Chapter 20
TWENTY
GEMMA
Lock drove me home after tea. To my surprise and delight, he didn’t follow me inside. Once again, I tried to lie to myself that it was just a fluke, until all three reappeared just a few hours later.
Now I sat in bed, staring at their three shadows. I’d since changed into a comfortable white nightshirt that said:
I FEEL GREAT.
PLEASE DIE.
And tried not to think about what Lock had said, instead scouring the internet for anything about me, Nathan, and Lock. There was nothing—well, nothing beyond the savage glee that Gemma Crowne was addicted to pills.
This was the worst press I’d received in…well, ever. Abigail always took the brunt of shitty tabloids. People said there was no such thing as bad press. Tansy Crowne said if you couldn’t control the press, you didn’t deserve to be in it.
I glanced back at the Horsemen’s bodies shadowing my frosted double doors.
You should know what it means to wear that title.
I thought back to what HSOG had said. If I was marked, even the wrong look can be considered a declaration of war.
That shouldn’t give me goose bumps, but it was a twisted fantasy I couldn’t help but want to drown in.
“Don’t you have people to enslave?” I yelled through the door. “You know, lives to destroy. Better things to do than babysit me?”
Silence.
I groaned, falling against my bed. That was how it had been for hours. It was almost twelve and any nightlife was just beginning. I wondered about Grim. Wondered if he was at the club, wondered if he was still sad, and why.
I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him. To still be thinking about him.
The space he occupied inside me grew and grew. He was smoke. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t touch him. But he was there inside me, taking over. Until I couldn’t breathe or move from it.
I was so goddamn weak.
Looking for a distraction, I pulled out my phone, to the last photo “I” posted.
It was this morning, some scheduled post with a photo I’d taken over a year ago.
I was in a bikini, because of course I was.
I stared so long at the photo my face became unrecognizable.
This Gemma was happy, whole—and never existed.
How could I compete with a version of myself that was so perfect everyone loved her?
Everything would be so much easier if I was just gone.
I will never be the Gemma Crowne in those photos.
All it would take is—
I chucked my phone at my mirror, hoping it would shatter to pieces. My phone slammed against the corner, and only a small, triangular piece of the glass fractured and fell to the ground.
Awesome.
A moment later, my doors flew open. Raze and Lock looked left and right, guns drawn. I had a half second to marvel at that—no way were they worried about me, right?—when my brother’s voice sounded from behind them.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Raze and Lock blocked my complete view. Behind them, I saw the outline of Wraith’s feet perched on my coffee table. My brother stared at that, at Wraith sprawled out on my couch, before finding Raze and Lock, their weapons drawn.
After a half second, where they scanned every corner of my room, Raze and Lock put away their weapons, turning to my brother.
“What does it look like?” There was a suggestive tease in Lock’s voice. My brother glared at Lock, before looking to me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Raze and Lock stepped together, closing the window where he could see me.
“She’s great,” Raze said.
“All right,” Gray said, restraint roughening his voice. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
Lock stepped to him. “Or what? Gonna call the police? Tell them about the deal you took with the devil?”
Guilt clawed my stomach. I was the reason Gray had anything to do with them. I could have found another way to save Story, one that didn’t involve tying us to the Underworld.
A dark, fucked-up part of me whispered that it wouldn’t have mattered.
I would have always called Grim.
Most people cowered at the mere sight of the Horsemen, but Grayson folded his arms, looking put out.
“I don’t give a shit what you have on me, or what you’ll do. She’s my sister. Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
“What about that pretty little wife?” Raze asked. “Care what happens to her?”
I saw the switch in Gray. The brief flash of fire in his eyes, before an iron coldness took over. He stepped to Raze, until their chests were nearly touching.
Grayson would kill them.
I ran and stepped between them, placing a hand on both their chests.
“It’s fine,” I said, gently pushing my brother farther away. “I’m fine.”
He glared at them for what felt like too long, then stepped back.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked.
I thought about that. Am I in trouble? Yeah, probably. Probably been in trouble longer than the Horsemen were causing it.
I shrugged. “It’s nothing. I needed drugs.”
His brow furrowed, but his muscles noticeably relaxed. “What the fuck, Gemma? I saw the magazine—”
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting him off.
