CHAPTER FIVE
The night air was sharp and unforgiving, biting at Kennedy Lockhart’s bare skin as she fled across the sweeping, manicured lawns that separated the Ashford-Wale estate from her own.
The two properties sat side by side on the Rhode Island coast, their boundaries marked only by a low, ornamental stone wall and centuries of shared history.
Kennedy scrambled over the low wall, her breath tearing through her chest in ragged, desperate gasps.
The remnants of her midnight-blue velvet gown hung off her shoulders, torn and ruined, a physical testament to the destruction of her life.
She did not look back. She ran as though she were fleeing the scene of a violent crime, the wet grass soaking her bare feet—she had abandoned her heels somewhere in the darkness.
The imposing, familiar silhouette of the Lockhart manor loomed ahead of her, its grand windows large and silent.
She slipped through the side entrance of the conservatory, her hands trembling so violently that she could barely manage the brass handle.
The moment she reached the sanctuary of her sprawling bedroom, Kennedy slammed the mahogany door shut and drove the deadbolt home with a sharp, final click.
She did not make it to the bed. Her knees gave out, and she collapsed onto the plush cream rug, curling into a tight, agonizing ball.
The silence of the room pressed down on her, before the first sob finally broke free.
It was a guttural, wretched sound, tearing its way up her throat and shattering the quiet of the house.
She pressed her hands over her mouth, trying to stifle the noise, but the grief was too feral to be contained.
She cried for the fifteen years she had spent loving a man who had never seen her.
She cried for the careful, dignified distance she had maintained for over a decade, obliterated in a single hour of chemical madness.
But most of all, she cried for her own weakness.
The shame was a living, breathing thing, wrapping its claws around her throat.
She had known it was wrong. When the drug had first taken hold, when the heat and the desperation had clouded her mind, there had been a fraction of a second where she could have chosen differently.
She could have turned the doorknob. She could have screamed for help.
Instead, she had looked at Grayson, drowning in the same feverish haze, and she had kissed him.
You took advantage.
Grayson’s words echoed in her mind, a lethal, repeating loop.
She squeezed her eyes shut, digging her manicured nails into her scalp as though she could physically tear the memory from her brain.
If her parents found out—if Spencer knew what she had done, how she had fallen so spectacularly low—they would look at her with the exact same revulsion Grayson had.
She was a Lockhart. She had been raised to possess unshakeable poise, self-control, and unyielding grace.
In one night, she had proven herself to be nothing more than a desperate, pathetic shadow, unworthy of the name she carried.
A sharp, urgent knock at the door jerked her out of her spiral.
"Kennedy?"
It was Spencer. His voice was muffled through the thick wood, but the deep, fraternal concern in it was unmistakable.
Kennedy scrambled backward until her spine hit the edge of her bedframe, pulling her knees to her chest. She couldn't speak. Her throat was raw, her chest heaving with silent, hyperventilating sobs.
"Kennedy, I know you’re in there. I heard you come in," Spencer called out, his tone sharpening. He rattled the brass doorknob. "The door is locked. Open it."
"Go away," Kennedy managed to croak, her voice unrecognizable, shattered and hollow.
The doorknob rattled again, harder this time. "I am not going away. Open the door, Kennedy, or I swear to God I will break it down."
"Please, Spencer," she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "Please, just leave me alone."
"Not a chance," Spencer replied, his voice dropping into a low, unyielding register of determination. "I am not leaving this hallway until you look me in the eye and tell me what’s wrong. Open the door."
It took every ounce of strength Kennedy had left to crawl across the carpet.
Her hands shook violently as she reached up and twisted the deadbolt.
Before she could pull away, Spencer pushed the door open.
He stepped into the room, the dim light from the hallway spilling over his broad shoulders, and froze.
He took in the sight of his sister—the fierce, untouchable Kennedy Lockhart—huddled on the floor in a torn dress, her face smeared with ruined makeup, shivering like a terrified child.
