Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

They paused as they scraped chunks into a dustbin, but not before looking me dead in the eyes.

I watched them leave, dread weaving its way into my veins. I shouldn’t be here. The longer I stayed, the more I pushed my luck. The Crownes didn’t want me. The du Lacs didn’t want me. The servants didn’t want me.

No matter my last name, I still wasn’t welcome.

After tea we had a momentary respite before the next event, which would include everyone in the garden. I ducked where the garden went off path, into the flowers, needing a minute to breathe.

A moment to apologize to my baby for being such a fuck-up. For putting her in this position. I held my stomach and stared at the sky. A bright blue, cold mid-November day. I would get us out of this; she would not live as I had, constantly in the dark.

A crack of twigs had my head snapping to the left. I pushed aside a veil of flowers and found him. It smelled sweet and musky. Grayson leaned against a tree, a sucker in one hand, a joint in the other.

His eyes found mine. A second later, he dropped the joint to the ground, stamping it beneath his shoe.

“You don’t—”

“I’m not going to smoke around you.” His eyes lingered on my abdomen.

As silence and awkwardness bloomed, my grief flowered. I missed Grayson. Missed talking to him. I was so lost in the pregnancy. Scared.

I didn’t know what I was doing.

What to do.

Grayson looked away, and I couldn’t take it, being ignored by him.

I cleared my throat. “I’ll go. Didn’t realize this hiding spot was taken…”

“What the fuck was that back there?” he asked my back.

I paused. “What?”

“Your smile with the photographers. It was fake as shit.”

I turned around to face him. “You do it. Lottie does it. West does it—”

“You’re not like us, Snitch.” He gripped my face, the smell of sugar on his lips mixing with the flowers in the air. “Don’t ever smile when you’re sad. Promise?”

So taken aback by the abruptness of his touch, the strength in his grip, my words were charred. “I won’t if you won’t, Grayson.”

His blue eyes cracked like lapis lazuli.

Leaves rustled around us like coins.

“I was wondering where—” Lottie stopped, spotting us.

“I was…” I pulled away, for some reason tripping over what I was doing. It wasn’t like Grayson and I had done anything. So why did I feel so dirty?

“I was getting a smoke,” Grayson finished for me, dropping his hands and then brushing by me as if I were nothing. And like that, whatever had happened between us vanished. The honesty gone.

I stared at the spot where he’d been, sunlight dappling the ground. I urged the pounding in my chest to vanish as he had. I thought Lottie had gone, too, but a minute later her soft voice drifted like wind.

“Why are you back?”

I spun. Lottie’s shoulders were down, but her eyes burned.

“Every day I have to watch him love you!” Her voice raised. “His arm is wrapped around my waist, his lips are on mine, his body is in my bed, but his heart is with you.”

It was the opposite from my point of view.