His Trouble Maker

Chapter 86

JESSICA

43%

“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.

have a plan,” he says, voice quieter now, more human than I can stand “But plans

pretend it’s fate. You didn’t choose me, Grayson–you abandoned everything and slapped

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at his chest, and

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

“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

Still, he said nothing.

couldn’t

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

don’t get to torch the future we planned and then stand there and ask me to pretend it’s

breathe my name. Just once. Barely louder than the wind rattling

didn’t turn.

like a prayer, like it was

“Don’t you dare just

closer, and I felt the heat of him behind me before

it,” he said quietly. “I’m choosing you.”

kind of weight you can’t measure. Not in pounds or distance or time. They landed in my lungs

the air right out

looked at him–really looked–and for

Because he looked destroyed.

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

exhaled, and for the first time,

“I know,” he said.

he dropped

gesture–barely a

Know what?

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38)

Chapter 86

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

jaw clenched once, hard, like he

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

voice broke, and he shook his head, once,

thinking about you. And how I was slowly becoming someone you wouldn’t recognize. Someone who could win every fight

breath caught, and I didn’t know if

something vast and unforgiving, like this was the last thing he had left to give.

me, then another, slower now, like he was afraid if he moved too fast,

as a legacy. A throne

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