“I can’t give you what you need.” My voice was hoarse, raspy. I hadn’t intended that, but the pain in my chest scraped at my throat.
She was a fucking princess. Her blood was blue, but fuck all of that—she was Abigail. Abigail who loved blind, Abigail who gave her whole heart to mend yours. She deserved to be kept and cared for by someone worth something.
“You’re the only one who can give me what I need. It’s only ever been you. You’re it for me. I feel it in my bones. You’re in my blood. You’re in me. Why can’t you see it?”
I ground my jaw until it felt my teeth would become dust.
Abigail’s eyes narrowed. “Ned was going to give me the world. Should I go back to him?”
She took a step back, but I grasped her wrist, stopping her from leaving, keeping her palms pressed to my face.
“I’m scared. I’m scared you’ll leave me, but I’m jumping anyway, hoping you’ll catch me this time. Catch me.”
A split second followed her declaration, marked by the waves crashing into the sand, and then our lips collided—crashed, slammed. It was violent like the surf, the thunder roaring above us, the lightning flashing our world white.
Then she ripped her lips off mine. I went right back in, but she turned away, breath louder than the wind.
Our foreheads were still pressed together, her eyes on the sand.
“Loving me at a distance is selfish and cowardly,” she whispered. “I won’t let us do it anymore.”
Her eyes found mine. “You either love me in public, proud, where everyone can see, or not at all. I don’t want your burgers, I don’t want your presents, I don’t want secret acts of love, and I don’t want your protection. I want you.”
“Selfish? Cowardly?” I growled.
True, the voice in my heart whispered back.
“I’ll wait for you,” she said, finding my eyes. “Come find me. Come keep me. Please.”
She took a step back, breaking our connection. Then with one more searing moment of eye contact, she left, just as the rain started to slam into the ocean.
I woke with a hangover—an Abigail Crowne hangover. I should be used to them by now—I’d received enough of them in my life. It’s a throbbing ache that starts in your chest.
She’d called me on all my shit and offered me my greatest dream.
Why couldn’t I just fucking take it?
I groaned into my pillow just as there was a knock on the door—the newspaper. Whether I wanted it or not, the motel delivered the Crowne Point Tribune every goddamn morning.
I answered the door in my boxer briefs and nothing else. My hair was a mess and fell over my eyes, and the sun felt too hot. At my feet, in black and white print, Abigail’s face stared back under the headline ABIGAIL CROWNE ELOPES.
My heart bottomed out. Had she fucking eloped with Ned? I tore the paper off the ground as an older woman walked by, staring at how little I wore.
“Take a fucking picture,” I said, slamming the door.
I gripped the paper. It wasn’t an announcement about her and Ned. They said she’d eloped with her bodyguard. Something about her falling in love with a bodyguard and calling off the engagement.
I threw on jeans and T-shirt, heading to Main Street to see if any other publications had covered it. This had to be just another Abigail scandal. She wouldn’t really go through with something so nuclear.
When I got to Main Street, Abigail was front-page news on multiple national and international magazines. Not only that, morning news was covering her. They all said the same thing.
“My little reject…” I thumbed through the magazines. This was what she’d meant when she said she’d gotten out from under Ned.
The Crownes didn’t have many enforced rules, but there was one: you marry who you’re told to marry. If they let you marry for love, then how would you stay in power? How would you stay a Crowne?
I looked to the beach, to the black palatial house visible from anyplace in Crowne Point.
I needed to find her.