Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)
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ed to me, pulling my face to his, kissing me breathless.
When he pulled back, he still gripped my face. He had the look…the Grayson Crowne look that said he was about to do something terribly destructive, but when he spoke, he said, “Okay.”
I gnawed on my lower lip.
“I have twenty-four hours,” I said. “Will you give me what I want?”
“Anything.”
I smiled. “A night with Grayson Crowne.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. “Just give me one thing, Snitch.”
“Of course.”
“Open your fucking locket.”
The inside was dark green and…wet. I touched it and my finger came away green
“Ink?”
When I looked back, Grayson was on the ground, on his knee.
“What are you doing?”
My heart beat like a drum.
Grayson’s eyes were pinched, and he took a moment to speak.
“You said Mary Shelley carried her dead husband’s heart…and I thought about what my heart would be. What would be inside my heart? Every single time…” He trailed off and looked away; when he looked back, he smiled. “You’re the ink in my soul. You changed me. You made me different. Better. It’s you.”
What was in Grayson Crowne’s heart?
Me.
I couldn’t breathe.
“I can’t sign my name next to yours on a piece of paper. Can’t marry you the way I want. Can’t give you the big proposal. But…I don’t want to put a ring on your finger, Snitch. I want to put bruises on your body. I want to put ink in your soul. I want you to do the same to me. Forever.”
“Forever?”
“I was never letting you go, Story. I tried and failed.”
Every time he looked at it, he saw forever with me.
A future.
I thumbed the butterflied heart on my chest, feeling like it was the one inside my rib cage. “I wore this for months.”
His eyes drifted to the gold, voice rough. “Yeah.”
“Someday I’m going to give a proposal the whole world can see, Snitch. Someday we won’t be in the shadows. We won’t be in the cracks. Even if it takes us our lifetimes, I’m going to give you a proposal the world can see. You’re going to wear my last name. But for now…Story Hale, will you marry me?”
Sixty
STORY
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