Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

To Grayson, I would always be the girl behind the girl.

Foolish me for thinking Grayson Crowne would ever love me in the light.

I walked down the dark hallway, forgetting why I’d come. The wind howled as I passed the wing I’d stayed in with West.

I wanted to exorcise Grayson Crowne from my body.

From the very beginning it was always about one. Fucking. Thing.

Her.

Getting him back with her.

So why do I feel like I’m breaking, I’m cracking? Little pieces of me chipping off with each step. The gold decorations glinted hauntingly in the dark.

Grayson kept doing these things because I keep letting him. Our relationship isn’t built on trust, it’s built on my allowance of his fucking lies. I’m a pushover.

I let him walk all over me.

He promised he wasn’t touching her. I’m taking his promises like broken glass and they keep cutting my hands.

I almost fell for it.

I almost became the girl in the tower. Because everything had seemed to be falling into place. One of the artfully decorated trees caught my eyes, the glimmering metallic bulbs shining too bright in the darkness.

The mistress always gets the holidays.

“Angel?”

I stopped short at West’s voice, as though I’d been ripped out of a dream. I turned to find him carrying a candle. We were just outside the antique room…I struggled not to fall.

He still wore his bronze mouse king mask and the candlelight flickered against the bronze. He lowered the candle to my face as he approached me.

“You don’t look very good, Angel.”

I swallowed the lump of emotion in my throat. “And you would know?”

“I pay closer attention than you think.”

A heaving, deep ravine of sadness caved in my chest and threatened to destroy me. I lunged for West, standing on my tiptoes, wrapping my arms around his neck.

He anchored my lower waist and dragged me flush against him as our lips crashed together.

“We haven’t consummated our marriage,” I said.

Fifty-One

STORY

* * *

I shoved West into the antique room, and he stumbled back. West looked around at the cloth-covered antiques, more eerie in the screeching wind.

I could feel it around us.

A ghost.

A memory.