Chapter 6 #2
I could tell Chloe was now solidly torn between wanting to believe me and not knowing how to. But just as her lips parted, my stare snapped to the side—to where I could feel the furious energy of the woman coming up beside us.
“Excuse me,” I muttered as I stepped away from Chloe to meet Mallory head on.
“Give them to me,” Mallory demanded, her voice soft but no less irate.
“Since you asked,” I began, my hurt and shame mixing with her anger, creating a volatile storm inside me, “I was already on my way to Huntley to talk to Briggs about both your job and mine, because I’ll do anything to make sure you don’t lose this job, even if it means I do.”
Her wrath-filled eyes abruptly widened as she stopped just in front of me. The hand that had been outstretched wavered as she focused on me instead of the keys I was holding out for her to take.
“But then Wren texted that she was surprised you were at their farm without me. Next thing I knew, I was headed to you instead—not her. And then you passed me on the road.” I grabbed her hand and shoved her keys into them, my voice lowering to a near growl.
“For the record, Peach—not that you bothered to ask this—I’ve never touched Wren Pearson. ”
“For the record,” she began, twisting my words back around on me, a shield of ice and venom coating every word as she spoke, “this is the one subject I stopped believing you on long ago.”
Pain speared my chest, causing my hand to flex around hers as I searched her guarded stare.
And even though anger was building up right alongside my pain, my words came out soft and defeated when I asked, “What did I do?”
Dropping her hand, I stepped back and ran my fingers through my hair, gripping tightly at the strands as I tried wrapping my head around all these new developments.
“I can’t figure it out—I can’t figure you out,” I went on. “We both signed that paper. We both had an equal part in what happened that night. But you’ve been punishing me like it was my fault, and mine alone. You’ve been acting like I hurt you—like I ruined your life—by marrying you.”
“You did,” she cried out like it should’ve been obvious.
And, man, if that confirmation didn’t hurt worse than anything else had these past months.
But just as I took a staggering step back and reached for that ache in my chest, she added, “You couldn’t even last twenty-four hours after marrying me before sleeping with someone else,” stalling my step. Stalling my heart.
And then it took off.
Because that was pain in her voice. That was sorrow.
And even though my anger was quick to flare at her assuredness, I leaned close and kept my voice low and even when I reminded her, “I haven’t slept with anyone.”
Her face pinched with dejection and embarrassment before she quickly shook her head as if trying to rid every emotion that had sprung up. By the time the words, “Stop lying to me,” left her, that impenetrable defense was firmly in place as she glared at me.
“I’m not—”
“You’ve never cared about the obscene body count you carry around,” she said over me, making my mouth snap shut and my jaw tick from the sudden pressure I put on it. “You’ve never had any respect for how a woman feels—especially me.”
They were obvious shields she was throwing at me—lies she was grasping at. And yet, they had my chest pitching faster because I could tell from the way she was struggling to keep her chin up that there was real hurt there. Which meant, there was some truth to what she was saying.
Or, at least, they stemmed from a truth she believed.
“I’ve watched you for over a decade, Gray,” she continued. “You can’t convince me now that you’ve suddenly changed.”
My next breath fled from my lungs.
I’d been right . . . and so wrong.
Mallory’s barbed words had stemmed from a truth. One she only believed because I’d caused her to with every intentional and unintentional interaction I’d had in front of her over the years. Interactions that swarmed my mind and weighed me down with a regret that seemed endless.
Shields or not, partial truths or not, I didn’t know how to fix this.
I’d spent so long trying to erase the pain of knowing Mallory Monroe would never be mine, and in the end, I’d hurt her.
And now? I’d somehow destroyed whatever there had been of us.
My head bobbed absentmindedly as I mumbled, “Right,” the word thick and sounding like glass over gravel.
Clearing my throat, I took a step away, only to rock back and search her face—her fracturing shield that she was trying so desperately to keep in place.
“I don’t know what you actually believe,” I began, letting her know I knew exactly what all those veiled grenades she’d lobbed my way had been, “but the minimal body count has always felt like chains weighing me down. There’s nothing sudden about my changes.
