Chapter 4 #2
My head moved in small, absentminded nods before I whispered, “Wish I could say the same.” Turning, I wove through the small space, shakily calling over my shoulder as I did. “Leave, Gray.”
I was feet from my bedroom when his familiar hand curled around my arm.
Turning on him, I spun out of his grasp and went for a hit to his sternum, but he’d already anticipated the move—grabbing my fist and attempting to use it to twist me back around. But as with him, I’d anticipated the move and managed to slip out of it.
That was the thing about fighting with someone you’d sparred with for over a decade. You knew all their moves, and they knew yours. Just like I knew all his faults, and he knew mine. After so long, you’d think he wouldn’t have the ability to hurt me, but he did.
And I hated him for it.
At least that traitorous knot of emotion was nowhere to be found as I threw all my focus into trying to take Gray down.
“Talk to me,” he said once we were both on the floor minutes later, and he had me in an Achilles’ lock—the same way our spars always ended.
“Let go,” I said through clenched teeth, desperately and vainly trying to relieve the strain on the tendon. Not that he would actually, physically hurt me. Just as I knew all his faults, I knew his best qualities too, and Hudson Gray wouldn’t hesitate to protect me with his life.
He already had once before.
“Tell me what’s going on first.”
Just like that, all those complicated emotions rushed up to overwhelm me . . .
Crushing my lungs. Tearing at my frayed heart. Gripping my throat. Burning the backs of my eyes as I desperately tried to fight the building tears.
And I knew I was seconds from doing what I’d wanted to for three months: baring my soul and giving Gray all my weaknesses . . . but I couldn’t.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
I hadn’t realized my breaths had turned harder and more clipped until his worried, “Mallory?” filtered through my spiraling thoughts.
Forcing my mind to empty of everything else, I focused only on the way Gray hurried to release me and move back, giving me the perfect opportunity for me to slam my foot into his chest.
A hissed curse burst from him and ended on an appreciative laugh. “That was dirty,” he said, as if the entire thing had been a ploy.
He could think what he wanted.
I forced myself not to look back at him as I got to my feet and finally made it to my room. Quickly shutting the door behind me, I twisted the lock, then pressed my shaking hands to the surface and let my head hang low. After a few heaving breaths, I finally stepped back to stare at the door.
Not that I expected him to break it down or pick the lock . . . again, this was Gray. I knew him. But for as much as my ruined heart needed him to leave, a part of it needed him to continue trying.
Hearts were complicated, fickle things. It would’ve been better if I didn’t have one at all.
When minutes passed without so much as a sound from the other side, I suppressed a sigh and forced myself to move.
Resisting the urge to crawl into bed, I numbly walked back to where I’d been before he arrived. Lifting my phone, I tapped on the screen until the same picture from earlier was pulled up, then set it so it was leaning against the wall, perfectly in view.
A photo I had clearly taken, given the way my right arm was outstretched in the shot.
From the background, I couldn’t tell you where we were, but that didn’t matter.
Gray was kissing the corner of my mouth as I smiled in a way I wasn’t sure I ever had.
From the way I was holding up my left hand, showing the too-large band we’d somehow procured, we were already married.
I didn’t remember what happened that night in Aruba, but I had this. And I wasn’t sure if it was better that I did. I also wasn’t sure what it said about me that I stared at that photo for an unhealthy amount of time each day.
Blinking away the threat of tears, I picked up my brush with shaky fingers, then carefully swiped it through one of the colors on the palette before lifting it to the wall.
For long seconds, I just stood there, hand raised, before finally continuing the painting.
One where a knight was walking through a field, surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of beautiful wildflowers.
Behind the knight, at the edge of the field, was a fortress of thorny bushes with a single, wilted bloom hidden inside.
Gray was still in my condo.
Not that I’d checked before finally going to sleep early this morning; I’d fully expected him to have slipped out once I’d made it to my room because leaving was such a Gray move.
At least, that’s what I’d always heard in stories.
But when I’d stumbled out of my room to start my coffeemaker, I’d found him asleep at my kitchen table.
I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised that Briggs had helped Gray find a way into my condo, or that Gray was still there, hunched over, with his head on his folded arms as if I didn’t have a couch. As if he didn’t have a bed in his own apartment.
I didn’t bother keeping silent as I moved through the space, since the sounds and smells of the coffeemaker would wake him anyway.
Some childish part of me wanted to obnoxiously slam the cabinets and drawers, but I was too exhausted to.
Not from the little sleep, just from the constant war I’d been under these past months—needing the man I could hear stirring, all while my heart couldn’t stand being anywhere near him.
And with a shuddering breath, I realized I couldn’t do it anymore.
Maybe it was that I could tell Gray was at a point where he wouldn’t stop until he got answers. Or maybe it was that I’d already bared my soul in the form of a painting last night. Either way, I was tapping out.
Grabbing a second mug, I waited for the coffee to finish brewing before pouring one for each of us, aware that Gray had woken at some point and was now silently standing behind me. Once I had a healthy dose of sweet cream in mine and a splash of milk in his, I turned, sure I was ready to face him.
But the sight of him there, looking unfairly handsome with his rumpled clothes and hair all a mess—reminding me of Aruba all over again—assured me I was not, in fact, ready to face him.
My stare dropped to the floor before I remembered that I wasn’t raised by a drill instructor and four older brothers to shy away now. Drawing back my shoulders, I forced myself to meet his guarded green eyes and held out the mug with his coffee.
