“If you want to seduce me, don’t you think you should try harder?” He rolled back on his shoulder, trailing one finger down the slope of mine.
I swallowed.
I should. I should try harder. But how? I didn’t think this through. Even if I want
ed to fake it, my shivers, my goose bumps, my sighs and cries…they weren’t mine to give.
They all belonged to Grayson.
“I would be happy to give you everything you want, Angel. You don’t have to steal it. Don’t have to work behind my back.” He reached behind him, grabbing his phone. I breathed a gulp of air at the space.
“Password protected, stored in multiple clouds. You can delete it with the press of a button.”
I bit my lip. It was a trap.
“When you choose me, I’ll give you this without hesitation.”
Slam.
The trap shut.
West threw his phone back on the nightstand without breaking eye contact, and then his eyes fell to my stomach. “How much longer do you think you can hide it, Angel?”
Fear bubbled noxious in my gut, and I turned to roll away, when his hand fell to my rounded stomach—holding me in place.
“You forgot the fatal flaw in your plan,” he said easily, palm pressed too possessively on my stomach.
I glanced at him.
“What happens when you fall for me? Really, truly, love me?”
I will never love you.
He seemed to read my mind. “You have a few months until you give birth. A few months to pull off your plan…or for me to win over your heart. Who do you think will be more successful?” His eyes lifted to mine. “Because in that time, my sister will also give birth to his child. She’ll carry on the Crowne name.” I tried to pull away but his grip tightened like a claw on my stomach. “And you will give birth to my child, with my name.”
“My heart will never belong to you. This child will never belong to you. Even if your name is on the birth certificate.” I swallowed back the fear that climbed at those words. “Even if you tattoo it on our bodies. We still wouldn’t be yours.”
He removed his hand as if I were fire, and I sucked in air, trying to fight back the tears.
“I wanted to aim for your heart,” West growled. “Don’t make me aim for your obedience.”
“You wouldn’t even know where to look for my heart.”
West glared at me a moment longer, then rolled to his back.
I cursed myself for being so fucking bad at this job of deception.
And so we stayed like that, shoulder to shoulder, neither one falling into sleep. I tried to stay awake, refusing to sleep next to him. But each blink got heavier, the wall fuzzier…
I woke disoriented, quickly scrambling up. The songbirds were singing, but it was still dark out. The clock read two in the morning. West was gone, where he’d slept rustled. For that I felt grateful, and I relaxed into the sheets.
Put my heart in a cage and treat it like a songbird.
My song will wait until you return.
Is that what happened? Was my heart still waiting to sing for West, all these years later? Even though it had been left to rot in the cage, its song now emaciated and withered.
I drifted back to sleep, listening to the sweet yet oddly macabre sound of a songbird at night. And I cursed my heart. Cursed it for holding on to West like a rusted, flaking thing.