Chapter 34
Thoughts of us.
“He is my husband. We often speak for each other,” I replied, not quite smartly.
“Like we used to for each other.” Grey dropped his hands from my shoulders when I turned around. His lips curved into an admiring smile. “You’ve grown to be more beautiful than I imagined.”
“Thank you.” I blushed. He wasn’t the man to give compliments often. At least not to me. “You’re looking good, too, for your old age.”
“Watch it. I’m just four months older.” His easy grin flamed my heart.
We were standing too close, yet I didn’t want to take a step away from him. The valet was on a call from my peripheral, trying to hunt down Carter’s car. A couple had just dropped off their car and hurried inside.
He tilted his head. “I used to think you were the prettiest girl in high school.”
I grinned despite my best intentions not to. “You never told me that.”
“Best friends don’t say that kind of stuff.
” He lifted his brows. His light brown skin had reddened over the years, giving him a natural glow even in the moonlight and the pale light of the museum entrance.
I noticed the laugh lines around his eyes.
He used to be so grumpy. Something told me he was happier now.
Then again, he had accomplished what most people never even dared to dream.
“We weren’t best friends the last time we saw each other.” I reminded him, and I rubbed my stomach, which suddenly ached. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Grey glanced at my rubbing hand and frowned. “I told myself that if I saw you again, I would be honest about everything I ever thought about you and about us...well, if Carter wasn’t around.”
“Why?” I asked, though the glint in his eyes suggested it wouldn’t be a good idea. Horrible idea. Yet, I had to know.
“So, you would know I had a wicked crush on you from the moment you beat me running when we were kids. I fell in love with you the first time you fell asleep in my bed, freshman year in college. So, you would know that everything I ever did was to be close to you, hoping you would see me like I always saw you,” he said as he gazed into my eyes.
“I know I don’t have the right to say that to you, but you had to know. ”
“Why?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“Mrs. St. Patrick, your car will be here soon.” The valet tossed Carter’s key in the air before he jogged off to retrieve the car.
His interruption was enough to break the intimate bubble we’d created where no one existed except Grey and me. I stepped back. “It doesn’t matter now. We can’t stay in the past.”
“I can tell it still matters.” He stepped closer, and I retreated with my hands out, stopping him.
“Same old Grey. One thing I realized after you left was how selfish you were. Fucking with my heart when you knew I was falling for Carter. You can’t come back into my life and disrupt shit because now you’ve accomplished your goals.
” I shook my head. “Carter has been there for me. He never left me, especially when....” I stopped before confessing about the twins.
“What you’re doing right now is foul, Grey.
I’m married, and he’ll be back soon. So please go. ”
“I’m sorry. I’m fucking up this conversation because I want to say so much with so little time.” He tried to touch my wrist, and I jerked away. “I’m not trying to anger you. I meant we still matter to each other. Please. I have to see you again.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t cheat on my husband.” I folded my arms, keeping an eye on the door for Carter and for anyone who may be paying attention to Carter’s wife and Grant Jameson. We were alone after the valet left to park a car.
He held his hands up and sputtered, “I’m not trying to get with you or disrupt shit.
I just want to talk to you and catch up.
Above anything else, we were best friends for seven years.
You knew everything about me, and I knew everything about you.
I cried when I won my gold medal because you couldn’t share it with me.
Sometimes, I hate that you ever knew I was in love with you.
Then we could still be friends. We could still share our lives. ”
I closed my eyes briefly because I understood that deep chasm of loss.
We used to dream together about celebrating his gold medal, and when I opened my drugstore.
”Even if we remained friends once I married, we couldn’t be the same type of friends anyway.
I share my life with Carter. I don’t regret the love you and I shared.
At all. Not even after you broke my heart. ”
His forehead furrowed. “You broke mine first. By fucking Carter a day after you gave it up to me. Deep down, I knew you would never love me like you love him, so I left and didn’t look back. Except I never stopped thinking of you.”
I glanced around the parking area. “We can’t talk like this out here.”
Grey implored, “Then meet me somewhere...anywhere.”
Shaking my head vehemently more to deny myself than to deny his request, I replied, hating the yearning in my tone, “I can’t.”
He grabbed my forearms and looked down at me. “Because you’re scared of your feelings for me or because you love Carter that much?”
“Why are you being this way?”
“What? Aggressive? Bold? Don’t give a fuck if Carter sees me? I’m being this way because I was too much of a coward to claim you when I had a chance. I was about to do that shit again. Pretend that all I want from you is friendship. I’m not walking away from you again if you still love me.”
My head started to swim as I stared at the passion and love that screamed from the man who still held captive a piece of my heart.
“Get your fucking hands off my wife,” Carter came charging out of the building like a raging bull, and before I could intervene, Grey’s grip tightened. This time, a fight between the two men was inevitable because the stakes were so much higher.
“Darren?” Grey shook my arms slightly, his hazel eyes filled with concern, and I quickly scanned my surroundings. I’d been daydreaming or nightdreaming while I waited for our car. Did I imagine our whole conversation or some parts? “Darren...are you okay?”
