Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

We were friends.

I pushed away the icky feeling that I was a thing to be hidden. Something to hide in the dark, in the cracks, in the places people didn’t want to see.

I was his friend.

He was helping me.

And then I would leave.

I would come out of my hiding place for good.

As the elevator dinged and I stepped into a luxurious room that looked more like a penthouse than a doctor’s office, I ignored the part of me that said…you’ve said that before. Over and over, I said I would leave while instead I became like glue.

“I’m—” I started to speak to an auburn-haired young woman behind an oval desk taking up half the room.

“We know who you are.” She gestured for me to take a seat.

The place was eerily empty.

On purpose, I’m sure.

I pushed past it.

Did she know me?

The Cinderella of Crowne Hall.

Or…The Stepsister Slut.

It ate at me. I didn’t know who they saw me as now. Who I saw me as.

Only a few moments later, another woman dressed in pale lavender scrubs came out of a door. She saw me and smiled. “Mrs. du Lac.”

Oh right, I was her now too.

I stood up off the soft couch, grasping my purse and following her, but pausing at the receptionist.

“Can I take one?” I pointed at a porcelain bowl of suckers. She nodded warmly and I took one, following the nurse into another well-decorated room. Still no sign of Grayson. I was beginning to wonder if he was really going to show.

They directed me to get changed.

I pulled on the nicest, softest hospital gown I’d ever worn, then sat on a pale lilac leather patient’s bed.

When the door creaked open behind me, I assumed it was the nurse returning to get my vitals. Grayson shut the door behind him with a soft click.

His brows caved. “Why do you look so surprised?”

I thought maybe you weren’t coming back.

I shrugged. “No reason.”

He came to me and pushed aside my hair, eyes searching, a look in them I didn’t want to read.

“What’s with the sucker?”

They’re my need for you incarnate.

Both satisfying yet leaving me with a deep, aching Grayson-shaped hole in my stomach.