His jaw tight, eye
s dark.
Panic seized my lungs and I doubled over in pain. I gripped his bicep as another contraction hit me.
Beryl laughed, and Grayson flexed his fingers into a fist.
“I should have ripped him out of you,” he growled. “I should have fucking ripped him out of you when I had the chance.”
The sirens grew louder.
“The weight is too heavy for your shoulders,” I cried.
“My shoulders will get strong. Now leave, but do one thing for me.” He shoved fabric into my hand, wet and cold. “Survive.”
His green pocket square, sticky with blood. Inside, bloody and cold, wrapped around my locket, was the final coin.
How—what—I couldn’t ask him, not with Beryl watching our every move.
He turned from me.
“Grayson, you survive too. You promise me. You survive too.” He wasn’t responding, and the longer I went without a response, the higher my fear rose. “Grayson?”
“Leave, Snitch!” he yelled, and I jolted, running out of the room, pausing only to give one last look.
“My song will wait until you return, Atlas.”
I ran to find Lottie; the last thing I saw was Grayson standing tall before his grandfather.
A fault line formed along my heart at exactly 2:02 in the morning. With every beat, I felt it digging. I swallowed, throat dry, as I left the love of my life forever.
Sixty
STORY
Lottie was waiting just outside the entrance to the tunnels.
“Where is Grayson?” she asked.
I rolled my lips, shaking my head, unable to say the words. The realization dawned on Lottie slowly as her mouth parted. Grayson Crowne was out doing what Grayson Crowne did best—sacrificing himself.
The gravity of the situation was apparent in the low way she spoke, the tight draw of her brow.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I don’t have any ideas left and she—” Lottie broke off on a breath. “She was the only person home I could think of…the only person who isn’t them.”
“Who?”
“Jesus Christ. If I look between your legs, am I going to see little baby Gray giving me the finger? How the fuck are you standing?”
Oh no.
Wearing a baby pink sweatshirt that said MOOD: FUCK(ing) YOU with a leather and diamond choker, Gemma Crowne looked like she belonged trending on Insta, not here. In the tunnels of Crowne Hall, shepherding two pregnant fugitives.
“Gemma?” The fate of my and my baby’s life hung with Gemma Crowne?
We were doomed.
“Where’s my brother?”