Grayson’s eyes narrowed on mine for too long. It wasn’t like my pill problem was news to Grayson, but the questions in his eyes mirrored the press. How bad is it really? How long? Should I have seen—
“Can you please stop acting like you suddenly give a shit?” I snapped. “Save that for Story.”
He opened and closed his mouth, looking like I’d slapped him. He shot one final glare to the Horsemen, then left without another word.
It was cruel, but it worked.
I stared at the empty space he left, feeling naked and vulnerable.
I spun around. They’d all sat back down, and Lock’s black boots marked up the imported glass of my coffee table. My lungs vibrated, my gut squirmed. My world had tipped over, spinning on its axes.
“I’ve been trying to figure out why you’re all here. I’m not so special—”
“We could have told you that,” Lock said.
“So,” I continued. “I’ve been thinking, maybe you just don’t want Grim near me. I wonder why.” Their feet were on my table, my friends had seen me with them, my brother was worried, and this was not the fucking deal.
They were silent, but a tension threaded their muscles.
I was poking places I shouldn’t. And yet…
“I wonder what could possibly have you all spooked,” I pressed. “Maybe you’re afraid of Grim being with me—”
“You’re an ungrateful, selfish, spoiled brat.” Wraith was up faster than I could blink, scary tattooed eyes glaring in mine. I wasn’t afraid, too stunned by what he’d said.
“Ungrateful—”
“You’ve spent the last five years making our lives hell for a contract you tricked Grim into taking.”
All the air left me.
I stared at him, brain short-circuiting. By the time I spoke, my throat was dry and scratchy. “What did you say?”
“You think we can’t see through you, see through this, but we can. Unfortunately, we’ve known you our entire fucking lives, Gemma.”
I smiled at him. “And what is it you see, Wraith?”
“A spoiled little brat ripping off her dolls’ heads because she’s scared no one loves her.”
My lips parted, but no words came. It felt like my chest had been hollowed out.
If Wraith felt any satisfaction on getting a reaction, he didn’t show it. He sat back down, pulling out his phone as if I wasn’t there. I stared at them a moment longer, then went back to my bedroom and slammed the doors shut, maybe too hard.
I fell back against them, hands still holding the knob behind my back, trying to steady my breathing.
Tricked. They’d thought I’d somehow managed to trick him.
If anyone had tricked anyone, it was fucking Grim.
Tricked.
I walked over to my balcony, looking down two stories to the sand. I’d never had to sneak out of my room before, but… I leaned over, spotting a possible exit. If Grim could figure a way to sneak into my room, why couldn’t I find a way to sneak out?
I glanced back at the doorway, to the three shadows.
Why would he lie to the Horsemen?
What does that mean?
Is it some kind of game?
It has to be some kind of game.
That restless, hurricane energy innervated my blood.
I let that feeling carry me over the balcony, nearly slipping on the stone, before landing with a thud on the sand.
It carried me all the way down the beach, to a packed club, through a packed dance floor, past the women lining up at the stairs, and to the off-limits second floor.
I’d played the Horsemen’s good little slave for five years because we had an unspoken agreement: stay the fuck out of my world.
I gathered curious looks as I went. After the world just learned about her drug problem, Gemma Crowne was in a nightclub, wearing an oversize T-shirt, without any fucking shoes. All I needed was to shave my head.
If I had a plan, any semblance of it disappeared the moment I hit the top floor.
Grim was there, on a couch with two women, kissing them.
Huh. I guess this is what it feels like to be so mad you want to kill.
So first he all but promises to fuck me, then ignores me and installs guards, keeps me prisoner for no fucking reason, lies to everyone about why, and he was just…kissing someone?
I didn’t feel jealousy, people felt jealous of me—so what was this hot twisting knife in my gut?
Grim must have known I was here, must have been told the minute I came into the club. There was no way I was getting upstairs without him knowing.
But he didn’t open his eyes, didn’t stop kissing.
Grim and I had kissed only that one time on the beach. There was something profoundly bullshit about the fact that he wouldn’t kiss me, but he’d shove his tongue down some random girl.
Maybe that was why I found myself at his feet.
Why I bent over and slapped him.