17. Clementine
CHAPTER 17
Clementine
I t had been a very trying week. No matter what I did, Grayson refused to leave. I thought if anything might encourage him to take an evening off from guarding me, it was Liam’s weekly concert hour at the local coffee shop.
However, when I stepped out on the front porch to walk to my car, he was there too.
“Why are you coming with me to my boyfriend’s show?” I asked irritably.
“Because you’re going to be there,” Grayson answered.
“This is my boyfriend,” I tried again. “I love him very much. Won’t you be uncomfortable, since you say you want to get back with me?”
Grayson’s lips twisted up. “You do not love him, Clementine. And where you go, I go.”
“By all means,” I said. “I hope you like sentimental reflections on the life of an undiscovered musician.”
“Love them,” said Grayson, shutting the door behind us.
The coffee shop was in beside the old hardware store in our small downtown, and my vain hopes of being inconspicuous were immediately dashed.
This was about as dressed down as Grayson ever got. Polo shirt, slacks, even a hint of salt-and-pepper stubble on his face, but the coffee shop was very small and Grayson was very big. As usual, his size and how handsome he was attracted attention everywhere he went, and I felt very self-conscious as we made our way to one of the tables.
Liam raised his hand jovially from where he was tuning his guitar, and he began his set.
Really? I thought angrily.
Not one single bit of jealousy that I go everywhere with this hot as fuck FBI agent constantly on my tail?
He’s not jealous, because he really doesn’t care, I thought depressingly.
This relationship has always been casual and you know it, Clementine .
I could have happily strangled both of them, and I glared at Grayson.
It infuriated me that he was here, and looking like that. Sitting politely, big man in a tiny chair, sipping his latte, his face polite, open, expressionless.
Suddenly, even though it was the middle of Liam’s song, “More Than Just a Handsome Face,” I elbowed Grayson sharply in the side.
“Stop pretending like you’re enjoying yourself,” I hissed.
“Of course I’m enjoying myself. I’m with you, ” he countered. There was a spark of humor in his eyes that I rarely ever saw when he had been pretending to be my husband, and my pulse started to pound.
“This song is ridiculous and you know it,” I whispered angrily.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say about your boyfriend’s singing,” Grayson said mock-chidingly. His harsh mouth twisted up a little bit.
“You can’t sit there are tell me you are artistically appreciating the line
Everyone always thinks I’m just a handsome guy
Sexy
Raw
Built
Your dream man
But really I’m so much more”
“Why wouldn’t I like those lines?” Grayson countered. “Something wrong with them? Seems like a very relatable problem.”
I had a ridiculous urge to laugh, but I only huffed at him. “Bullshit, Grayson. Like everything else that comes out of your mouth.”
Shifting in my seat, I tried to edge away from him as inconspicuously as I could. I didn’t want him to see how he affected me.
I had always been weak for Grayson. No persuasion needed, even the barest of glances from his ice-cold blue eyes and my core would heat. When we were fake-married, I would have followed him anywhere.
He turned in his seat and I felt it all along my body as he leaned closer, his breath heated on my skin.
“What’s bullshit is you and him. You don’t give a shit about him.”
“Yes, I do,” I countered.
“He won’t give you a baby. I can.”
My breath hitched in my chest.
It wasn’t fair.
Five years ago I had asked Grayson Bentley about starting a family and he had brushed me off.
“Why should I believe you now?” I hissed.
Liam finished his song to tepid but polite applause. He had been playing the same songs at the coffee shop for some time and most of the patrons had heard them many times.
My boyfriend grabbed his beer and chugged it thirstily before moving into his next song.
Oh great. These lyrics weren’t going to improve if he was belting them out drunk.
“Because I don’t need to be persuaded to put a baby in you,” Grayson whispered to me.
His arm was on the back of my chair, not touching me, but I could feel the heat between us, the skin on my body tingling at his proximity.
