I couldn’t go down this road.
“If you never wanted to be your father…I never wanted to be my mom.”
“What would our wedding look like, Snitch?” he asked.
My eyes snapped to his. Why would he ask that? He took a step closer, forcing me to take one back, until my back was almost pressed against the glass window.
“Tell me.”
My brows caved with my lungs. “Why?”
“I need to fucking know.” His voice was raw, shredded.
A part of me yelled to lie. Tell him I hadn’t thought about it at all.
“It would be small,” I said softly. “Not a ridiculous Crowne party. Intimate. So all we had to worry about was each other.”
“You’d like that?” The hope in his voice splintered my heart.
“You’d like that.”
A sad, barely there smile flickered and died on his pink lips. When he spoke, his voice was rough, like he’d inhaled a year’s worth of smoke. “Yeah.”
God, these moments with Grayson were so addicting. I should hate him, right? But how could I when he let me see the broken, lonely prince beneath all the thorns?
“In the winter,” I continued, getting sucked into his eyes, into a fantasy that would never be. “So snowflakes frosted the glass like glitter. And you’d wear something just for me.”
“Oh yeah?” He reached out, caressing his knuckle down my cheek. “Like what?”
“A pocket square…” I closed my eyes, drowning in his touch, goose bumps shivering along my heart. “M-Maybe something green.”
He took a deep, jagged breath.
“I’ve got you fooled,” he eventually said, throat thick with tension.
I opened my eyes. “I’m the only one you don’t have fooled, Grayson. You let your sisters think you don’t like them. You let the world think you’re a playboy. But you care so much.”
Something flickered beneath the deep blue of hi
s eyes. His hand slipped from my cheek, to the back of my neck, locking me in place. His jaw clenched, gaze focused on my lips, dark and possessive.
I put a hand to his chest, but I couldn’t quite shove him off, so it just lingered.
This isn’t something to do for a servant. These aren’t things you say for someone you’re going to abandon in two months.
“Why are you doing this?” I begged. “Why? Why can’t you be like this always? Do you remember what you said to me, what you did to me, back in France?”
“Why are you giving my fiancée green pens?” he countered, grip on my neck harsh. “Why are you telling her what I like?”
“So you’re happy. You deserve to be happy.”
His jaw clenched. “No one has ever accused Grayson Crowne of deserving happiness.”
I fisted the fabric of his white dress shirt before he spoke again.
“I tell you my deep secrets, my dirty pieces of me. I can breathe when I talk to you. With you I have no weight on my shoulders. I…I fucking trust you, Story Hale.” He said it like he couldn’t believe it—and also hated me for allowing the trust to blossom.
I looked away. “Lottie is waiting for you.”