I was raised to respect all women, but you? ”
A strained breath wheezed from me. “If I didn’t respect you, I wouldn’t have fought beside you for years.
I wouldn’t have tried to continue fighting beside you when my contract was up.
I wouldn’t have stopped trying to lose myself in random women years ago because, even though you’d made your thoughts on me clear, they weren’t you. ”
The tension between us pulsed, and her blue eyes flared, betraying that fortress she hid behind.
But as soon as those eyes narrowed on me, I firmly added, “And I’ve never lied to you.”
I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I just left the pieces of my soul I’d bared with her and headed to my truck.
But as I pulled out of the downtown area, I didn’t turn in the direction of Asher and Lainey’s house. I turned the opposite way, heading for the only person who had ever understood.
In minutes, I was in the charming neighborhood and standing on the wide porch.
The side of my fist slammed against the large, wooden door as I forced myself to breathe and think through everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, which led to dozens of other thoughts throughout the past three months.
Thatch swung open the door, already talking as he did. “What is wrong with—” His eyes widened in surprise and then worry when he got a good look at me. “Tell me what you need.”
“You really think I’d sleep with Wren?”
“You did,” he said, as if reminding me.
A bitter sound left me as I rubbed at my forehead before dragging the hand through my hair. Without waiting for an invitation, I pushed past him, into their house.
Moving through the space, I headed straight for the kitchen and fridge. Once I had a beer in hand and open, I turned to face where Thatch was watching me with even deeper worry than before.
“You told me,” I began with a huff that was as irritated as it was desperate.
“You’ve always said, ‘She’s never gonna give you the time of day when you chase every girl that passes you.
’” My head shook as I forced down a swallow when my throat felt so thick and dry.
“‘If you’d just treat her the same way you feel about her, things might be different for you.’”
Thatch studied me after I finished quoting him about Mallory, his brow furrowed as he waited to see if I would offer anything else. When I didn’t, he repeated, “Tell me what you need.”
“Monroe hates me.”
“She doesn’t,” he argued, forcing a challenging huff from me.
“She does,” I countered, the sadness in my voice beyond evident, but I didn’t care.
“She thinks I’m someone I’m not, and it’s—” My head slanted as I lifted the bottle to my lips, only to still as I thought back to her pain and aggravation from her condo and today.
With a defeated sigh, I lowered my hand and placed the full bottle on the counter.
“It’s my fault. Not that that’s surprising to you. ”
He moved to lean against the island and folded his tattooed arms across his chest, looking like it bothered him that he couldn’t disagree. “You still haven’t told me what happened.”
“We’ve been fighting in ways we never have before,” I told him, not that he didn’t already know that. “Real fights, not our normal bickering. And this morning . . . this morning was the first time I’ve ever walked away from her.”
“Gray,” he prodded, that familiar worry lacing his tone.
“And she just had a meeting with Briggs. Today.”
“Gray.” My name lashed from Thatch on a frustrated and wounded plea.
“I think she’s leaving Shadow,” I muttered instead. “Something she said . . . the way she said it.”
Surprise and hurt stole across Thatch’s features before he shook his head like he was refusing to believe what I’d just told him. With a heavy exhale, he passed a hand over his face and tried again. “Why are you keeping things from me? Especially about her.”
Because I don’t know how to admit I finally got her, only to fully lose her.
“Gray,” he began when I didn’t respond, sounding just as disappointed in me as he was worried. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what you did.”
“Why do you automatically think I did something?” I asked, letting him hear just how much that bothered me. “I didn’t do anything.”
He held out his arms before crossing them again. “How am I supposed to know that when you won’t talk to me?”
“You’re supposed to know that I wouldn’t hurt any woman, but especially not Monroe.”
Thatch’s eyes widened as if he was waiting for me to realize what I was saying. “You think hitting on every woman in sight doesn’t hurt her?” he gently challenged. “You think picking up countless women in front of her doesn’t hurt her?”
