Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
GEMMA
No one spoke on the way home—no, not home, I quickly corrected myself. This was not home. The drive lasted most of the night, and by the time we got back to Crowne Point, it was morning. I wasn’t sure where we’d gone, probably somewhere out of state.
Lock got out and held the door for me. That would never not be weird—the Horsemen being gentlemen.
The Horsemen started talking as they got to the foyer, about mundane and sundry things like whose turn it was to do the laundry.
Where was I? What was that place? Why was the fucking prince there again?
I followed Grim up the stairs, to his room, mind spinning, tongue tied.
“Tell me what that was,” I said before the door had even shut.
He paused, the muscles in his back twitching beneath his black shirt. He shut the door with a soft click, then turned around, face a mask.
“The Underworld.”
I took a breath, trying to calm the tiny, scratching fingernails clawing at my chest—
Anger.
Oh, I’m angry. Again.
Hmm. I’d spent the majority of my life numbing my overactive emotions, but with Grim, they bubbled up and over.
Because how dare he?
How dare he upend my life? How dare he whisper sweet promises to me while he was inside me and keep fucking lying.
He glanced at my clenched fists, like he could see the thoughts in my head, and smiled.
“You keep saying that,” I said. “But you know I know of the Underworld as that fucking club.”
He dragged a hand across his jaw. “You got a lotta questions today, Rich Girl.”
“And, like always, you have zero fucking answers.”
Cool.
Fucking great.
Of course nothing was changing. I went to move past him and open the door, needing space, needing a quiet place to question my life and my choices. Because, like, what the fuck was wrong with me that I knew this was our reality and I kept hoping for something different?
He grabbed my arm. “Wait.”
I stared at the inked fingers curled above my elbow, traveling up to meet his gaze. Some kind of foreign emotion clouded his eyes. Fear?
No, that couldn’t be right.
“There are things I can’t tell you, Gemma.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
His jaw clenched. “Won’t.”
A moment passed, marked by the shattering crash of the waves on the beach and the cawing of a lone seagull who didn’t get the winter memo.
Anger dissolved into heavy, thick disappointment. In him. In myself. In the fact that I accepted this. I had his mark on my neck, he’d been inside me, and I still didn’t get to be in his world.
“I have to go,” Grim said, but he didn’t let go of me. His grip tightened.
“Business?” I cocked my head, knowing full well he wouldn’t tell me where he was going.
He didn’t respond.
He didn’t have to.
A moment later he left. I stared at the empty doorway.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Fuck this.
I stomped downstairs—yes, stomped. I wasn’t above being petty. But downstairs was empty, so wherever Grim had gone involved the Horsemen. I walked into the kitchen, bare feet cold on the checkered marble. They had to have alcohol somewhere.
My eyes scanned the antique, hand-painted cabinets. A crystal bottle glinted at me from behind the cabinet’s glass pane.
Bingo.
I grabbed the bottle. Patrón Lalique series. Expensive. I popped off the crystal top, taking a drink as I left the kitchen.
There was a heaviness in my heart that reached my limbs.
It choked me.
Sniff.
I paused at the sound, following it to the living room. Zabby sat next to a black metal fireplace, on a deep burgundy Persian rug with intricate floral and geometric motifs.
“You okay?”
She startled, turning to find me, eyes wide. “I’m fine.”
Her eyes were shiny, nose red.
I held up the tequila. “Wanna get drunk?”
We got through half the bottle before either of us said anything. Zabby turned on the fireplace, the heat and crackle warming a deep ache in my bones that had nothing to do with the cold. Out the floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows, the rusted Ferris wheel sat beneath a wintery gray sky.
“Wanna tell me why you were crying?” I asked.
She quirked a brow. “Wanna tell me why you stole the tequila?”
We stared at one another, neither blinking.
“Fine,” I said, taking another drink. “Grim is lying to me. Or…keeping things from me.”
Zabby exhaled. “He does that.”
Curiosity replaced the heaviness in my limbs. This was Grim’s sister. She grew up with him. She knew him.
“What was he like?” I asked. “Growing up?”
She stood up on her knees, suddenly animated.
“Well, one time when I was in grade school, I asked a boy to be my Valentine. He said yes, but the day came and he completely forgot about me. Laughed at the present I got. I came home crying. Weirdly,” she continued, “later that night, the boy showed up with a dozen roses and two boxes of expensive chocolate.”
I bit my cheek to stop my smile. Grim was always protective, even then. For the next hour Zabby told me all kinds of stories about Grim.
