“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.”
