We headed up to the second floor, and my heart beat faster. I took one corner of the sheets, and my uncle took another as we removed them to put on a fresh pair of linens.
“I’ve found you a place,” my uncle said casually.
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you need somewhere to work. I found you somewhere to work. You can’t work here anymore. You must know how the servants view you.”
“Well, yes, I do.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Story. I know you’re smarter than this. I have to assume something else happened, more than simply looking him in the eyes. I’ve found you somewhere to work, an estate in Scotland.”
Scotland.
I looked at the linens in my hand and back again to his bed that I’ve slept in, where I’ve done more than sleep. We’ve whispered secrets, we’ve shared pieces of our soul, but when it comes down to it, this is who I am.
I change his sheets.
Gray always said the contract wasn’t about sex, because I would give it to him. If I could just last until Christmas, I’d have enough money to set Uncle up for life, but I don’t know anymore. There was one escape clause—leave Crowne Point forever.
I never thought I’d even consider it.
But I can’t be my mother.
Now Uncle was giving me a place to escape to.
A crash pulled me out of my thoughts. Uncle dropped his side of the sheets, falling into Grayson’s night table, pushing the lamp off, shattering on the floor.
“Uncle?” Fear strangled my throat. “Uncle!” He was awake, but cross eyed and loose limbed, barely held up by the nightstand against his thighs. I ran to him, grappling with his body, sliding my arms under his as his body weight transferred to mine. We both slid down, when suddenly the weight lifted.
Grayson.
My heart pounded with his arrival. I’d started to expect
his hardened voice. His shadowy presence whenever things were starting to go south. That was wrong. That wasn’t good. Because I knew without a shadow of a doubt there would come a day when Grayson wouldn’t be there.
When I would have to carry the weight on my shoulders alone, once more.
I looked up at him, wide eyed. If he noticed my stunned reaction, he didn’t show it. Grayson lifted Uncle up, putting one arm over his shoulder as I did the same, and silently put Uncle to bed—in his bed. My heart lurched. The Grayson the world knew would never do something like this.
The Grayson I knew? I wouldn’t doubt it.
So why was he always trying to show me the lie?
Grayson ripped out his phone, muttering fast, furious words into the receiver. I caught ambulance, doctor, paramedic. Meanwhile I stared at my uncle’s passed-out, white-as-a-sheet face, the truth I didn’t want to acknowledge staring back at me.
Grayson turned to me, furious. “What the hell is happening?”
“Cancer,” I croaked, barely above a whisper. I swallowed, saying more clearly, “He has cancer.”
And apparently wouldn’t fucking stop lying about it, either.
“It’s back? How long have you known?”
“I mean, since right after the Fourth, but he said…he said he was getting better.”
He turned from me on a curse.
A thought popped into my head, and a new fear bubbled up my throat. I grabbed Grayson’s wrist, trying to get him to face me.