Grim Reyes doesn’t love me. He never did. He saved me because he saw an opportunity to keep the perfect Crowne princess hostage forever like a broken doll to play with.
Every word, every action, was calculated.
But he didn’t get to end it this way. He didn’t get to end it, period. He didn’t get to turn my world upside down over and over, and then call it quits. Leave me in the dust.
Again…
I swallowed, realizing I’d been quiet for too long, the tattooist eyeing me uncertainly.
“Thirty, fuck.”
He looked away, but said, “Where you want it? Lower back?”
“No.” I pointed at the nape of my neck, where my hair was just short enough for it to be seen always. “I want it visible.”
He sucked in a breath. “You got a death wish or somethin’, girl?”
“Or something,” I muttered, sliding face-first into the leather chair, legs spread on either side.
The needle hit my skin, and I swallowed a gasp as Ipermanently inked Grim into me. I played with the cracks in the leather chair, the night with Grim replaying over and over again. A numb sort of calm spreading through my veins.
You will never be mine. You’ll never wear my mark.
With each prick of the needle, I felt that already blurry line between my world and his dissolve.
I couldn’t stop thinking back to the day I first met Grim—not the day our fates collided, but the day we first spoke—and wondered what would have happened had he not seen me, and I not talked to him. If we hadn’t tumbled into our fate, and our lives stayed separate.
I’d been too complacent. Too foolishly hopeful. I’d lived five years on the crumbs that Grim gave me. Not anymore.
It didn’t take long for the tattoo to finish, or maybe I was just so in my thoughts that I didn’t notice time pass.
He handed me a mirror that reflected against the one he held to see the fresh ink on my neck.
“They’ll know,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if you try and hide it. They always find out.”
“I’m counting on it.”
My mother always said happily ever afters didn’t exist, and I should look for opportunity.
THIRTY-TWO
GEMMA
The door slammed open, my head pounding with it.
I rolled over, pressing my forehead into my pillow and groaning into the satin fabric. “Fuck you too.”
Without a second to breathe someone grabbed my bicep, yanking me out of my warm, soft bed and into the cold morning. I blinked blearily into earnest blue eyes, so similar in color to mine, if not icier.
Grayson, my brother.
I shoved his hand off me. “Excuse you.”
“What does he have on you?”
I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my palm, trying to clear out the harsh morning light.
“Who?” I asked through a scratchy throat.
