One
STORY
Fate is a thread; you can tie it in a thousand knots but you’ll always come to the same end. My mom loved to whisper that whenever things didn’t go her way, which was…often. As I stood across from Westley only hours after Grayson’s wedding, I pictured our thread. The thousands of knots we’d tied together. And in the end…Lottie’s wedding dresses hung up behind me. Her lingerie too. I would have to help her into them.
Help Mrs. Grayson Crowne.
The one and only…the one who should have always been.
“Grayson’s guards will be here any minute,” I said to West.
He smirked, quirking his plump lips just enough to flash his bright-white teeth. “Lottie is Grayson’s wife now.” I clenched my teeth at the pain those words brought as West walked closer, sliding one hazelnut finger along the vanity. “She gave me permission to be here. Something about forgetting her garter.”
As Lottie’s girl, I was supposed to bring it to her, but West picked up the lacy garment, twirling it around his finger. My eyes darted from it to him as fear crept up my spine. Westley had never been violent. Still, I was nervous. A few weeks earlier I had finally said what had been weighing on my soul: Westley du Lac raped me.
I don’t know how a man like West would respond to that…how any man would. I still wasn’t sure if I believed it myself. Rape, to me, was supposed to be bloody and vicious and cruel, not filled with sweet words.
“What do you want?”
“I told you I would be here,” he said for the second time. West was close enough now that I could smell his rich cologne, see his dark tux straining across his thick biceps.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
Though West had promised to pick up the pieces that he said would inevitably fall after Grayson, he couldn’t be serious. He was just fucking with me. The boy who had ghosted me and taken my virginity for a bet didn’t actually want me.
Didn’t actually care for me.
West took a step closer, but I stayed put, refusing to let another man push me back.
“I can give you what you want, Angel.”
I scoffed through my nostrils. I should just ignore him, get back to work, stop poking at the wound, but I couldn’t stop this gnawing in my gut. Why? After everything we’d been through, why did West think I’d want that? It must be a rich thing, right? Being so arrogant. Believing everything belongs to you, even people.
“You can’t give me anything. I want nothing to do with you.” I turned from him, fidgeted with the second of Lottie’s dresses.
“So you’re just going to stay here?” he asked. “You know what a girl has to do for the bride.”
I swallowed. “I’m doing it. I’m getting her dresses ready.”
“Angel, you know that’s not what I mean.”
My fingers froze on the delicate lace, eyes traveling to the spiderweb lingerie just beside it.
A girl did anything for her mistress, whether it was dress her, clean her, listen to her woes. Rumors of old, ancient rituals crawled with a shiver up my spine. Girls forced to bring the bloody evidence back and, in some cases, help the bride after—anything to ensure a baby.
West laughed, but it was mocking. “You do know.”
Months ago I’d already come to terms with what I might be asked to do, because I would do anything for my uncle, even if it meant readying the bride for the love of my life while I was still sticky with his come.
“I’ll take you out of this place.” West’s touch found my shoulder, featherlight. “I’ll give you the happily ever after you deserve.”
I tried to focus on the lace, the window, anything but my heart rising into my throat.
Push him off.
Shove him away.
Do. Something.
“You know…we never kissed, Angel.” His low, smooth voice was in my ear now. “It’s all I can think about.” He pushed my hair to one side.
I exhaled a breath that scraped on the way out.
Then I spun and shoved him off, snatching the garter out of his hand, and exited Grayson’s wing without a glance in West’s direction.
My fast-beating heart was anger.
Grief.
Nothing more.
The wedding was in full swing, the big band carrying from the ballroom. Patrons in silk and sequins laughed, paying no attention to me.
“Angel—”
I looked over my shoulder, cutting off West before he could speak. “Why—how could you think I’d want to be your fucking mistress? Just leave me alone, West.”
I didn’t give up everything to throw it all away on the man who’d thrown me away—
Grayson.
I came to a full stop.
Seated above everyone else in the ballroom, he tangled a hand in his rose gold hair as he talked to paparazzi. I looked at the garter in my hand, the one I was supposed to bring to the wife on his arm so he could peel it off her leg.
My heart crumbled like old granite.
He didn’t see me…and that was a good thing. I was back to being a ghost. My eyes found the bruise forming on my finger in the shape of Grayson’s teeth. A vicious wedding band, the only kind someone like me could ever have with someone like him.
“Marry me,” West said to my back.
I froze, and his hand clasped my shoulder, forcing me to spin. To look into his deep brown eyes.
“Marry me, Angel.”
I would have laughed if I wasn’t so disgusted, so broken, at the thought.
My soulmate left me in pieces, and the boy who ruined me—raped me—wanted to pick them up.
“You can’t offer that. None of you can!” I yelled before I could control my emotions. “You give away…you give away promises you don’t own the right to keep.”
I swiped at my tears.
West blinked. “I’ll take you down to the courthouse right fucking now.”
I glared at him.
He’d been the one to call me out on my naïveté, for believing in a happily ever after with Grayson. When I’d once thought Grayson and I were speaking in truth, it turned out West was the only one to offer me real truth.
There is no such thing as a happily ever after.
“I don’t know what your goal is here. I don’t know what bet you’re involved in again—”
“It’s not a bet—” he all but growled.
I cut him off. “But how little you must think of me. If you honestly believe I’d fall for that.”
Again, my brain supplied.
If you honestly believe I’d fall for it…again.
Not once, but twice, I’d fallen for a happily ever after. I was Cinderella in bare feet, walking across nails, pretending the only reason I couldn’t see my shoes was because they were glass.
I exhaled a shaky breath.
“There’s only one person keeping me here, and when he dies, I’m not staying around for another prince peddling his lies.”
Except a small, tiny piece of my heart wanted to go back to West. Wanted to make what happened between us okay. Because then, maybe, I wouldn’t have to look back on that memory with sadness.
It might wash away the stain.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said. “There’s a wife missing her garter.”