time Lottie needed to be in her room.
And the time West would most likely expect me.
“Cinderella usually gets until midnight.” He gripped Lottie’s silk and lace pajamas, then ripped them off my body. “There,” he breathed. “That’s fucking better.”
“What am I going to wear?”
“Nothing.” He palmed my stomach in the way that always stole air from my lungs, adding, “You’re going to my bed, but there are too many stairs—”
I laughed. “You and stairs. I can walk up stairs, Grayson.”
“I’m gonna carry you, little wife.”
“I’m too pregnant to threaten with that. You can’t lift me.” I gestured to my stomach.
His eyes darkened, and then he grinned. A full-on Grayson Crowne smile. That was the only warning I got before he swept me off my feet—literally.
I was tucked into a fireman’s carry, wrapping my arms around his neck in seconds.
“I’m too big for this—”
“Shut up, Snitch.”
He carried me up the stairs and to his bed effortlessly. When he set me on the mattress, his whole face changed. I swallowed, hot and cold and achy just by the look he was giving me.
Needing something to do, something other than crisscross my legs back and forth, I felt his silky, black sheets. “I missed your sheets.”
Grayson dragged a thumb along his bottom lip. “I’ll always miss you in my sheets, Snitch.”
Then slowly—finally—he got beside me, but he didn’t get in the sheets.
And I was strung out.
Just from the feather-distance between us.
“Kiss me,” I begged. “Please.”
“First, tell me all your words.” He dragged a knuckle down my cheeks. “The words they stole from you. The words you couldn’t say. The words they put in your mouth.” He lay on his side, head resting on one hand. Watching me. “How are you doing, really?”
I chewed my bottom lip.
I knew what he meant.
I knew what he wanted me to say.
Where to fucking begin?
I looked for a reason not to begin. My eyes landed on the nightstand, where the green handkerchief lay, the one from our wedding.
“Why is it there?”
“To remind me every day that you’re missing. That our happily ever after isn’t complete.” He thumbed my tears. “Snitch, please, bleed with me.”
I traced anxious lines across my stomach. “I never thought I’d have to justify my actions to millions of people. This is my love story, not theirs, but they’re acting like I know how it ends.”
I kept playing it over and over in my head like a record that wouldn’t stop skipping. Was all of this heartbreak pointless, and was it all my fault?
“Did I mess everything up? Should I have run with you that night?” I turned to him, and he was already looking at me. The moon and stars his backdrop, the shadow clinging like velvet to his pouty lips and soft eyes.
Grayson.
I’d missed this, nighttime—our time.
“They don’t get it.” He traced my lips with his thumb. “They can’t. I feel sorry, they must not know love. Every single one of those women would have jumped at the chance to run away with me, Story Hale. Only you had the guts to say no. Only you cared enough to say no. Only you had the strength.”
I couldn’t stop the tears from running.
Spilling down my cheeks and salting the pillow where I’d first opened my heart to him and all those nights after.
He didn’t thumb them away. “You’re the moon, Story Hale. Some people will want to snuff you out for no other reason than to bring you into their dark”
I paused as West’s words came back.
I am fucking worried about you, Angel. You’re the moon, and some people out there want to snuff you out for no other reason than to bring you into the dark.
But if I had to guess who said it first, it would always be my thorny prince.
He gripped my face so tight it bruised. “You are the only person in this goddamn universe looking out for me. You are the only person who loves me enough to be hated. You are the only person who loves me.”
I pressed my forehead to his. “I want to spend what hours I have with you, just with you.”
Not the press.
Not the public.
Just him.
So for a while we lay together, talking about everything and nothing.
With my cheek resting on two hands, I stared into Grayson’s deep eyes. “Did you give my uncle all that money?”
The way he bit his bottom lip and looked away let me know the answer was a solid yes.
“Why?”
“He was like a father to me. I would have