Heartless Hero (Crowne Point 1)

It wasn’t like before. She had no fight.

I’d thought about this moment for five years, what I would do when I finally saw her again, how I would make her suffer like she’d made me.

I’d expected her to fight back.

“The girl who opens her legs for anyone,” I said quietly, working the blocky beads so hard they bit into my skin. “The girl who begs for insults, because they come easier than adoration. The girl who’d ask to get slapped if it meant someone would touch her.”

“Please…” Abigail bit her lower lip and looked at the grass. “Stop.”

“The Reject Princess.” I licked the words with a humorless smirk.

Her eyes flashed back to mine, haughty and filled with fire. For a minute she looked just like she had the night she’d started this.

I was sixteen when they’d found me.

When she’d found me.

I don’t know much about my life before the Crownes. I’d lived on the streets of our small town, when one night a shiny, black car stopped. Abigail Crowne got out of the car. I remember it had been an unusually cold July, and the streets popped with fireworks every night.

She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. Her black hair had curled in the wind like silk ribbons and she had an entitled, callous sheen to her violet veiled brown eyes I’d only ever seen on the rich.

She’d bent down until we were eye to eye and said, “I’ve been looking for a pet. Grandpa’s allergic to dogs and Mom hates cats…” She’d trailed off, biting her bottom lip, looking at me. Her front teeth were a little crooked, but it had only added to her allure.

You’re going to be mine forever, and you’re going to thank me for it.

“The Reject Princess… yeah.” I laughed, grabbing her elbow, pulling her closer. “I’m going to break your heart, and you’ll thank me for it. You’ll beg me to do it again.”

Fear flickered in her eyes, and she searched my own.

Whatever she was searching for, she wouldn’t find it.

She lifted her chin high, and whatever vulnerability she’d shown me before vanished.

“If I’m the Reject Princess, what does that make you? The pathetic dog asleep at her feet?”

A humorless smirk chilled my lips; then I bit the air between us, stopping a feather’s distance away from her lips. She jumped back, heels losing purchase in the sandy grass, falling on her ass.

My laugh barely reached my lips, let alone my eyes.

Her eyes widened. “What happened to you?” Abigail scrambled back, getting tangled in her tulle. She spun around and tried to stand, tried to leave. I stepped on the hem, and she fell forward on a gasp.

I yanked her up by the laces of her dress just before she hit the grass.

“I dunno.” I gripped her satin laces, pulling her to me. “What happened to me?”

I didn’t give her a chance to recover. With one hand on her laces, I trailed my other lightly along her collarbone.

As far as I was concerned, she’d had five fucking years to be comfortable.

Her heartbeat pounded against my touch, and hard, heavy breaths escaped her spoiled, pouty lips, but she held her face in a firm grimace. Still, her skin rose to meet me.

“You’re not the boy I remember,” she said, a wrinkle marring her perfect porcelain brow. “You’re not the boy I saved.”

“You’re not the girl I remember either, princess.”

There was a time I thought Abigail was like me, but she’d always been a spoiled brat. Today proved that, shattered any lingering doubts.

“I’m exactly the person you left me to be,” she said.