he dragged me the rest of the way by the waist. He stroked his thumb across my lip, pushing the rest of his come in my mouth. Then he kissed my jaw. He kissed my chin, my nose, my cheek, my forehead. Everywhere but my lips.
I pushed him away, a knot in my chest.
He still won’t kiss me.
Because I don’t mean anything.
He dragged me back.
“Mr. Crowne,” I whispered.
He rolled off me. I was cold, so cold.
Grayson Crowne is the cruelest person in the world, and I’m hopelessly in love with him, but his love only bloomed in the dark.
Thirty-Four
STORY
* * *
The rest of the trip passed with Grayson barely acknowledging my existence. I couldn’t believe it was almost August, that the summer was almost over, and this thing between Grayson and I was getting closer to the end.
I kept telling myself he was marrying Lottie, and I needed to get used to being invisible again. My heart hurt, was breaking each second he kept choosing her, each second I let him keep choosing her. Until one moment it cracked in two, when everything changed, the night of Abigail Crowne’s engagement party.
I heard rumors about her fiancé.
Abigail was supposedly marrying a horrible, abusive man. I think it bothered Gray…he acted like it didn’t, refused to let the world see anything save his perfect mask. I tried to tell myself I had no right to wonder, let alone ask.
He had a constant frown, his shoulders were slumped, and anytime he left me to go spend time with Abigail’s fiancé, he looked ready to throw something.
The day of the engagement party he stopped talking to me completely.
He lounged on a dark-leather couch overlooking his private beach, one leg propped on a glass table, scrolling through his Instagram feed.
“I’m going to visit my uncle,” I declared, both telling him and testing to see if he would try to stop me. A little spark in my gut hoped he would. I don’t know why I liked it. I was a servant. I shouldn’t like being told what to do.
But I missed it.
He didn’t come for me at night anymore, didn’t acknowledge me in the day, and for the thousandth time I wondered why he kept me around.
I took a step toward the door, and when he didn’t so much as lift his head from his phone, I kept walking.
The house was buzzing with energy for Abigail Crowne’s engagement party. Servants cutting and preparing fresh flowers, a multistory ladder erected so they could shine the sparkling two-ton chandelier that hung from the domed ballroom. Paparazzi being escorted into the press room. I paused when I saw Ellie, hoping she would say something…but no one looked at me, not even to glare.
I was afforded the same treatment as a Crowne, or a Crowne’s guest. Yet I was not a Crowne. I was in an in-between world. Not belonging below, not belonging above. As a result, I was the loneliest I’d ever been.
When I reached the servants’ quarters, my uncle’s heavy black door was already open. Silver was piled high on his bed, and he lay against the headrest, polishing.
“Uncle?” I asked, eyeing the silver.
“Story.” He smiled when he saw me. “Good to see you.”