Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

I shifted. “Everyone does. If you’ll excuse me.”

I made a motion to leave again, but he stopped me with another question. “What’s your name?”

My discomfort had now morphed into warning.

“Um…” I struggled with the need to always be respectful and the feeling that if I told him, I’d be really and truly screwed. So I just opened and closed my mouth.

He looked at my clothes; then his eyes zeroed on my locket, the one that I couldn’t get myself to take off.

“That’s a beautiful piece of jewelry. Who gave it to you?”

I slapped a hand over my neck. “My mother.”

It had happened in a split second. One minute he was eyeing me, the next he ripped out his phone and snapped a picture of me.

“Hey!” I shouted. I covered my face, but it was too late. He was still eyeing me with that same suspicious look, but then he turned over his shoulder slightly to yell to someone I couldn’t see.

“It’s her! The Cinderella of Crowne Hall.”

Eleven

STORY

* * *

“What? I’m not—”

A flash so bright it blinded me cut me off. I put my hand up as another one went off right after. I tried to back away, but I fell into another person.

“When did you fall in love with Grayson?” the person behind me asked.

My heart pounded. “I don’t…you have the wrong person.”

I’d had one job today: stay away from the press.

Guards were trying to break up this impromptu press conference, dragging them away one by one. I was certain they would lose their Crowne family press passes—a coveted item. Only so much press were allowed for each event.

Was it worth it?

“Do you hate Charlotte du Lac?”

“You have the wrong person,” I said again, a sinking in my gut. They had the right person.

“Did his family force you apart or did he abandon you?”

It felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer in the chest. Suddenly I wasn’t fighting to leave, even as the cameras went off, once again recording me at my most vulnerable for the world to see.

I didn’t know the answer to his question.

Was that the why I’d been searching for all these months? Why we were broken? I tried to search over the heat of the camera, the rapid-fire questions, to the grassy knoll on which I’d last seen Grayson.

Suddenly a hand grasped my arm.

Grayson?

Some primeval part of me recognized him as my savior before I had a chance to stop it. I lifted my head, covering my eyes from the cold autumn sun, trying to block out the glare and see who it was.

GRAY