His Trouble Maker

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.

plan,” he says, voice quieter now,

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

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chest, and he lets

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

Like it wasn’t the last thing your father gave you. Like I didn’t

Still, he said nothing.

I couldn’t

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

to do this,” I whispered. “You don’t get to torch the future we planned and then

felt him move behind me before I heard him breathe my name.

turn. I

said it like a prayer, like it was the only word he still believed in–broke something I didn’t know

louder now, my back still to him. “Don’t you dare just stand

the heat of him

said quietly. “I’m

weight you can’t measure. Not in pounds

the air right

around slowly, heart in my throat, and looked at him–really looked–and

Because he looked destroyed.

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

the first time, it didn’t sound controlled. It

“I know,” he said.

then he

gesture–barely a

Know what?

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38)

Chapter 86

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

jaw clenched once, hard, like he was

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

his head, once, hard, like he hated himself for even admitting

becoming someone you wouldn’t recognize. Someone who

breath caught, and I didn’t know if I wanted to run or

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

then another, slower now, like he was afraid

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

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