He laughed. “This is so fucked up, Snitch.”
“It was the only way I could see you. I needed to see you. I can’t stay past ten…” Past the time Lottie needed to be in her room.
And the time West would most likely expect me.
“Cinderella usually gets until midnight.” He gripped Lottie’s s
ilk and lace pajamas, then ripped them off my body. “There,” he breathed. “That’s fucking better.”
“What am I going to wear?”
“Nothing.” He palmed my stomach in the way that always stole air from my lungs, adding, “You’re going to my bed, but there are too many stairs—”
I laughed. “You and stairs. I can walk up stairs, Grayson.”
“I’m gonna carry you, little wife.”
“I’m too pregnant to threaten with that. You can’t lift me.” I gestured to my stomach.
His eyes darkened, and then he grinned. A full-on Grayson Crowne smile. That was the only warning I got before he swept me off my feet—literally.
I was tucked into a fireman’s carry, wrapping my arms around his neck in seconds.
“I’m too big for this—”
“Shut up, Snitch.”
He carried me up the stairs and to his bed effortlessly. When he set me on the mattress, his whole face changed. I swallowed, hot and cold and achy just by the look he was giving me.
Needing something to do, something other than crisscross my legs back and forth, I felt his silky, black sheets. “I missed your sheets.”
Grayson dragged a thumb along his bottom lip. “I’ll always miss you in my sheets, Snitch.”
Then slowly—finally—he got beside me, but he didn’t get in the sheets.
And I was strung out.
Just from the feather-distance between us.
“Kiss me,” I begged. “Please.”
“First, tell me all your words.” He dragged a knuckle down my cheeks. “The words they stole from you. The words you couldn’t say. The words they put in your mouth.” He lay on his side, head resting on one hand. Watching me. “How are you doing, really?”
I chewed my bottom lip.
I knew what he meant.
I knew what he wanted me to say.
Where to fucking begin?
I looked for a reason not to begin. My eyes landed on the nightstand, where the green handkerchief lay, the one from our wedding.
“Why is it there?”
“To remind me every day that you’re missing. That our happily ever after isn’t complete.” He thumbed my tears. “Snitch, please, bleed with me.”
I traced anxious lines across my stomach. “I never thought I’d have to justify my actions to millions of people. This is my love story, not theirs, but they’re acting like I know how it ends.”