Chapter 86
JESSICA
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“You’re out of your fucking mind,” I whisper, but it doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like someone else a girl I don’t recognize, one who thought she knew the limits of what he’d sacrifice.
But clearly, I didn’t.
A dry, bitter laugh claws its way out of my throat. I pace. No–I spiral. Across the room, back again. I run a hand through my hair, tug too hard at the roots, because the pressure keeps me from screaming. “You didn’t. You didn’t do that. Tell me you didn’t just–tell me you didn’t give it to Riot. Riot, Grayson? Are you even hearing yourself?”
He looks at me then. Really looks. And it’s worse than if he’d ignored me. Because he’s calm. He’s heartbreakingly calm. Like this isn’t the end of everything. Like he hasn’t just stripped himself of the only thing that’s ever anchored him.
My stomach turns. The bile builds slow, bitter, hot. I press a fist to it. “No. No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to give up being Alpha and call that love. That’s not how this works.”
Grayson says nothing. He’s just standing there watching me with his bored expression.
Damn him. I cannot believe–I cannot believe he’s looking at me like this is fine.
“Say something,” I spit, voice rising. “Don’t you dare just stand there like you haven’t set fire to the only thing that ever made sense in your life. Say something, Grayson.”
He finally stands.
And god, he’s still every inch the Alpha, even without the title. Broad shoulders. Steady stare. Voice low and clear as he says, “I’m not erasing it. I’m choosing you.”
I shake my head too fast. It rattles something loose in me.
“No,” I say, barely above a whisper. “You don’t get to choose me like that. You don’t get to throw yourself into a freefail and expect me to catch you. I never asked for this. I never asked you to give up who you are.”
The tears come fast, hot, and I wipe at them angrily. Like if I smear them across my cheeks fast enough, they won’t count.
“You don’t love me,” I say, and I hate how broken it sounds. “We had a plan.”
Grayson takes a step forward.
I step back.
And it keeps going like that–him advancing, me retreating until my shoulder blades kiss the cold wall and he’s close enough that
I can feel the heat radiating off him, simmering beneath the calm he wears like armor
He doesn’t touch me. That might’ve hurt less.
“We did have a plan,” he says, voice quieter now, more human than I can stand “But plans change.”
My laugh cracks. “No. Cowards change. Cowards fold and pretend it’s fate. You didn’t choose me, Grayson–you abandoned everything and slapped my name on it.”
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I shove at his chest, and he lets me.
I took another step toward him and shoved him, both palms to his chest, sharp and fast and hopelessly human. He barely moved. And the way he just absorbed it, like he’d already accepted every version of pain I could throw at him, made me want to scream.
“You gave Riot the title,” I said, voice trembling now. “You handed it to him like it wasn’t your entire life. Like it wasn’t the last thing your father gave you. Like I didn’t fall in love with the man who fought for it.”
Still, he said nothing.
And I couldn’t take it.
I turned away, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes as if that might stop the room from spinning. I gripped the edge of the table just to feel something solid beneath my fingers, but even then, it felt like the ground was shifting, like everything I’d built in my head was crumbling in slow motion and there was nothing left to hold on to.
“You don’t get to do this,” I whispered. “You don’t get to torch the future we planned and then stand there and ask me to pretend it’s romantic.”
I felt him move behind me before I heard him breathe my name. Just once. Barely louder than the wind rattling the windows.
I didn’t turn. I couldn’t.
But the sound of it–the way he said it like a prayer, like it was the only word he still believed in–broke something I didn’t know was still whole.
“Say something,” I said, louder now, my back still to him. “Don’t you dare just stand there like this isn’t the end of everything. Say something, Grayson.”
He stepped closer, and I felt the heat of him behind me before I even heard the words.
“I’m not erasing it,” he said quietly. “I’m choosing you.”
The words landed with the kind of weight you can’t measure. Not in pounds or distance or time. They landed in my lungs and
knocked the air right out of me.
1 turned around slowly, heart in my throat, and looked at him–really looked–and for a moment I wished I hadn’t.
Because he looked destroyed.