My stomach filled with lead and sank, making me feel sick in an instant.
I’d meant what I said in Mallory’s condo: on a near-daily basis, she’d made it known that she couldn’t stomach the thought of us together, so what had been the point of sitting around, waiting for that to change?
It hadn’t mattered what my heart wanted. It hadn’t mattered that she’d been the only woman I’d seen.
I would’ve been heartbroken and pathetic if I’d waited around for her all that time.
“You think I haven’t been hurting in all this?
” I shot back coldly. “How many times has she told me exactly what she’s thought of me?
How often does she tell me she’d rather do anything other than consider being with me?
How many ways has she described how I disgust her?
And let’s not forget the amount of times I’ve been friend-zoned or compared to her brothers. ”
“You ever think maybe she was saying it out of self-preservation?” he asked in that same gentle but firm tone. “You ever think she needed for you to mean it?”
I shot Thatch a questioning look.
“The way you talk to women, it’s always in that Gray way.
It works, but it’s . . . I don’t know . .
. not real. Like you know exactly what to say, and like you’ve used those exact same lines on hundreds of women before.
” He lifted an eyebrow when my expression fell.
“That’s why I’ve always told you, if you treated Monroe the same way you felt about her—not just flirted with her the same way you do when trying to get someone to fall at your feet—things would be different. ”
That was the problem, wasn’t it?
I’d always been this way. My mom still joked about how I’d been charming every female within a five-mile radius since I could talk.
I swallowed around the knot that refused to leave my throat, head slowly bobbing as I reached for the bottle of beer again.
But I just turned it in slow circles on the light granite as I once again questioned the past eleven years, my entire life, and everything I thought I knew about my relationship with Mallory Monroe.
Before I could begin to filter myself, the words, “We eloped,” fell from my lips. At the sudden, deafening silence, I hurried to add, “In Aruba. The night of Briggs’ wedding.” My stare darted to Thatch to find him more shocked than I’d ever seen him.
“Apparently, we were wasted, though I still don’t—whatever, that doesn’t matter.
We woke up the next morning with no memory of it.
Clothed,” I quickly added, wanting to protect Mallory from anyone thinking her drunken mistake had gone further than it had.
“Nothing else happened, but she was still furious and blamed me.”
“‘Apparently,’” Thatch echoed with a questioning lift of his chin. “Since when do you drink enough to get wasted, let alone to have no memory of what you did?”
My chest pitched with a heaving breath that showed exactly how confused I’d been by that. Still, I wryly said, “Since a wedding in Aruba.”
At the furrowing of Thatch’s brow, I added, “I know, but that’s—again, it doesn’t matter. What matters is Monroe just started talking to me again outside Shadow, and it’s to fight with me in a way that . . . Thatch, we aren’t coming back from this.”
At his mumbled curse, I held out my free hand, then let it fall, slapping against my side.
“I didn’t do anything. And before you try saying anything about Wren, I’m gonna let you know what I just told your wife when I saw her in town: nothing happened.
For whatever reason, Wren lied, but I’ve never done anything more than flirt with her. ”
Thatch continued studying me as a minute came and went before finally asking, “Did you annul it?”
I gave him a dry look. “When have I ever known how to leave her? I almost reenlisted again just to stay with her, even though I knew she’d be out a year after us. I’d die for her. I almost did.” I waved a hand like Mallory might be standing just past the kitchen. “She hasn’t annulled it.”
At that, Thatch’s eyebrows lifted before his expression shifted into something more meaningful as if he was waiting for me to understand the meaning of that too.
But I just shook my head. “You’ve seen how she’s been. Like I said, she’s refused to talk to me outside the office until this weekend, and now it’s worse than ever before, and I think she’s leaving.”
Concern once again eclipsed Thatch’s features at the break in my voice, but he didn’t say anything as silence once again settled over the kitchen.
After minutes passed as I stood there, weighed down by dread and pain and frustration, he pushed from the counter and walked to the fridge.
Grabbing another beer from it, he nodded toward the living room and said, “Then let’s figure this out before she does.”