Grayson’s words echoed in my head as I walked back to his wing. It was getting late, the light waning in long, gaunt shadows along Crowne Hall.

I could. I can write anywhere. But every time I put pen to paper, I froze. I’ve hidden for so long I didn’t know how to show my soul.

What if people see me, and they don’t like what they see?

When I got back to Grayson’s wing, shouting stopped me short in the hallway.

“One fucking thing, Mom,” Grayson’s voice bounced off the walls.

I paused a few feet down from the door to Grayson’s bedroom, his yelling echoing in the barren halls.

“Grayson, dear,” Tansy Crowne’s tinkling voice drifted like a breath of winter wind. “You know how these things work.”

“He hits her. He’s a fucking psychopath.”

“His father’s company will be quite the addition, and we both know Abigail isn’t the most…attractive investment.”

I looked back down the hall, thinking I should leave, when the click-clack of heels stopped my heart. I turned, finding Tansy Crowne. We both froze as I stared her straight in her red-brown eyes—eyes so similar to her least attractive investment’s. Then sanity returned and I quickly looked at the floor.

Her approaching footsteps were the only sound; then she stopped exactly parallel to me. I stared hard at her polished, nude heels, my heartbeat thunder. The minute dragged on like nails against a chalkboard.

“How much?” she asked, voice low.

“What?”

“How much?” she repeated. “I’ve paid off every girl who thought she loved my son. You all have a price. Name it.”

The shock of that statement had me looking up and into Tansy Crowne’s eyes.

“You’ve paid off every girl interested in Grayson? Does he know?”

Her red-brown eyes slimmed. “Do I tell him about the girls who wanted his money?”

“I don’t want his money,” I said, though I had to look away. Because what was I even doing here? I’d signed my name on a dotted line for cash. All this was only for money.

Tansy kept walking, and I let out a breath.

When I got to Grayson’s room, he was on the edge of a couch, legs spread and head in his hands, already in a tux for the party. He looked every bit the lonely, broken prince I knew him to be, crushed beneath the weight of expectations. I struggled with the decision to leave him alone or go to him.

I wanted to take the weight off his shoulders as no one had done for me when I was a kid, but I knew that was impossible, because no one could take that weight away. Sometimes problems are just unfixable.

So I said the one thing I wished someone had said to me.

“It’s not fair.”