“You said that so he wouldn’t be mad at me.” Grayson takes a slow step backwards. His eyes are guarded, and he’s blinking way more than necessary. “Why would you do that?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.” I wipe a tear off my cheek. I’m so angry and filled with emotions, there’s no holding them back, and that pisses me off, so I grit my teeth and I feel my chin wobble. “Nothing is going to change what any of us did or didn’t do, and the last thing I want is you guys fighting about shit that happened in the past.”
“Don’t cry, Frankie,” Felix murmurs softly and tries to approach me.
Sidestepping him, I argue, “I’m not,” even though it’s obvious I am. “I’m just tired.”
“Now that is some bullshit,” Remy intones. I cut my eyes toward him, and he doesn’t even have the decency to look intimidated as he walks over and wraps his arms around me. I struggle for just a moment, then bury my face in his chest as a few shuddering breaths leave me.
“I know there’s still a lot of shit swirling around in your head, doll, but I need you to understand a few things.” Remy strokes his hand over the back of my head. It’s easier to listen to him while I’m enveloped in his arms. “We never gave up, not even Gray. Now, I know you want to argue with me, but just hear me out,” he says when I make a noise of disbelief.
“You’re right about a lot of shit, but not all of it. We all made some bad choices. We can chalk it up to being young and dumb or just dumb, I’ll let you decide, but we were all hurting from those choices and it affected each of us differently.”
“How are you the voice of reason right now?” I lean back and show him my shocked face.
Remy flashes his dimples and waggles his eyebrows at me. “I’m just good like that.”
“I can see you still think an awful lot about yourself,” I mumble.
“Frankie.” Felix’s voice is solemn, and it prompts me to step out of Remy’s arms. “I need you to understand why we never broke the circle or unmade it, and it wasn’t because we wanted you to do it. We didn’t break it because we still want it. We want to finish the ritual. It was always supposed to be the four of us.”
I hear his words and have no problem comprehending them, but still, something doesn’t compute, because I can’t wrap my head around them. I make a sound that could be a scoff, but it’s really just me trying to breathe past the tightness in my throat and chest.
“See? I told you she didn’t get it,” Felix says, pointing at me.
“I suppose you were right. She looks thoroughly confused,” Remy agrees as if I can’t even hear them.
“Of course I’m confused,” I snap. “I just found out some part of the ritual worked, and I’ve essentially been holding you captive all this time—which is exactly what I was trying to avoid—and now you’re telling me you want to finish it? How do you know it’s not just the spell making you feel that way and influencing you because of what we did?”
“Now you’re just insulting us.” Remy crosses his arms over his chest, but he doesn’t really look bothered at all.
“It doesn’t have that kind of influence,” Grayson chimes in. “I could have broken it at any time.”
“Then why not do it?” I challenge.
“I thought about it. A lot,” Grayson confesses. “A few times, it was only those two who stopped me from doing it.” He points at the other guys. “But in the end, I was too afraid—afraid I would lose everything.”
I take a moment to examine him. It feels like he’s telling the truth, like they are all telling the truth, but maybe it’s just what I want to believe. “This doesn’t make sense. If you still wanted to try, to be together, then why didn’t you ever come to me?”
“We would have eventually.” Felix pushes his glasses up on his nose. “We had a timeline.”
“A timeline? Like, what, if none of us were married by the time we were thirty or some shit?” I snarl indignantly.
“I asked them to wait.” Grayson admits. “I convinced them you would come back when and if you wanted to.”
“Why was it all on me, huh? I mean, you guys could have given me a sign, an inkling you still wanted that, a fucking smoke signal!” I wave my arms in the air. I probably look like a psycho. “Instead, I waited for you to show up at school, but you dropped out. I even went to the registrar to check.”
“It wasn’t just you leaving. There was other stuff that happened after.” Felix looks at Grayson.
“That’s putting it nicely. My family basically imploded after Winston decided to leave town. It left my family scrambling to find a replacement figurehead.” Grayson rolls his eyes.
“It was more than that. His family wasn’t going to let Winston go that easily. Not after all the training and grooming they did to get him into that position. Gray stepped up so Winston could have some peace and run his own life for once,” Remy tells me. I look over at Grayson, but his head is lowered. That’s something I would expect him to do.
“Dad is stronger than him, always has been, and that’s why he was the one chosen to carry on the family name. But they really don’t give a shit who does the job as long as the Hale name is still important in Hill Crest,” Grayson grumbles bitterly.
“You’ve done some real good, though, since you were elected last year. The town is doing better than it has in a long time,” Felix offers, to which Grayson scoffs, making me think he doesn’t really agree.
“Albion also offered to make me first string as a freshman, and not many other schools would do that, and my goal was always to get picked up as early as possible, so it made sense. I knew we would have our time,” Remy adds with a shrug. He’s always so sure of himself.
