Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

Dark, angry energy filled me at the thought of her doing that. This was for us.

So I did what I always did when the pain got too much.

I laughed.

“This secret belongs to me just like everything else about you. You can say you didn’t want me to know, but we’re bound and tied together by it. It was meant for me.”

Something flickered in her eyes, something distant and foreign.

“I want to be there for y—for the baby. I want to be there for the doctor visits.”

“You didn’t choose me, Grayson. You don’t get to choose me now.”

I grabbed her bicep, turning her so she faced me.

It was on the tip of my tongue to yell it out.

I did. I did choose you. I will always choose you.

I blew up and will blow up this world for you.

But Grandfather, everyone, fuck…Every time I do something for someone else, the only one who remained unscathed was me.

Hell, we had a whole wing dedicated to it.

The one where Story slept.

“You have a bad habit of touching my wife.”

I clenched my jaw as she ripped her arm away, wrapping it around West’s. I let Lottie wrap hers around mine.

Together we faced the paparazzi for another photo.

Twenty-Three

STORY

* * *

With my third sucker for the night tucked deep between my lips, I stayed up with Grayson’s poetry like an addict. I knew I should let him go…close this book and forget about him, but it was almost like I was asleep with him and he was next to me.

* * *

I own all the luck in the world, but none of it belongs to me.

* * *

I took my pen, writing alongside his green ink.

* * *

Dear Atlas, if my hate for you was a secret, then love would be the reason I kept it.

* * *

I stashed his journal in my nightstand like a beating heart, and pointlessly tried to fall asleep. As the night stretched long and lonely, my thoughts crept.

I don’t even know how to keep my world afloat, and there’s something growing inside me that will be entirely dependent on me. I don’t have any answers. I keep making the wrong choices. I always said I wouldn’t become my mother, but she’s my only role model. What if she bled into my very being?