My head snaps up to find Grace standing in the doorway, hurt bleeding from her expression, but I can’t concentrate on anything but the fact she knew my parents were going to be killed. “You knew?” I ask her in disbelief.
“W-what?” she asks.
“My fucking parents, Grace! You knew something was going to happen?” I question, standing from the bed.Was she involved after all?The thought makes me sick, and I have to swallow the bile that spills into my mouth for the second time.
Grace freezes, and through the cloud of rage hanging over me, her non-answer seems to say everything she’s not. “I… I didn’t…” She stumbles over her words.
“You fucking did, Grace! It’s written right here! You’ve been lying to me this whole time?” Why does it feel like my heart is being ripped out of my chest?
“I wanted to tell you,” she whispers, stepping into the room. “I wanted to tell you everything, but you wouldn’t have understood.”
“Stop telling me I won’t understand, Grace.” A growl rumbles from my throat, but a thought dawns on me. “Easton was right this whole time.” I laugh, shaking my head, but there’s not a drop of humour in it.
Stepping towards her, I can barely think straight. Anger and confusion burn through me, clogging my veins with ash and clouding everything I thought I knew about the girl in front of me. “How much of what you told me were lies?How could you let them die, Grace?” I yell, clenching my fists at my sides.
“I wanted to warn you,” she says as tears slip down her face. “So you could stop it.”
“But you didn’t,” I spit at her, venom coating my words.
“Because he beat me so bad, I could barely move, Sebastian!” she shouts at me, and now it’s my turn to freeze. “Do you think I don’t feel guilty? That I don’t imagine every day what would’ve happened if I’d been able to warn you?” Her voice cracks on the last word. I feel sick. Rage wars with guilt as I struggle with what to believe.
“Who ishe, Grace? Because you still haven’t fucking told me. Was it Ian? Is that why you ran from the warehouse, so he couldn’t fucking expose you?”
Easton had thought they were working together, and even though it doesn’t feel right, my mind grasps the first thing that fits. He’s the only person she’s ever named.
I’ve been so consumed byher—so focused on being the reason she wants to stay that I stopped pressing for answers. She went through something horrible, and I had started to accept I might never know the full extent of what happened. To be honest, from what she’d already revealed, I wasn’t so sure anymore that Iwantedto know. What she told me of her childhood wasn’t a lie—I feel it with all that I am—having seen the proof in her scars.I read it in her journal.But the details of everything else? Her timeline of events?
How the fuck can I trust that now?
How do I know theheshe’s referring to now is the same bastard who abused her as a kid?
“You want to know the truth?” she asks.
“Of course, I fucking do,” I yell, shaking with rage and hurt.
“I’ve loved you since I was sixteen… at least I thought I did. Except I didn’t love you. Not really. I don’t think I even knew what it meant to love. But I know now,” she says, wiping away a tear from under her eye. “It feels like home. Like my heart is so full it doesn’t feel like there could be any more room inside, yet it grows with every minute and every day I spend with you.” She smiles, but it’s sad, so fucking sad. “It feels like the person who fills every inch of space in there just reached into my chest and tore it out. Only for them to stand in front of me with my beating heart in their hand, letting me watch as they squeeze the very blood that runs for them out of it.”
Fuck. “Grace…”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, then she’s gone, and I let her go.
The sound of my heart surrounds me as I stand in the silent room. Battered and bruised, it beats a strange rhythm—like the muscle keeping me alive is letting out too much blood with each beat.
What the hell does she mean she’s loved me since she was sixteen?
Does it have something to do with the photograph I found?
My head throbs as my mind tries to make sense of everything.
Part of me wants to hate her after finding out what she kept from me, whilst the other clings to the part where she said she loves me without even using the three words I’ve silently been craving. Only her words both fill me with more warmth and cut me deeper than ‘I love you’ever could. My fingers flex, squeezing the leather-bound journal still clutched in my hand. How many more of her secrets are buried inside? Since day one, the pull I’ve felt around Grace tightens around my chest, trying to draw me towards the empty doorway, but I plant my feet.
Are you just going to let her go after all you did to keep her here?
I don’t know.
I need time to think.
My phone rings in my pocket, but I send it straight to voicemail without checking the caller ID.