Page 28 of Fallen to Thievery
He didn’t say anything as he walked away, but I could see him getting undressed by the shadow the fire casted on the tent. I looked away. The image of him unclasping his belt made my stomach roll. I took a bite from the apple in hopes that it would settle.
I had squeezed myself into the side of the tent, but quickly realised it was of no use, when he finally ducked into it. Grayson was huge. He struggled to manoeuvre into his sleeping bag in the tiny space. His apparent aversion to touching me calmed my nerves slightly.
He somehow managed to settle without bumping against me, and I was grateful to him for that. If a man never touched me again, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.
I had my back to him, curling myself into a little ball as much as the space allowed, trying to get warm. My whole body was still shaking.
Grayson sighed behind me. “You’re going to keep me awake all night with those chattering teeth,” he said flatly.
“Then maybe you should sleep outside,” I dared to say.
He scoffed. “I could be a mile away and I’d still hear you. But at least you’re keeping those things away.”
I listened. The night was quieter than the previous one. Was it the rain? I could mostly hear the pitter-patter of the raindrops on the tent.
“How did you get to me so fast?” I wondered. I was supposed to be a whole day ahead of him.
“I ran most of the way. Which wasn’t easy since I was still weak from being drugged. And seeing people I know that are fucking dead,” he added, his tone bitter. “I still have questions about that, by the way.”
The Jimson Weed. It was a strong hallucinogen. It said a lot about Grayson’s willpower and control over his own mind if he was able to fight off its effects. “But how did you know where I was?”
“I tracked you, Princess. It wasn’t very difficult either. You were stomping a clear trail through the forest.”
I hadn’t thought about covering my tracks. It surely wasn’t that obvious anyway. He must be good at tracking.
Gods, it was a doomed journey from the start. I should have just stayed at the cabin. His words still echoed through me. That he would kill me if I tried to escape again. And for a moment at Digger’s camp, I thought he would. But I was still alive, and he had saved me.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, my voice sounding small and timid. I hated how fragile I sounded.
He didn’t answer for a while, and I wondered if he even heard me.
“I don’t know,” he finally said on an exhale. He sounded weary. Tired.
I dared a look over my shoulder. Grayson was lying on his back, staring at the roof of the tent, his face tight. The dancing flames from the fire casted a warm glow onto his features. He rubbed a hand over his face before turninghis head to meet my gaze. A small smile crossed his mouth, not reaching his eyes. “What would you do if you had a hostage with a knack for getting herself into trouble?”
I watched his sombre face for a minute. I hadn’t noticed how utterly stressed he looked and...
Why did I care? He got himself into it when he kidnapped me. None of this would have happened if he had just left me alone. I blamed him. All that had happened to me was as result of him.
I turned away again. “I would’ve given her a stack of the money I stole, apologised for everything, and sent her on her way,” I grumbled miserably.
He chuckled dryly. “It wasn’t money. It was gold bars.”
Gold. It made sense how they struggled to move the bags. There must have been a fortune in them. What did they do with it?
“I would, you know,” he said softly. “I would give you all of it, if it meant…” He didn’t finish his sentence. Just sighed. “Gemma and Hunter are my responsibility. I cannot let anything happen to them.”
I turned to see him still looking at me, his expression pained. His eyes searched mine. I was taken aback by the emotion he was showing. The cold, aloof mask was gone. I nodded silently. Not sure what to say or what to think. His words seemed to be a promise of my doom, but his eyes held no such notion.
Gemma and Hunter. His friends. Grayson knew I’d seen their faces. There was no point in hiding their names from me anymore.
Great.
They might as well add me to the group chat and invite me to family dinners. I was beyond fucking screwed.
Grayson shut his eyes and pulled a hand through his hair, then started to unzip his sleeping bag all the way through, before starting on mine.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, bewildered.
