Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

STORY

* * *

When the door pushed open later that night, I knew it was Grayson.

“Come with me, Snitch. No games. It’s snowing and we haven’t visited Woodsy.”

“It’s midnight...”

But I was already getting out of bed.

We walked through the shadowy hallways of Crowne Hall, out into the gardens where Uncle was laid to rest. Grayson laid his jacket on a snow-dusted bench for me, and we stared at my uncle’s mausoleum as the snow fell.

Around us, poems were etched in the granite tombs. Up the walls, beneath the names, some mournful, others joyful.

“Woodsy and I used to come out here a lot,” Grayson said.

“It feels emptier without him,” I said.

“Yeah.”

Grayson pulled my hand into his.

I wanted a world where I could hold his hand.

In public.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

He craned his neck slightly, the sharp ninety-degree angle of his jaw and the slope of his plump lips catching the moonlight.

“About how much damage I’ve done to my family.”

“Grayson, you care about family more than anyone. You would never do anything to hurt them.”

A look flitted across his eyes.

Hurt.

Pain.

Why? Thorns were back around his heart, and I couldn’t get inside…But then, they were around mine too. Silence was soft as the falling snow.

“You said you wanted to leave Crowne Point. Is that still true?” He thumbed the bones on my palm.

I swallowed hard. “West gave me a plane ticket.”

He tensed but said nothing.

“I should probably want to leave this world. It’s never been kind to me. Now everyone knows my name and they gossip about me.”

Grayson continued to thumb the bones in my hand, something on his mind he wouldn’t let me read.

“You really haven’t slept with her?” I asked quietly. I’d spent these months distrusting everything about him.

He shook his head.

“But you said. You said you fucked her. She sucked you off.”