“I feel sorry for you.” I whispered my venom. “You don’t have any friends. Not really. They think your favorite food is steak, and they’ve never seen the inside of your wing. Everyone wants a piece of you, but no one could give a shit who you are.”

Anger, and something else, flashed. “What the fuck do you mean they think my favorite food is steak?”

Fear battled with adrenaline. I was calling Grayson Crowne out on his shit, and if he wanted to toss me over the ship, leave me to drown, none of these perfectly beautiful people would bat their eyelash extensions.

“You’re afraid to tell the girl of your dreams you love her. I feel so, so sorry for you. You’re so fucking lonely, Grayson Crowne, that friendship feels like a trap.”

“Do you think you’re my friend, Snitch? You’re nothing to me in private; you don’t exist to me in public.”

“Liar,” I breathed.

He froze, eyes hard.

I couldn’t say all my words. That in private, behind closed doors, in the dark…he needed me. We’d started to need each other. It took all my strength just to look at him. So I settled on the one word I could get out.

My mouth was dry, my heart pounding.

I dragged my lip between my teeth to hide the tremble. Even though I wished I wasn’t, I was scared. This world was harsh and cruel like an icy tundra, and no amount of living as a ghost around them had prepared me for when they would finally notice me.

Gray’s hooded eyes dropped to my lips, then lazily, slowly, so slowly, he found my eyes. I knew I should look down. It was growing impossible not to look him in the eyes. Yet there was something smoldering in his stony blue eyes. A heat I knew was impossible—insane—because there was no way he wanted to kiss me.

Not after calling me disgusting.

After saying I was nothing.

But when I licked my lips, his jaw tensed, and he took the smallest step toward me.

Then a scream sounded, a splash following soon after.

“Lottie!” Aundi screamed. “Lottie just fell off the boat!”

Grayson jerked his head toward the scream.

“And?” The douche I recognized as Khalid, the one who’d tried to gamble for me, said. “Does she not know how to fucking swim?”

Across the boat, Khalid leaned forward on a table, doing a line of what looked like cocaine.

Without missing a beat, Grayson spun from me, pushing through the crowd to where Lottie had been. He stepped over the table where Khalid was, leaving a footprint in his cocaine, to the leather seat, until he stood atop the railing, wind whipping his blond hair.

He tore off what remained of his shirt, diving off the back of the boat. Disappearing after Lottie with a splash.