How he used to let her fall asleep on his shoulder during cartoons. How he was never mean like her other friends’ brothers. How he would read to her, doing all the voices. How he slept with a light until he was twelve—
“No!” I interrupted. “No way. Grim was afraid of the dark?”
She nodded excitedly. “Our life was totally different before Vander.”
There it was again, that name.
“Who is Vander?”
A look clouded her features, like she’d said too much, and she quickly changed the subject. “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked. “Being, you know, claimed. People will want to hurt you. To kill you. Just to make a point.”
Was I afraid? Maybe. Deep down I knew Grim would never let anything happen to me.
But also, deeper down, a part of me didn’t care if something did.
“Kind of,” I lied, and took another swig from the bottle. “But I don’t know if it matters. I don’t know how it’s going to work. This thing. Obviously I can’t stay here. I don’t know why they’re keeping me here.”
“It’s not up to them, you know. They have to report to someone.”
“Wait, wait, wait—they report to someone?”
“It’s more than that…they’re captive.”
I choked on my liquor. After a good minute of Zabby drunkenly slapping my back, I sputtered, “The fuck did you just say?”
She looked startled, like she’d let something slip she shouldn’t have. “I thought you knew! It’s because of you.”
“Me?”
Because of me? How could it be because of me? I barely knew them. I said as much to her, confusion making my throat hot. She stayed quiet, that look still on her face, like she’d just revealed my aunt was my mother.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t know much. I just know they were almost free of their debt, then Grim took yours. I think it’s even more complicated now that he claimed you. You’re not…really supposed to do that with someone in your debt.”
That was five years ago. He was almost free?
I took another drink, willing the room to dissolve.
After a few more, it did.
Somewhere in our drunk logic, our clothes came off. Zabby said something about her being a witch, and that if we wanted to get rid of the negative energy of the day, we needed to burn it. So we tossed them into the fire.
It did feel good.
Now we lay naked on the soft rug, staring at the swirls of the ceiling’s intricate crown molding. Only in America were people weirdly prudish. No one batted an eye in a Japanese onsen.
There was something…grounding about it. Like beneath the clothes, inside the flesh, we were the same fucked-up pieces of stardust.
Zabby swished the bottle around. “Aw, empty—”
“Where the fuck are your clothes?”
We turned to find Lock standing in the doorway.
Zabby sat up, swaying. “Hi, Big Brother Lock.”
“Where are the other members of the boy band?” I asked.
Lock’s eyes were trained on Zabby, jaw clenched. I swore I saw something in his eyes.
Something way beyond brotherly.
It was as if he’d been hit by a bus, and was also trying to lift the fucking bus.
“Where. Are. Your. Fucking. Clothes.”
We both shared a look, laughing.
“It’s a secret,” I whispered.
And we laughed harder.
“Are you drunk?” Lock demanded. If steam could come out of his ears, it would have.
We both laughed. “Maybe.”
“You let her drink?” He shot me daggers. “It’s a fucking school night and she’s seventeen.”
I looked around. The fuck? Was this the Underworld or a goddamn church?
Zabby shot up, fists clenched, before I could respond. “I’m not seventeen anymore! I haven’t been seventeen for months. Stop treating me like a fucking child!”
Lock’s eyes flashed.
Whoa. Am I really drunk or did something just pop?
Lock reached over his head, pulling his shirt off by the back of his collar. “Put this on.”
Zabby stuck out her lower lip. “No.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched. He took a step toward her, and she took a step back. Lock’s stare sharpened, and then he was after her. She sidestepped him, running around the couch.
The chase was short-lived. He reached across the couch and threw her over his shoulder.
She waved at me as he carried her up the stairs.
Right as Lock left, Grim came into the room.
“You’re ruining the game.” Zabby’s slurring words disappeared up the stairs.
Damn. There goes my drinking buddy.
Grim leaned on the doorjamb a moment, watching me, a softness in his eyes that was still too much even with my drunken haze.
He came over.
Wordlessly, he bent down and lifted me into his arms, carrying me out of the room and up the stairs.
“Is it true?” I asked. “Am I the reason you’re condemned?”
His eyes flashed down to mine. Blazing. But he said nothing. When we got into the room, he placed me in his bed. Pulling the covers up.
“Since when does the monster tuck the princess in?” I asked.
He came down, lips a breath from mine, so I felt the heat of his words on my flesh. “Since the princess started flirting with them.”
“You wanna know a secret, Grim?” I asked. He stilled, waiting. “You’re the one who flirted with a monster.”
Some emotion flickered through his eyes, but whatever it was, I wouldn’t get access to it.
He pulled the blankets up to my chin. “Go to sleep, Rich Girl.”