Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

I let my gown fall and numbly climbed back into my funeral dress. I was overwhelmed, drowning in emotion. I was wearing the dress I buried my uncle in, and I had just learned I was pregnant. Pregnant with a baby I don’t know if I should keep.

I couldn’t process these emotions, so I just let them sink deeper inside me.

“I won’t let my child grow up in the same life I did,” I said.

“So you’re gonna keep me out of its life?” he growled.

Her, some weird, internal part of me said.

“What about never wanting to have a mistress? To be your father? What about me? I don’t want to forever be the second choice.”

He gripped my biceps, spinning me to him. “You aren’t.”

“So you’re going to leave Lottie?”

“Yes.”

Another gong to my chest. If it was so easy, then why have I been living in a fucking hellscape?

“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s go tell her.”

His eyes clouded. “It’s not that simple, Story—”

I put my hand up, stopping him. I already knew the words.

I’ll tell her tomorrow.

By the weekend we’ll be together.

I’m leaving her.

“If you force me to stay, you’re locking us into the very fates you spent your entire life trying to avoid.”

For a minute, I thought he might see the light. Shock and sorrow split his features.

“I couldn’t figure out why you would break us. Why you wouldn’t let me leave,” I whispered. “But it was so obvious. You want me all for yourself, Grayson Crowne, but you don’t want to keep me. Because I wasn’t good enough. Not to marry. Not to have your child—”

He gripped my face, dragging me closer, so tight his thumbs bruised, eyes mad and gleaming. “Is that what you think? That you aren’t good enough? I’m not good enough. Can you trust me? Can you trust that I won’t do that to us? I don’t want you as a mistress. I want you by my side forever.”

I stared into his blue eyes.

Trust him. Trust him after he’d shattered it forever?

“Then tell me why. Tell me why you chose her.”

I stared at him, waiting for an answer, a reason for everything he’d done to us. The clock in the room ticked and ticked. I exhaled.

Grayson Crowne had no reason.

I tried to push past him.

“I was trying to protect you,” he yelled.

GRAY

* * *

“By breaking my fucking heart?” She swiped at her nose.