Not visibly. Not in a way that most people would see. But I saw it. I knew him too well not to. It was in the way his shoulders didn’t square up the way they used to, in the way his eyes didn’t hold that same fire. He looked like a man who had carved out the best parts of himself and left them on an altar, hoping it would be enough.
Grayson exhaled, and for the first time, it didn’t sound controlled. It sounded tired.
“I know,” he said.
And then he dropped his gaze.
It was such a small gesture–barely a tilt of his head–but it shattered everything
Know what?
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38)
Chapter 86
“I know you didn’t ask for this,” he said again, slower this time, like each word cost him something. “And I know what it looks like. I know it doesn’t make sense to anyone else… maybe not even to you. But it makes sense to me.”
He paused. His jaw clenched once, hard, like he was biting down on something sharp.
“I didn’t give up the title because I stopped caring,” he went on, voice fraying at the edges. “I gave it up because–because l couldn’t keep pretending that it mattered more than you. Because every time I walked into that war room, every time I stood in front of them and made decisions like they were pieces on a board-”
His voice broke, and he shook his head, once, hard, like he hated himself for even admitting it.
“I kept thinking about you. And how I was slowly becoming someone you wouldn’t recognize. Someone who could win every fight except the one that mattered.”
My breath caught, and I didn’t know if I wanted to run or reach for him..
“You were never my weakness,” he said, finally lifting his eyes. And God, the way he looked at me–like he was standing on the edge of something vast and unforgiving, like this was the last thing he had left to give. “You were the reason I held it together for as long as I did.”
He took a step toward me, then another, slower now, like he was afraid if he moved too fast, I’d disappear.
“I know it was the last thing my father gave me,” he said, softer now, almost reverent. “But it was never really mine, Jess. It was an obligation dressed as a legacy. A throne built on rules I didn’t write. And the longer I held it, the more it started to feel like I was trying to become someone just to earn the right to stay beside you.”
I blinked. Hard. Because I hadn’t realized how badly I needed him to say that–not just that he loved me, but that I had always been the thing he wanted most, not the title, not the power, not the myth of the Alpha.
His voice trembled then, and it made everything inside me go still.
“I didn’t step down because I was brave,” he said. “I stepped down because I was scared. Scared that I’d wake up one day and realize I lost you while trying to be someone I never wanted to be in the first place.”
And then he did the one thing I never thought I’d see him/do.
He dropped to his knees.
Grayson fucking Westwood, on his knees in front of me. My hands hung useless at my sides, every nerve ending in my body screaming like it didn’t know whether to run or reach for him.
This wasn’t happening
And yet.
There he was. On the floor. Head tilted back just enough to look up at me, jaw tense like it took everything he had not to look away There was nothing proud lett in him, nothing polished, nothing of the Alpha who used to walk like he owned the sky. Just the man beneath the legacy, wrecked and shaking and trying to keep his voice steady when it cracked all over the place anyway.
“I don’t care what they call me,” he whispered, voice so low I had to lean in just to catch the words, and god help me, my body did it without asking my permission “I don’t care what Hose if I lose you, none of it means anything”
My lips parted, but no sound came out. Just breath–regged, uneven, almost embarrassed at how fragile it felt in a room this heavy.
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0:07 Fri, 22 Aug 0
apter 86
43%
was still looking at me like I was the sun after a hundred years of night. And I hated it. I hated the way it made my throat close. ted the way my chest hurt like it was trying to crack open, like every rib had just remembered the shape of his hands.
bottom lip trembled. I bit down on it hard enough to taste blood, but it didn’t stop the shake. Didn’t stop the burn behind my es or the heat crawling up my spine or the part of me that wanted–desperately–to fall with him.
-I don’t know what to say to you,” I choked out, arms wrapping around myself like they could keep me from splintering. “You n’t just come here and fall apart at my feet like this. It’s not fair.”
m not asking for fair,” he said, still grounded, still staring straight into me like he could see past every wall I’d built just to survive m. “I’m asking for you.”
nd it was so unfair.
ecause I had been angry. Righteously angry. I’d had it all lined up in my head–how I would tell him off, how I would walk away nd mean it this time. But there he was, on the ground like a vow, like a confession, and I didn’t know how to keep my hands to yself.
didn’t know how to stay angry at a man who looked like he’d set the world on fire just to keep me warm.