“I crave seeing you pregnant with my baby. I can’t get the picture out of my head. You with a cute baby bump, me rubbing your feet in the evening, feeding you ice cream and pickles or whatever the fuck you want, Clementine. I want a family with you .”
My heart was hammering in my chest and Liam warbled slightly drunkenly into the microphone.
“This one goes out to my girl, Clementineeeeeee. It’s called A Ring Don’t Mean A Thing, and it’s all about how society is trying to pressure us into marriage when, like, you can have the sweetest time without it.”
Grayson was frowning. “What a jackass,” he said. “Do you want to leave? We don’t have to stay.”
“No, let’s wait until the set is over,” I said.
I didn’t want to make myself even more conspicuous by leaving with him right in the middle of the song.
When his set was mercifully over, Liam came and drunkenly squashed in beside me at the table as Grayson took our mugs back to the counter.
“Forgot to tell you, Clem. I looked up some YouTube clips of your dad’s trial. Damn, that shit was crazy! They edited your name out, but I was like, damn, I know that girl! One of those clips got like 50,000 views. Pretty sick. You didn’t tell me that agent, like, faked being your husband. Bro, they should make that shit into a movie. Shit was wild.”
“I’m glad it amused you, but I don’t want to talk about it,” I shot at him.
“Shit, Clem,” Liam said, taking another big drink of his beer. “Let it go. It was a long time ago.”
I felt a rush of raw, dark anger.
“It’s not something you forget,” I said, feeling for a moment like I was choking as the memories of that nightmarish trial suffused me.
Grayson’s cold, unemotional voice as he answered the defense lawyer’s questions.
Those words fell on me like heavy lead, burned like I was fae and they were iron.
They meant everything that had made me feel safe and loved had all been a lie.
And here Grayson was, telling me it wasn’t actually a lie. That really he had cared for me despite betraying me and publicly humiliating me.
I couldn’t risk trusting him . Another betrayal like that might shatter me beyond repair.
“I mean, your dad is kind of a crook,” Liam said, and I felt a cold prickling heat breaking over me.
Is that what everyone secretly thought?
That I was overreacting to be upset? That it wasn’t that big of a deal?
Maybe even that I had deserved to be humiliated because of who my father was?
I wanted to sink into the ground, and I felt hot tears prickling the corners of my eyes.
Humiliating
But I felt movement beside me.
“Shut the fuck up,” Grayson said. “it was a big deal, it was my fault, and she’s right to be pissed at me.”
It was like being doused in cold water. I didn’t dare look at him for fear of what my face would show.
Instead, I turned to Liam.
“We’re through.”
Liam’s jaw dropped as he ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair.
“Damn! Come on, over something like that?”
But that was it, and I didn’t even particularly feel angry. Just kind of tired and sad.
Why had I hung on so long? Just because he was safe. Boring but safe.
I already felt gone.
“Can you grab those cupcakes I ordered for my crew?” I choked out to Grayson, and he immediately nodded, the rough tips of his fingers holding my elbow for a moment.
Then I pushed out the door and headed down the street to my car.
We hadn’t gotten a very good parking spot and my SUV was all the way at the end, down a dark side street.
I heard the slap of sneakers on concrete and I turned to see Liam following me.
“Stop!” he called. “I was just joking!”
“I don’t care!” I said hotly. “You think I want you watching fucking YouTube clips of the worst time in my life and laughing? You’re a fucking asshole!”
“C’mon, Clementine,” Liam whined, putting a hand on my arm. “Don’t be a bitch. . .”
That was all he had a chance to say when, moving strangely soundlessly for such a big man, Grayson came up beside me and grabbed Liam by the arm. One hand holding the box of cupcakes carefully, with the other he shoved Liam face first into the hood of my car, yanking his arm up painfully behind him.
“You better get the fuck away from her, you little shit,” Grayson snarled at Liam.
“What. . . the. . .hell,” Liam said, although it was difficult to hear him with his face smashed against the hard metal of the car.
“God, Grayson!” I gasped, although my heart was hammering hard. “Let him go!”
