CHAPTER 43 GIGI
GIGI
Gigi woke up alone. She went outside and couldn’t find anyone but Knox. It didn’t take her long to realize: Savannah was gone.
She left, Gigi realized all at once. With Rohan. And Brady. But not me. Not Knox, either, who confirmed for Gigi that the others had really and truly taken off.
“Savannah left me.” Gigi really should have anticipated this.
“Don’t look like that,” Knox told her. At least he hadn’t left.
“Like my heart just chewed its own leg off?” Gigi’s eyes stung. “Is that how I look?”
All Gigi could think was that Savannah was who-knows-where—probably on her way to England and the duchess—and Gigi was here. I said no. She’d had a chance to do something, to bargain, to infiltrate the Gilded Blade, maybe even to find Avery. She’d had a chance to prove herself, and she’d said no.
For Savannah. And Savannah had left her behind, like she was a child.
“Don’t cry.” Knox sounded mildly panicked at the prospect.
“I’m not a crier.” Gigi’s throat stung more than her eyes. “Even as a baby, I almost never cried. My parents always said it was like I was born happy.” Happiness was a choice. Gigi knew that. She believed it.
“Damn it, kid.” Knox made his way down the hall toward her. “Cry all you want.”
Crying felt like giving up, but not crying would have been worse. Gigi’s superpower had never been pretending to be happy. She’d never pretended to be anything. Savannah was the one with masks. Gigi was just optimistically, maniacally, chaotically herself.
“Have you updated Alisa on all of this?” she asked Knox.
He averted his gaze. “I’m going to take that as a yes,” Gigi said quietly.
“I’m also going to go out on a limb and guess that she ordered you to take me home.
” That was what Grayson would want. Savannah, too.
They all just wanted to stash Gigi away, like a porcelain doll placed on a high and lonely shelf.
“Would it be so bad?” Knox asked. “Going home?”
Home was Gigi’s mom, the best mother in the world. Home was a place where Gigi was safe and loved and lucky. Home was the Arizona sun and Katara, Gigi’s—
Gigi stopped and sucked in a breath. She went back up to the loft bed, confirming what she’d just realized. “Savannah and Rohan took the kitten.” Gigi blinked, knowing she probably looked owlish. “They left me, but they took the cat?”
Knox eyed Gigi like she was wrapped in TNT and filled with glitter, and if he moved a single muscle, she just might explode.
“I said no for Savannah,” Gigi choked out.
“She told me not to disappear, so I didn’t.
Maybe I wouldn’t have anyway, but I never even got the chance.
” Gigi shook her head, sending her brown waves bouncing into her face.
“I wanted—I don’t even know! I don’t even know what I want, Knox, because Savannah is the one with ambitions and plans and a—and a Rohan!
She’s the one who won the Grandest Game.
Savannah always wins, and I have always been okay with that.
I have been happy, and I have tried my best to make everyone else happy and—”
Gigi cut off, because what else was there to even say?
“I don’t do hugs,” Knox told her. “In most circumstances.”
It was a miracle. A bona fide miracle, and Gigi couldn’t even take him up on it, because she was a glitter bomb of existential despair, and she needed to be elsewhere. Anywhere. She shoved her way out the door, onto the platform, and took to the ladder.
Knox followed. “Where are you going?”
Gigi didn’t know. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do. She didn’t know what she needed or wanted, just that she needed and wanted. She started stalking back toward town, then stopped suddenly.
Because there he was in the shadows. Like she’d summoned him out of thin air. Mattias Slater. He stood beneath an old and twisted tree, and there was something about the way he stood there that hit Gigi with full-body force, like a tidal wave.
There you are, she thought. And then she realized how very still he was. Too still—even for him.
“Slate.” Gigi slowed as she approached him. “Mattias?”
“Hey, sunshine.” Slate took a single, haltering step forward. “I need your help.”
My help? Gigi’s heart thudded in her rib cage, half because Slate was scaring her and half because no one ever needed her help.
“Oh hell no,” Knox said behind her.
Gigi ignored him. “Why would you need help?” she asked Slate. My help.
“Eve.”
“What about Eve?” Gigi reached Slate just as Knox reached her.
“You’re dripping,” Knox told Slate flatly.
Dripping? Gigi’s gaze went to the ground beneath Slate’s feet and saw red liquid dotting the grass. “Blood.” Gigi’s eyes darted back up to Slate’s side—to the hand he had pressed to it. “What happened?”
“Got shot.” Slate was clearly not one for lengthy explanations.
“What do you mean you got shot?” Gigi stared at Slate in horror. “Who shot you?”
“Eve. It’s just a nick. In and out. I bandaged it myself.”
“Shit.” Knox moved in to support Slate’s weight with his own. “You’ve bled through the bandage?”
Gigi fumbled with her phone, trying to get it out of her pocket so she could dial 911.
“No hospitals, sunshine.” Slate reached for her hand. “No police.”
“I’m going to need a little more than that,” Gigi told him, sounding only a teensy bit hysterical.
“Eve wanted in. She wanted an invitation.” Slate shrugged, then winced. “She got one.”
Not Nora, Gigi realized. Even after I said no—Calla didn’t choose Nora.
“Eve said yes?” Gigi barely managed the words. I said no. Eve said yes. “And then she shot you?”
“She nicked me, that’s all.”
He was dripping blood, but now was not the time to argue semantics. Slate had come to her. He’d needed help, and he’d come to her.
“I can sew,” Gigi declared, raising her chin. “More or less. And I’m not squeamish.” She turned to Knox. “Got any medical supplies hidden out here somewhere?”
“Son of a bitch,” Knox muttered, which Gigi took to mean: I’ll help.