“This mean I can stay?” he asked, his voice a rough rasp that had wings unfurling in my stomach.
I forced myself to ignore those.
“Long enough for a conversation,” I answered.
My words had been soft and controlled, but from the defeated look on his face before he glanced away, he heard the defensiveness in them.
With a stiff nod, he asked, “Where?”
I always drank my morning coffee in the armchair in my living room. It was huge, plush, screamed comfort, and begged for me to stay there forever. Which meant, the living room wasn’t the place for this conversation.
Without verbally responding, I slipped past him and headed back to the kitchen nook.
Once we were both seated at the table, I spoke before he could. “I’ll take care of the marriage.”
Shock and hurt stole across Gray’s features before he could mask them.
“I would apologize for keeping you from your normal . . .”—I searched for an appropriate word while doing everything to maintain an unaffected facade—“activities, but we both know it hasn’t changed anything.”
“Wait, what?” The question left him on a choked-sounding cough.
“And I’ll keep things professional at Shadow, so neither of us loses our jobs,” I finished with a little nod. “Good talk.”
The second I pushed from the table, he was right there with me, standing and leaning across the table toward me, his stunned and furious expression inches from my own.
“If you think that’s a conversation, you’re mistaken,” he ground out.
“And you know me far too well to think I’d ever be okay leaving things like that. ”
“I covered—”
“My turn, Princess,” he claimed.
He studied me a few seconds longer before sitting, his bright eyes narrowed on me as he waited for me to do the same.
Reluctantly, I did.
“Let’s start with what you said about my ‘activities,’” he began, his expression shifting into one of disbelief. “Monroe . . . what?”
I tried so hard to keep my voice unaffected—bored even. But when I spoke, the devastation, betrayal, and humiliation I’d been suffocating under the past months wrapped around each word. “Don’t play innocent now, Gray. I’ve known from the day I met you that you weren’t.”
His head shifted back as if my words had wounded him, when I knew that couldn’t be further from the truth. After all, I’d been witness to the trail of women he’d left pining after him.
He stared at me in stunned disbelief before asking, “And you think I’ve been with someone since Aruba?”
I snorted at his singular use of the word. “I know—”
“No, you think,” he argued. When my eyes rolled, he leaned forward, teeth tightly clenched as he claimed, “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”
“What? A week?”
If I thought I’d hurt him before, it was nothing compared to then.
Long, excruciating seconds passed as he stared at me before shoving his chair back and striding from the table, toward the front door.
But just as he reached it, he turned and took two large steps toward me. “The last time I even tried picking someone up was when Chloe first started working at Shadow, and do you know why I went after her?”
Because she’s the exact opposite of me.
Bright, bubbly, and captivating, whereas I was basically the human version of an aggressive dog. Adorable outfits always paired with high heels, whereas I wore tactical boots and clothes I could move in. Curvy, whereas I was basically all hard lines.
Without waiting for anything from me, Gray seethed, “Because, once again, you’d just reminded me that you couldn’t stand the thought of ending up with me.”
My stare snapped his way at the shocking statement, but I didn’t say anything as he continued with a defeated laugh.
“Briggs had just given us our assignments for the Donut, and you looked like you’d been served a death sentence because you had to go undercover in a school, and you hate kids.
When I started teasing you about it, you said, ‘The thought of being around kids is almost as horrifying as the thought of ending up with you.’”
I mouthed the last words with him.
I remembered that night well.
Not just because we’d been told we were doing another Donut—a service Shadow Industries provided but didn’t advertise; one that typically required us going around the law to help people in desperate need—but because of what I’d said.
I remembered every lie I told Gray in a vain effort to get my heart in check.
“And then, the next morning, there was Chloe,” Gray continued.
“Someone new. Someone who wasn’t you. Before that?
Years.” He held up a hand when I started arguing and backed up toward the front door again.
“I date. I go on dates. I know what everyone assumes of that and of me—but they’re just dates because I like being around people, and because what’s the point of sitting at home, alone, when you’re not gonna be there, and you’ve made it known from the day I met you that you can’t stand the thought of us together? ”
A harsh breath bled from him as he opened the door and glanced outside. With one last look at me, he gave me every ounce of his pain and frustration. “But sure, Monroe . . . it’s been about a week.”
Then he was out of my condo, and I let him go.
There was no point in trying to stop him. Not when my heart was stumbling and tripping over itself at the mere implication of what he’d said, all while I tried so hard to build my walls faster and faster because I knew at least half of it was lies.
Which meant, maybe all of it had been a lie.
After all, it was like Gray said last night: we tell each other things—we tell each other everything.
At least, we used to. So, when I’d gotten the unexpected news of my mom’s passing just a handful of hours after finding out I’d unintentionally married my best friend, I’d still gone straight to him.
The shock and heartbreak of losing my mom had outweighed every ounce of my fear, anger, and vulnerability from that morning.
But Gray hadn’t answered when I’d knocked.
When I’d called, he hadn’t picked up. And when I’d finally given in and reached out to Rush to let someone know I was racing to California, I’d been informed that Gray had been locked away with Wren Pearson ever since brunch ended—and not for the first time that trip, or at all.
A nauseating fact that had been confirmed by the other members of our team in the following months.
Not that I’d asked.
Not that I’d doubted them.