“What he said was not ok,” Grayson growled, raising Liam’s face from the car only to slam it painfully down again. “He’s lucky I don’t fucking kill him for calling you a bitch.”
“Kill him?” I shrieked, darting forward, to yank on Grayson’s waist, trying to drag him off Liam. “Stop it, you’re acting like a psycho!”
Liam began to cry in noisy drunken sobs, and Grayson slammed his face down once more, then stood back and let him go.
“Just get the fuck out of here,” he said.
His torso under my hands was rock-hard and rigid, and I dropped my hands like they burned me as we watched Liam scuttle off into the darkness.
“I’d rather beat myself the fuck up,” Grayson said, putting the box of cupcakes carefully down on the car hood and running his hands through his short salt-and-pepper crew cut.
I had never seen him look so distressed.
“How he can watch that video and think it’s funny is fucking insane. I can’t even look at it without wanting to vomit. It’s sickening.”
My heart was pounding painfully hard in my chest.
I should move.
I should get in the car.
Do anything but stay where I was, right in front of him.
When Liam was a safe distance away, I heard his reedy tenor from three blocks away, “Fuccckkk youuuuuuuu!”
Grayson turned like he was going to go after him again, and I acted on pure instinct, grabbing him around the waist and tugging at him. Of course it was like trying to move a two-ton granite boulder.
He grunted as I fell into him, then suddenly twisted and pulled me feverishly into his arms.
“Please, oh god, please put your hands on me again.”
Then Grayson pressed me up against the side of my car and kissed me.
For a moment, I forgot everything except what it felt like to be kissed by Grayson. His hard hands were on my face, but they held me so delicately, like he was afraid I would shatter. His thumbs gently stroked my cheeks but his lips felt desperate, plundering mine with harsh, gasping breaths.
He had always been one of those silent as the tomb lovers, but he wasn’t now, loud groans breaking from his chest, as he moved his hands to my hair, tangling in my long waves.
“I want you so badly, Clementine,” he groaned, breaking off to kiss my throat, pulling me so close I could feel his heart thudding through his chest.
“ It’s never been right without you .”
My legs wrapped around his waist, just an automatic muscle memory, my nipples hardening under my thin T-shirt to feel the thick bands of muscle on his chest pressed against mine.
That wasn’t true for me, was it? I had had lots of sex, good sex
But why hadn’t it felt like this?
My hands were on his thick shoulders, my arms around his neck. His cock pressed against my sensitive skin.
I could feel my breath coming in quick little pants, his tongue teasing the seam of my lips as I opened eagerly for him.
Too eager
It jolted me out of my haze and I shoved at him.
“Get off me!” I gasped.
For a second he held me tightly against his thudding heart, then he let me go.
“You’re very good at playing pretend,” I said, balling my hands into fists.
The pain in his eyes slashed at me. His chest was heaving, big gasping breaths torn out of his chest.
“It was real,” he insisted, that muscle in his jaw moving again. “I was in denial, but it was real. I was in love with you, Clementine. I never stopped loving you.”
He reached for me but I stumbled backwards away from him.
“I just want to pick up some Indian food and pretend like I never met you,” I said, feeling on the edge of hysteria.
The space between my legs was throbbing uncomfortably.
“How can I show you?” Grayson asked, keeping his hand extended toward me. “How can I show you what you mean to me, Clementine?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if you ever can.”
Grayson’s blue eyes shadowed with pain, and his mouth tightened, but he nodded, quick and sharp.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep trying until you trust that I’m not going anywhere.”
My mind felt jumbled, buzzing with lust and confusion.
Would it be the stupidest thing I’d ever done to trust Grayson Bentley?
It didn’t matter that he still made my pulse race. I could not get over that he had abandoned me.
Who was to say he wouldn’t do the same thing again if things got hard?
How could I risk it?
When we arrived home with the takeaway Indian food, there was somebody standing on the lawn waiting for us.
It was my recently paroled father Harvey Adler.