Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
GEMMA
It was the first day of February, the salty Saturday air bitter with cold, and the biggest party of the year for the Horsemen—Heart Eater Day. Every February, two weeks before Valentine’s Day, the Horsemen throw a party, some kind of themed, debauched version of the romantic holiday.
The morning after Grim visited me, the Horsemen were gone. Another day passed, and another. They vanished like smoke.
I shouldn’t care. I definitely shouldn’t be sitting in bed with a bottle of tequila, trying to numb whatever Grim had wakened. I ran my fingers up and down my inner thigh, remembering too easily how he’d touched me.
“Gemma?”
I yanked my hand from my thigh, caught, and turned to the voice.
My sister stood in the doorway. I thought I was seeing things at first. When my sister married her bodyguard, my mother disowned her and banished her from Crowne Hall. Since Grayson, that banishment had been lifted, but still, Abigail rarely came back home.
Couldn’t blame her.
I sat up a little in bed. “What are you doing here?” Anxiety twitched my chest—was my mother having another party? Had I forgotten?
Abigail picked at her lip, her slightly crooked front teeth visible. She was nervous.
I held up a bottle of tequila, but she shook her head.
“’Cause you’re, like, a mom now?” I fell back to my bed, head at the end. “Never stopped ours.”
Seconds dragged, and I could picture Abigail picking her lip in my mind.
“I’m worried about you,” she said softly.
I put my lips to the glass rim, muttering, “Gross.”
Abigail came to the side of my bed, her face upside down from my view. Brow furrowed.
“So…Grayson filled me in.” She picked at her lip. “I knew there was something going on when I found him in your room. That was years ago, though…”
Once upon a time, I pretended to fuck her now husband so I could get his journal and give it to Grim. In that same era, Abby had found me in this room, with Grim.
Still picking her lips, she continued. “I should have been a better sister. I should have dug deeper. Asked questions.”
Now that I couldn’t take. Quiet judgment, taciturn worry, I could take. I could numb that. But her guilt? Like she was to blame for all my fucked-up-ness?
I took a swig of tequila.
Abby grabbed the tequila and put it down behind her, on the nightstand. “Gemma.”
“Jesus, what?”
Her brown eyes—so different from any Crowne, except our mother—bore into mine.
Staring into her red-brown depths did something to me.
Abigail was the only Crowne who didn’t inherit our father’s eyes.
I wondered if he’d be disappointed in me.
No less than a second later, something acerbic slid up my throat, like heartburn.
I wasn’t even sure my father loved us. He was just lucky enough to die before the question had to be answered.
“What do you want to do, Gemma?”
I rubbed between my brows. “Get coffee. Pop some painkillers.”
“No, I mean, I always wanted to open up a jewelry shop. Story wanted to be a poet. For a while, those dreams were impossible. This was…a cage. Do you have something like that?”
I sank deeper into my bed. “It’s way too early for this.”
We didn’t do this, the sister thing. The closest we got to that was one night when we were teenagers and took scandalous photos.
My sister used to hope for our mom to love her, and since dear Mom didn’t know how to do that, another vacuum formed. When Mom kept choosing me over Abby, we stopped loving each other.
“It’s almost three.”
I glanced out my window at what I’d thought was hazy morning light but was in fact dusty afternoon. That meant in a few hours I would have to get ready.
My gut tightened.
It was just a party. I went to it every year, and most of the time, I never saw Grim or any Horsemen.
But this time…
I turned back, finding Abigail waiting patiently.
What did I want? My dreams are not normal dreams. I didn’t dream of accomplishing something, or being someone.
I dreamed of someone who would see inside me and not shrivel in disgust. Who would pick whatever roses bloomed in my shadows, because they loved the pain my thorns brought.
I dreamed of something I knew I’d never feel. As stupid, and cliché, and fucking pathetic as it was, I dreamed of love.
I’d known since birth who I was supposed to be, and so I’d known forever that I was very much not that person. Gemma Crowne was loved, but me? I was very much the opposite of her, and very much the antithesis of whatever the fuck was going on with this new Crowne image.
Abby stared at me earnestly.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “A fashion designer, I guess.”
Kennedy’s dream was to be a fashion designer.
A wrinkle formed between her brows but before she could call me on my shit, my phone rang. A video call from Blaire. Instead of Blaire, Kennedy’s face popped up.
“We’re on our way,” Kennedy said, flipping the camera to show Blaire driving.
“For?” I asked.
“The Underworld,” Blaire said, leaning closer to the phone. “You said you would handle glam. Don’t tell me you forgot?” Her eyes darted from the phone to the road and back.