“What’s the last thing you told me?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Umm...I’d just said – “
A woman’s voice called in the distance. “Grant, I’ve been looking for you.”
He slowly closed his eyes, released me, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Call me. I never changed my number in case...”
Finding my voice as he looked past me. “In case of what?”
Grey’s eyes met mine and said softly, “You.” He stepped away to greet the woman approaching us, and I turned around to see Tatianna. She'd grown more beautiful with the toned body of a seasoned athlete.
“Darren, it's been a long time. We never see you or Carter at these events. I saw Carter inside, and he told me you were waiting for the valet. Should’ve realized I would find Grant out here with you.” She gave me the briefest of hugs before kissing him and wrapping her arm around Grey’s arm possessively with her left hand.
The rock on her left finger blinged, and my heart fluttered.
“Guess I’m about to join you as a married woman soon. Did Grant tell you?”
“We didn’t really have a chance to catch up,” Grey answered quickly.
She grinned and leaned into him. “I finally got this stubborn man to settle down.”
I gritted my teeth so hard I bit my jaw before finally saying, “Congratulations. When?”
“Still trying to decide. We just moved back here last month and are trying to establish routines. Traveling so much for competitions makes it hard to return to civilian life. Eventually, we’ll have a baby or two and catch up with you and Carter,” she rambled while Grey watched me quietly, gauging my reactions.
Oh, God, did they know about the twins? “Give it time. I’m sure you’ll transition fine.” My heart pounded as I started moving away when I noticed the valet with our car. “Good seeing you both. That’s my car.”
I hurried away and settled on the driver’s side.
Carter would just get over it. I needed to feel in control and focused.
All the passenger side would do in the forty-five-minute drive home was trigger needless thoughts of Grey.
Thoughts of what could’ve been. Thoughts of if I’d held on to him instead of easily letting him go.
I thought of the life we would’ve had if I had remained by his side like Tatianna obviously did.
Maybe our daughter wouldn't have been a secret, and we could've been happy.
I would have seen my stubborn, grumpy best friend become a different man—who wanted a wife and children.
GREY AND TATIANNA WERE gone when a mellow Carter walked out of the museum and climbed into the passenger side without argument.
He’d been drinking more, and I understood the need.
I wanted to drift far, far away to a galaxy where the possibility of Grey didn’t exist. Carter once told me that I would choose Grey over him if Grey wanted the same things I did.
At the time, I’d denied it. Now that I know Grey wanted marriage and a family, the Earth had shifted. And it wasn’t from a quake.
We were quiet for the first fifteen minutes of the drive home. I assumed Carter had gone to sleep. His seat was reclined, his eyes were closed, and his arms were folded. I sighed loudly, wondering why we saw Grey again after all this time.
“You okay?” he asked quietly. “Couldn’t have been easy to see Grey. I saw him and Tatianna leave when I walked out the door. They're engaged.”
"I know. She's a good match for him."
Carter squeezed my thigh. His ability to empathize had always been his strength.
He seemed to know when I hurt, or he'd gone too far and would suddenly remind me why I loved him and wanted to marry him in the first place.
He could forsake his feelings for me, and I could forgive him any transgression when he displayed this side of himself.
I picked up his hand and kissed his palm. “It wasn’t easy for either of us. Why didn’t you tell me he would be there?”
He shifted towards me, though his eyes remained closed. “I hoped he wouldn’t show. I feared he knew or heard something about the twins, and I didn't want to worry you. From what I can tell, when I spoke to Tatianna, they know we have children, but nothing else about them.”
“Glad to know. Still, a heads up would have been nice.” I weaved between the cars on the busy highway on a Saturday night, thinking we could really put the past behind us.
Carter’s speculative gaze coated my face. “Maybe I wanted to see your natural reaction. See if you still loved him.”
My stomach leaped to my throat, and I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “And?”
“Your loyalty to me is stronger than your love for him. I know you won’t leave me for him,” he firmly said, and relief flooded me. I needed my husband to believe in me tonight, and I needed him to believe in us when doubts crept at Grey's reappearance.
“You forgot to add that my love is stronger for you than the love I have for him.” I held his hand against my heart. “You’ve been there, and he wasn’t. Plain and simple. We're in this together forever.”
“I’m sorry.” He suddenly covered his face with the back of his free hand, and his voice trembled.
Alarmed, I tried to remain calm and steady while driving. “What’s wrong, baby? What are you apologizing for?”
Carter sniffed and stared out of the passenger window. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just know that I’ll be a better husband, okay?”
“We don’t keep secrets,” I reminded him.
His eyes were red as he looked at me. “We’re keeping the biggest one right now. A secret I hope goes to the grave.”
Solemnly, we looked at each other before I returned my attention to the interstate.
The one thing above anything else is that we loved the twins.
The thought that our family, as we knew it, could be destroyed was enough for me to focus on the road ahead and leave the past where it belonged – in the rearview.