But before the door shut, he said to my back. “I’m not the bad guy, Story.”
He was.
He had to be.
Still, an inky feeling settled in my gut. At the look in Arthur’s eyes. At the way West’s brows drew together, the way his voice caught on my name. Not Angel—Story. Like he was truly concerned.
I slid down my double doors, pulling out my phone.
Dear Atlas,
My heart is rusty.
What if he didn’t rape me?
What if…what if I’m like my mother?
What if because I chose the second time, it means the first was never wrong?
Atlas…Every little flake that falls from my heart leaves me with another what if.
GRAY
Dear little wife,
I would scrape the rust off your heart.
If you’d let me.
—Atlas
Every morning I started by sending Story two messages. First, a message to her phone where she read it directly. Then something else—a secret, from Atlas.
This wasn’t planned, but then she kept sending me secrets, truths she wasn’t ready to say aloud, and I grew addicted.
Story’s secrets were mine.
Every. Single. Goddamn one of them. The ones she kept from herself, the ones she wasn’t ready to tell, every single fucking one.
“Grayson, so glad you finally made it downstairs.” My mother snapped me back into reality—the reality where another pointless Crowne party continued, as though Josephine wasn’t found on the terrace just outside.
My mother exhaled. “I would have chosen a lighter suit…Lottie is wearing rose and you will clash.”
She wrapped her arm around mine, leading me through a crowd of wide-eyes toward Lottie, so I could play pretend husband.
“With your grandfather gone—”
“And where is grandfather, again?” I cut her off.
He might be gone, but the world still spun on his axis. My guards still watched me with beady eyes. So wherever the fuck he went, it wasn’t good.
She tilted her head, blinking blue eyes like I’d asked what two plus two was. “Switzerland, of course.”
“Couldn’t even stay for the funeral?”
She put two fingers to her temple. “Please don’t remind me. It’s hard enough planning your child’s birth on top of New Year’s, now we have this.”
“Was Josephine’s death a bit of an inconvenience for you?”