GRAY
* * *
Tears welled in her eyes, big fat ones that rushed down her pretty hazel cheeks. Alarm rushed through me. Story Hale didn’t cry. She might get watery eyes, but she quickly wiped them away.
“I am fine!” Her face scrunched in anger. “Don’t think because I’m crying you control any of the situation.” She circled the air around us with her finger as more tears
blurred her eyes. “What the fuck is happening to me?” She dragged her hands down her face.
Story’s hands barely muffled her sobs, her shoulders racked up and down. I couldn’t just sit here and watch this. I dragged her to me by one shoulder, anchoring her to me with my arm.
This was fine.
This was barely a hug.
“What are you doing?” She tried to shove me off.
I held on tighter, forcing her face into my white dress shirt. “Just let me do this.”
It was nothing. Friends hug. They comfort each other. Story and I might be in a weird, no-man’s-land of hate and love, but we could do this.
Eventually she stopped resisting, melting into me, into the hug. Her tears wetted my shirt, until she stopped crying.
I pulled back, one hand lightly on her shoulder.
I swiped her cheeks clean with both thumbs, her jaw clenched tight.
“Why are you crying, Story?”
“Why can’t you keep your promises, Grayson?” she rasped.
I paused, her words hitting me like a fucking arrow I wasn’t prepared for.
“I’m trying,” I said. “Really fucking trying.”
Her brow furrowed, and I dragged my thumbs down until I touched the corners of her pretty plump lips, wondering if I could taste the salt on them if I kissed her right now.
“You’re kind of cute when you cry,” I said, voice grating like sandpaper.
Her glare slashed to me, but it was soft, vulnerable. “Shut up.”
I bit my tongue to keep from smiling. “You’ve been away too long. You forgot. You can’t talk to me that way, Snitch.”
“Someone needs to call you out on your shit…”
“And that’s you?” I dragged my thumb a millimeter to the right, tracing her bottom lip—
“There you both are.” Mrs. du Lac’s voice cut into the moment, and we spun. She stared at both of us, an unreadable expression on her wrinkleless hazelnut face.
“It’s time for the lucky kiss.”
We followed her back to the ballroom, where all the guests were lined up to break bones for our morbid tradition.
I wondered if Snitch’s heart pounded as hard as mine did.
Had Mrs. du Lac overheard?
“You know the rules,” my mother said. “Whoever pulls the bigger one has to do the lucky kiss.”