I’ve done terrible things. I’ve killed. I’ve bled. I’ve let people use me until there was nothing left.
“Lance?”
“Hmm?”
“Your seven seconds.” She lifts her head, chin on my chest. “What did you think about before me?”
The question finds the one place I’m still unguarded.
“Nothing,” I admit. “I just tried not to die.”
She presses her lips together, and for a second I think she’s going to cry, but she lays her head back down and holds on to me like I’m something worth keeping.
I stare at the ceiling. My hand moves through her hair. Thecabin is quiet except for Cavall’s slow breathing and the wind in the trees outside.
Tomorrow Art’s name will still be on her phone and his arm around her waist.
Tomorrow there’s a party we have to survive, and a world that will never let us have this without burning down their kingdom for it.
Tomorrow I’ll figure out how to live with what we’ve done.
Tonight, she’s mine.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
Chapter 33
Genevieve
I stare at myself in the mirror of Lance’s guest bathroom, smoothing my hands down the fabric for the hundredth time. The woman looking back at me is polished, put together, and ready to smile on Art Penngrove’s arm like nothing in the world is wrong.
She’s also a fraud.
My lips are still swollen from last night. There’s a love bite blooming on my collarbone I’ve covered with concealer, and another one on my hip that the dress hides. I still feel him—not just his hands or his mouth, but the weight of everything he told me in that armchair before the world collapsed. His father. The cage. Frederick.You’re my seven seconds.
In an hour, I’ll walk into a party full of Rosebrook’s elite on the arm of his best friend and pretend none of it happened.
You’re the queen. Patient. Waiting. Then you strike.
I take a breath and twist my earring once.
A knock on the front door, followed by the low rumble ofvoices, makes my heart jump. I give myself one more look, then walk out to meet my fate.
Art is standing in the living room, looking like he stepped out of a magazine. Navy suit, perfectly tailored, and his hair swept back and polished. He’s got that easy, boyish smile that made me fall for him in the first place pasted on, but it doesn’t hit me the same way it used to.
Back then, I thought easy meant honest. I guess I’ve changed.
He turns, and his face goes slack.
“Ginny, baby. You look…wow.”
I wait for the flutter in my chest. The warmth. The feeling I used to get when he looked at me like that. But there’s nothing except the ghost of Lance’s mouth on my neck and the memory of his voice cracking on my name in the dark.
“Thanks,” I say. “Felicity picked it out.”
He makes a face like hearing her name is distasteful.
“If it were anyone else, I’d thank her.” He crosses to me, his hands finding my waist, and presses a kiss to my temple. His fingers rest on the exact spot where Lance’s fingers dug in hard enough to bruise last night, and I lock every muscle in my body to keep from flinching. Earlier, I pressed on them, unable to keep the smile from my face, but now…
