Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

“I’m staying with West, but I have a plan—”

He grabbed my arm, dragging me to the door.

“Stop!” I scraped at his hand. “Let me go. Listen, I have a plan.”

“We’re getting out of here.”

I used all my strength to break out of his hold, slamming both hands into his wrist. With heaving breaths we separated.

Grayson reached for me again, and I stepped backward.

He looked wild and unhinged.

“I’m not letting you stay with West, Story!”

“I’m not letting you throw everything away, Grayson!”

He looked left and right, grabbed the nearest antique—a vase—and chucked it against the wall. It shattered. “My family isn’t worth it! They don’t care about you or us, Snitch. You’re going to throw away our happiness for that?”

“Your family treats me like garbage. You think I don’t want to see Tansy Crowne scraping by to make ends meet like I had to? See Gemma wear off the rack? I’ve been watching you, Grayson. I watch you when you don’t think I am, and I see how this is ripping you apart.”

He looked away like he was ashamed. I know if I let Grayson destroy them, he would never forgive himself.

I knew that, which is why I wasn’t hurt this time. It was the reason I’d made my choice so easily with West. Maybe we were each other’s glass shard, and we should walk away.

But fatal flaws are fatal for a reason.

“Do you think I can’t protect you?” he demanded.

“You protect me better than anyone.”

His blue eyes cracked.

He dragged his hands through his hair.

I stepped to him and placed a palm on his cheek. “I have lost so much. I lost who I was. I lost what made me me. I’m not letting that happen to you. I can’t take back what I did…It’s there. Sludge in my heart. A stain in my soul. But we don’t have to sink into that stain. That’s the easy way out.”

Hiding in our demons. Saying because we did something bad, we have no choice but to be bad.

“I want to be good. I want to be good with you. I don’t want what we’ve done to be our future.”

I threaded my hands through his golden hair. “I want everything for you, Grayson. The way you want everything for me.”

He looked up. “You are everything, all I need.”

I thumbed the single tear that had fallen from his eye when he’d come to get me. “Then why were you crying?”

He jerked his head out of my grip, turning away and giving me his back.

Grayson Crowne didn’t cry, even in front of me.

I waited for him to collect himself.

When he turned around, all emotion was gone, and I was faced with Grayson Crowne.

“I could force you,” he growled.

“You could…” I said. “You could put my name on no-fly lists.”