“Your mother likes these stories,” she whispered.
He gritted his teeth. “I know.”
Hazel stepped closer, not enough to touch him, but enough that he felt her presence, warm and steady as a hand against his back.
“Would it be all right,” she asked carefully, “if I brought these books to her next time I visit?”
He flinched. It was slight, but he was certain that Hazel caught it. He could see her eyes widen with concern.
His own voice, when it emerged, felt rougher than the stone walls around them. “I put them away for a reason.”
Hazel held the book more loosely now, as though afraid her grip might hurt him. “What reason?”
Greyson’s breath stilled in his chest. He stared at the closed trunks, at the memories hiding in the shadows, the same memories he had locked away so tightly he feared they would break him if he opened them even an inch.
“The stories,” he said quietly, “remind her of what happened, of what she lost. I do not want to add to her misery.”
Hazel’s brows lifted, revealing aching compassion that cut through him more sharply than accusation ever could.
“Greyson,” she said softly, “your mother is still here. She is still alive. She deserves her stories, her memories, herlife,even if parts of it hurt.”
He closed his eyes briefly, battling the tightening in his throat.
“She lives in the past,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “It is all she has now. There is no present for her, not with me, not with anyone.”
That truth, so ugly and aching, hung between them like a weight.
Hazel didn’t recoil. She didn’t argue. She didn’t pity him. Instead, she stepped close enough that he could feel her breath stir the air between them.
“Butyou,” she said gently, “have a present.”
He went utterly still. The words struck him. Though the words themselves sounded cruel, her voice was soft with compassion.He felt as though she reached straight into his chest and pressed a palm against the place he most carefully guarded.
“You have a present,” she repeated softly. “And you shouldn’t bury it with the past.”
Greyson drew in a slow, unsteady breath. Hazel stood so close he could feel the warmth radiating from her. She was close enough that if he turned even slightly, he could touch her, gather her into his arms, let her take the weight from him.
And that was precisely why he could not stay another moment.
“No,” he said, the word sharp enough to cleave the space between them.
Greyson tore his gaze from her, fixing it instead on the nearest trunk, the one holding the remnants of a childhood he no longer allowed himself to claim.
“The past should be left in the past,” he said, a monologue he had recited over and over through the years. “Some things are meant to remain buried.”
Hazel’s lips parted, as though she wished to speak, to comfort him, persuade him or try and reach him, but he could not bear to hear whatever kindness she might offer. He turned away before the heat in his chest could reach his eyes. He walked away, refusing to look back.
If he did, he wasn’t certain he would be able to walk out at all.
Chapter Nineteen
Hazel stood on the stoop of the townhouse, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders despite the mild afternoon air. She had a book tucked beneath the folds of the wool. It was hidden, protected… stolen.
The word thudded in her chest with every heartbeat. She had taken it. She had taken a book from a wing Greyson had all but forbidden her to enter. She had taken what he’d explicitly asked her to leave untouched. She had taken something fragile and precious, something intricately tied to memories he guarded so fiercely.
Hazel swallowed hard and rang the bell. The sound echoed in her bones like the tolling of a church bell announcing her guilt.
I am a thief,she thought miserably.And a horrible person.
