Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

Ash.

Ash from the fireplaces, the stoves…in my bed.

“Cinderella should sleep in the ashes, don’t you think?”

They laughed, leaving me with my dirty bed.

GRAY

* * *

“What the fuck was that?” I opened and closed my fists, struggling with my anger.

“She’s my girl, Grayson, at your request—no, at your insistence. She is supposed to do way more than that and you know it.” Lottie took an angry breath she tried to hide, and it blew out her cheeks like a chipmunk’s.

Then a faraway look overtook her eyes, like fog swallowing the horizon of Crowne Beach.

“I’ve been dreaming of my wedding night with you ever since our first kiss…”

Just like that, my anger evaporated into sludge.

I went to her, went to my wife. Taking her soft, manicured hands in my own. She still wouldn’t look at me, eyes downcast.

I tilted her chin with my knuckle, her brown eyes on mine. In this moment, I finally saw Lottie. Rage, hate, bitter betrayal. Charlotte du Lac was not someone who showed emotions, because she wasn’t allowed to feel them. I could relate to her on that level. It took a thief to burrow inside my heart and steal all the emotions I hid before I could feel them myself.

“Lottie.”

“Don’t.” She swallowed and took a step back, that familiar distance swallowing her eyes again. “I don’t want to talk about what we just did. If we have to do it again, we have to do it. We just don’t ever talk about it. If we need to use her, then we need to use her.”

Worse than being surprised by her words was expecting them. It was exactly what someone in our life would say. Before Snitch, before all of it, I wouldn’t have so much as blinked at them.

Now?

“No. No, Lottie. Never again.”

I dragged her into a hug, but she wormed her way out of it. The waves crashed and she rubbed her bare arm, ridding it of goose bumps.

“You can’t bring her to Asheville, Lottie.”

I tried to drive Story out, and that obviously didn’t work. Story was made of metal. She was stone. She was going to stay until Woodsy died, and I couldn’t fucking drag her around. The old man was gonna die soon, and she deserved to be there with him.

Lottie blinked, mouth parted. “You want me to go without my girl?”

“It’s our honeymoon; let’s just have it be us.”

She was silent for a moment. “Fine. I’ll go without my girl.”

I barely had a moment to exhale my relief before Lottie spoke again.

“Do you know that our prenup says you get everything if I commit adultery? It doesn’t say anything about you.”

“I promised you I would be faithful. I’m not fucking lying,” I all but growled.

She found my eyes. “You make me a lot of promises, Grayson…none of them are binding.”

My brows twisted. “The prenup was already settled over a year ago.”

“We could always get a postnup.”