This holiday was infamous. Anyone who was anyone would be there. What was I going to say? We couldn’t go to the hottest party of the year because I was starting to get a little too close to the guy I sold my life to?
“No, of course not.”
We hung up after I confirmed I did have glam—I didn’t, but Crowne Hall always had someone on staff—and they promised to see me soon.
Abigail stopped picking her lip and no longer looked nervous, but afraid. “You’re going to that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
A long silence stretched. Waves crashed—or maybe it was the blood rushing in my veins. Abigail worked her mouth into a twist, like she wanted to say something, like it was eating her up not saying it.
Before she could, my two best friends bounded into the room. Their loud laughter crashed into whatever moment had existed. Abigail gave me a lingering look, her brows knit, and then left.
“Was that your sister?” Kennedy asked, flopping on my bed. “Why was she here? Don’t you hate each other?”
I never answered. I called hair and makeup, and my friends turned the prep into a party. Kennedy lounged across my bed in a silk robe, sipping champagne straight from the bottle.
There’s my girl. My good girl.
I shook my head, trying not to think about what had happened there mere days ago.
Blaire was sprawled on the floor with a pile of jewelry cases, holding each piece against her throat to see what caught the light best.
I sat before my gilded vanity while two stylists tugged and twisted my hair into place, pinning it into something elaborate enough to look effortless. Another smoothed serum across my skin, her hands brisk and practiced.
Just a few short hours later, we were ready.
“The Aston Martin—” Blaire held up her car keys in one hand, as if to offer the choice. “—or a driver?”
The sun had fallen, in its place a clear black winter night. The moon was full, and my skin felt electric.
“Neither,” I said. “Let’s walk.”
After much cajoling, we stumbled along the beach, toward the Underworld.
“It’s so creepy out here—ah!” Kennedy jumped. “What was that?”
Blaire started cackling, holding up some kind of long, feathery flower.
“You’re such a dick.”
Kennedy stumbled in a small dune of sand. “Heels are so not meant to be worn in this shit.”
“So take them off,” Blaire deadpanned. We both held our shoes in our hands.
“But what if someone sees me?” Kennedy whined. “The outfit doesn’t work without them.”
We walked a little longer in silence, Kennedy tripping every so often. The moon was so full and bright every grain of gray sand was illuminated, shimmering like stardust.
“Are we going to talk about how Gemma brought a Horseman to tea?” Kennedy asked.
“The hot one too,” Blaire said.
Their heads turned in unison over their shoulders, back at me. I’d managed to be under the Horsemen’s thumb for years without anyone noticing, but now in a matter of days my perfect, pristine reputation had taken hit after hit.
The worst part?
I kind of…well, I kind of enjoyed it. So I knew without a doubt I had to do everything in my power to stay away from that side of me.
“I, um…” I struggled to think of an explanation. “I…I needed a hookup.”
“They do delivery now?” Kennedy looked like a kid who’d just learned her favorite toy came in a different color.
“Maybe it’s, like, a frequent-flier perk,” Blaire said, and they both laughed.
“Someone take a photo of me,” Kennedy said. “I look really good right now—wait, Gemma?” She paused, staring at her phone, then at me. “Are you sharing our location right now?”
“Maybe…”
“Oh my God! What is wrong with you? You have two hundred million people following you.”
“And?”
“And fucking Libby Whitehall was kidnapped because that bitch just had to let everyone know she got a bigger yacht than Bezos.”
Shivers ran up my spine. Libby Whitehall had been returned—barely.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Why the idea of someone finding me thrilled me.
“Um, Libby was kidnapped because she was a ho doing ho things,” Blaire corrected.
“Someone’s still salty that Sebastian chose Libby…” Kennedy said, underbreath. “But seriously, Gemma, what the fuck?”
“Chill,” I said. “I’ll turn it off.”
I pulled out my phone and went to my page just as we reached the Underworld. Spotlights danced, the lights milky in the sky. The thumping of a bass drifted through the white fog.
We were getting close.
Every sound was magnified. The wire fence creaked in the salty wind. Where the beach met forest, dry blades of grass brushed against one another. Soft sand beneath our feet.
One by one my friends walked up the old boardwalk that led to the club. Behind them, I trailed my fingers on the old iron fence, heart in my throat.
Prick.
I stilled. A small bead of crimson welled on the pad of my pointer finger.
Still open to my page, I clicked to post a story. I painted the blood across my lips like lipstick, then blew a kiss to the camera.
Location, on.