He lifted me up into his arms without another word and settled us into bed together, cradling my head on his bare chest. I noticed he’d taken off his shirt and had changed into sweats.

“What’s your safe word?” he asked.

“Mr. Crowne,” I croaked. When he made me choose one, I thought it was because we were going to be doing some kinky whipping and paddling Fifty Shades of Grayson shit. Not ripping apart my soul.

“Remember to use it,” he said, chest rumbling.

He stroked my hair. My back. Tears fell in a constant, hot stream down my cheek. I decided his sweet side was worse than his cruel side. Like the way the twinkling Riviera blurred with my tears, it blurred my picture of him.

“Why don’t you want to be a poet anymore?” he asked softly.

I wasn’t prepared for the question.

“Someone needs to take care of my uncle,” I said even more quietly.

“You can write while taking care of him.”

“Yeah,” was all I gave him.

I don’t know how many minutes passed as I lay on his hard chest. I kept telling myself to get up, to yell at him, to not let him get away with it. But he was warm, and his fingers were soft and loving, and I was weak.

“I received a really thoughtful gift from my fiancée today,” Gray said. “A green pen.”

“Oh,” was all I managed.

“I keep wondering how the fuck she knew to give it to me.”

“She’s your fiancée. You love her. She should give that to you.”

I sat up, angry.

Angry that he had the audacity to ask me such personal questions. To be sweet to me. To act like what he did to me never happened.

“What do you see in me, Story Hale?” His words were jagged and cutting, like the look in his eyes.

This is where I should tell him nothing.

After what he did to me, after all he said to me, I should tell him I see nothing in him. I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t tell him the truth—it was too damning. An Atlas carrying a world of expectations and responsibilities. A lonely prince who pretends he doesn’t care but cares so much he’s isolated.

I see the only person who sees me back.

So I stroked the broken ridges of his nose, because it was the closest to a confession I could get.

His eyes burned and broke and cracked. “Everyone who gets close to me, who gets close to the real Grayson Crowne, never likes what they see.”

“I see you,” I said brokenly. Hating myself for not hating him.

“Trust me, Snitch, I’ve only ever been good at making people hate me. At the end of this, you’ll hate me too.”