I swallow down my panic.
“You need a ride?” Grayson offers. “My car is here. I can drive you home.”
I shake my head. “My driver is just around the corner. I’ll wait outside. See you tomorrow.”
I don’t wait for Grayson to say goodbye. I don’t even look at Wyatt as I walk out of the room and head for the exit, phone pressed tight to my ear as I order Masters to break several traffic laws, so long as he gets here in the next two minutes.
I’ve got to get out of here.
I can barely breathe, with those too-blue eyes staring through me, unearthing all the secrets I fear I’ll never be ready to tell.
* * *
The sun is settingas we drop Harper off at her place. When I first moved into my new house in the Palisades, it was full of shadows and blank walls and empty rooms. I didn’t want to be there alone, so Harper stayed over almost every night — helping me settle in, rearranging furniture with me, making sure I didn’t go off the rails again. But now that the house is mostly decorated and I’m able to get through the day without dissolving into an emotional puddle, she’s gone back to her own space.
Not that I can blame her — a straight month of sleepovers here was a serious cock-block for her and Masters’ sex life. Still, the house feels vastly too large for just me. Sometimes, I almost miss my crappy little condo — neighbors screaming through too-thin walls, appliances that barely functioned, a pink-tiled bathroom too dilapidated to be consideredvintage.
Okay, I take it back. I don’t miss that place at all.
Masters and I drive in comfortable silence, neither feeling the need to chatter. Harper is generally the one who fills the empty air — she spent the entire ride home from Sloan’s telling me all about Helena Putnam. A month’s worth of gossip, crammed into a thirty-minute car ride.
This is what I’ve been dying to tell you! Don’t you understand? There wasnevera baby! She had a hysterical pregnancy and had to be committed. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from the other girls who do makeup at AXC… Grayson came back from Hawaii to try and talk her out of hurting herself… Apparently, he’s the one who took her to rehab… He’s still the only one she’ll talk to…
I ache to forget her words. I don’t want to know that Grayson Dunn might be a good guy disguised as an asshole. It’s much safer to keep him in strict shades of black and white. Saint or sinner. Good or evil. Selfish or selfless. But people rarely stay so easily confined to a single category. And the more I learn about Grayson Dunn, the more I realize he is a man made exclusively of grayscale hues.
He does monstrous things.
…But he is not a monster.
I make foolish choices.
…But I am not a fool.
Is it any wonder we were such a disaster together?
An already-broken girl who let a boy break her a bit more, just for the hell of it.
It’s strange — I once saw my own weakness as a character flaw. But I think perhaps when I first met Grayson, I was like a bone that snapped long ago and never healed correctly. Perhaps I had to be broken worse and then reset to ever have a chance of supporting my own weight.
Perhaps loving Grayson Dunn, letting him break me, was the only way to make myself whole again.
When I met him, the break was already there, built from twenty-two years of hating the reflection I saw in the mirror, hating the ugly girl inside who wore beauty like a mask to hide her true nature. The damage was already so severe it crippled me, after two decades of hearing I wasn’t good enough, that I’d never make my mother proud, that I didn’t deserve good things like happiness or commitment or basic human decency….
The fault line was always there.
Grayson simply applied enough pressure to set off the quake.
By the time we reach my neighborhood, I’m falling asleep with my cheek pressed up against the back window, exhausted in every way a human can be — emotionally, physically, spiritually. It’s already been what feels like the longest day of my life… and, as we approach my house at the end of the one-way lane and I see the bright green car parked outside my security gates, I realize it’s not yet over.
“Is that—”
“My mother,” I finish, groaning.
I should’ve known she’d track me down eventually. Cynthia is like a mythological hydra — you can cut off her head, but eventually she’ll crawl back out of whatever hole she burrowed into, with two more grown in its place. I fired her last month, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to stop messing with my life. Especially now, when I’m on the cusp of the stardom she spent so many years pushing me towards.
“Do you want me to keep driving?” Masters asks. “We can do a lap, come back in an hour or so…”
“She’ll just keep showing up,” I say, voice resigned. “Let me out. I’ll talk to her here. But I’m not inviting her inside — they say, once you let a cockroach in, it’ll lay eggs and cause an infestation.”