"Jesus," Spencer breathed. He dropped to his knees in front of her, disregarding the crease in his formal trousers, and reached for her. "Ken. Hey, look at me. What happened? Are you hurt?"
Kennedy flinched away from his touch, curling tighter into herself. "Don't. Don't touch me. You don't know what I did."
"Then tell me," Spencer commanded softly, keeping his hands hovered near her, ready to catch her if she fell further apart. "Tell me what happened."
The confession poured out of her in a broken, chaotic flood.
She told him about the champagne, the sudden, terrifying heat, and the desperate retreat to the study.
She told him about finding Grayson there, equally consumed by whatever had been in the glass.
But she did not spare herself. She wielded the truth like a knife, turning the blade on her own actions.
"It’s my fault," Kennedy wept, her voice trembling violently.
"It’s all my fault, Spencer. I knew something was wrong.
I knew we weren't in our right minds, and I should have walked away.
I should have called you, or Arthur, or anyone.
But I didn't. I looked at him, and I just…
I wanted him so badly. I kissed him first. I didn't stop it.
I am a horrible, disgusting person. I deserve every single thing he said to me. "
Spencer listened in stunned silence, his blue eyes darkening as the horrific reality of the night clicked into place. But as Kennedy continued to verbally tear herself to shreds, a fierce, protective anger began to override his shock.
"Stop it," Spencer said firmly, reaching out and gripping both of her shoulders, forcing her to look at him.
"I can't face him," Kennedy sobbed, trying to pull away, blinded by her own self-loathing. "I can't face any of them ever again. I just want to disappear, Spencer. I have to leave. I’ll go to the house in London, or the flat in Paris, I don't care. I just can't be here."
"You are not going anywhere," Spencer said, his voice anchoring her to the floor. He gave her shoulders a small, grounding shake. "Listen to me, Kennedy. You are not a monster. You are not a bad person."
"You didn't hear what he called me—"
"I don't care what he called you!" Spencer interrupted fiercely. "He was out of his mind, and so were you. Something happened to both of you tonight, something neither of you was in any condition to control. Do not sit here and tell me you engineered this."
"But I didn't walk away!" she cried, the guilt threatening to drown her.
"No, you didn't," Spencer agreed, refusing to lie to her, but refusing to let her carry the weight of a crime she hadn't committed.
"Mistakes were made. Things went horribly wrong, and yes, it could have been handled differently. But I am not going to sit here and let you reduce yourself to the worst thing you think you’ve done.
You are bleeding out over a choice you made while you were out of your mind on a drug you didn't choose to take. "
Kennedy stared at him, her chest heaving, the tears spilling continuously down her cheeks. "How am I supposed to live with this?"
"By standing up," Spencer told her, his voice softening, his thumbs brushing the tears from her jaw.
"By accepting what happened. What’s done is done, Ken.
We cannot undo it. But you do not get to run away.
You do not get to disappear. You take responsibility for whatever part was yours, and then we figure out the rest. But you are not doing it alone. Do you understand me?"
Kennedy couldn't find the strength to agree. She merely collapsed forward, burying her face in her brother’s chest, weeping until there was nothing left inside her but a hollow, echoing ache.
***
The next morning, the sun rose over the Ashford estate with a blinding, cheerful brilliance that felt offensive to Grayson.
He was standing in the center of his expansive, marble-clad shower, fully dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants, letting the freezing cold water cascade over his head and shoulders.
He had been standing there for nearly an hour, but the water did nothing to wash away the cloying, suffocating guilt that clung to his skin.
He gripped the polished chrome handle of the showerhead, his knuckles white, his head bowed under the freezing spray.
His mind was a chaotic, fractured battleground.
He kept replaying the night, sifting through the hazy, fragmented memories of the study.
He remembered the heat. He remembered the terrifying loss of control.
He remembered the brutal, all-consuming way he had torn Kennedy’s dress, the savage desperation of his own hands.
A wave of nausea washed over him, and he braced his forearms against the wet marble wall, dragging air into his lungs.