Chapter 17
“And it didn’t matter that my entire world stopped when I first saw you,” I carelessly admitted, because I was apparently just confessing every messy part of my heart to Hudson Gray now.
“It didn’t matter, because then you slipped right back into that charming way of talking, like you knew exactly what you were doing with your voice and those stupid dimples and that smirk.
And I refused to let you think for even a moment that you could treat me the way they had. ”
A laugh tumbled from me, but it sounded more like a sob. “And, eventually, another woman crossed your path, and another, all while you hit on me the way you hit on them, and that told me all I needed to know about you.”
“Mallory,” Gray softly seethed, “what did you say?”
My chest hitched as I fought to control the emotions now threatening to overwhelm me.
Bracing my spine, I once again lifted my chin, ignoring the rain pelting my face and eyes.
But my stance did nothing to cover the way my voice wavered and dipped when I spoke. “I said a lot, Gray. Be more specific.”
His pale eyes were dark with wrath as he erased the last of the distance between us and demanded, “Who?”
A huff bled from me, but before I could once again ask him to be more specific, he continued.
“Who touched you?” His voice lowered with lethal intent when he added, “Give me every name. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I instinctively bristled at the implication that I’d need someone to take care of me, all while wings took flight in my stomach and my heart raced this unforgiving beat.
By the time I responded, the firm tone I’d been going for was replaced with something that sounded dangerously close to Chloe and Lainey’s voices when they swooned over their significant others. “I can take care of myself,” I reminded him. “And I took care of them.”
“I’ve always known you could. That doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to be the one fighting your battles.”
Those stupid, pointless, traitorous tears fell faster at the depth in his words.
“Tell me who.”
“What does it matter?” I asked over the emotion gripping my throat. “Most of it stopped when I retired. You’ve handled anything that’s happened since, because you’ve been there.”
“It matters because it’s you,” he said unwaveringly.
A strangled sob twisted from me as I rocked back a step. “You can’t say things like that and think it’ll just erase the last eleven years.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Nothing either of us says or does will erase what we’ve done up until now.”
“I’m aware. But keeping everything in and pretending you were only my best friend has led us to this, so I’m done pretending.
As for erasing the last eleven years?” Gray’s water-slicked brow furrowed and a strained huff tumbled past his lips.
“I would never erase those years because I got to know you in a way I’m not sure I would’ve otherwise.
I got to fight with you. I got to fall in love with you every day, even when I thought I would only ever be your friend. ”
My body sagged under the weight of my next heaving breath. As if his confession had just stolen every need to show this man that I was fine—that I was strong—without him.
“From that first meeting, you’ve been different for me—you’ve been it,” he went on, voice a rough whisper. “I should’ve treated you like you were.” His throat worked before his head moved in the faintest shake. “No excuses.”
A saddened laugh left me when I reminded him, “You just gave me every excuse—”
“No excuses,” he repeated firmly. “You’ve always been everything; I never should’ve made you think you were anything less.”
Claiming the little space I’d placed between us, Gray lifted his hands to cradle my face. The movements purposeful yet careful, as if he was making sure I knew what he was about to do and giving me time to stop him.
Because he knew now. Not details, but he knew.
And even though Gray had touched me thousands of times before, he’d never touched me like this. Soft and tender and adoring.
No one had. And it broke something in me, making the tears fall even harder as I reached up to grip his forearms.
“And so there’s no question,” he murmured as he lazily brushed his thumbs across my cheeks, “I would marry you, sober, every day, for the rest of my life.”
I pushed up on my toes and crushed my mouth to his before even registering what I was about to do. But the second my lips touched his, the tension that had swirled around us for over a decade snapped, and we fell into a kiss that felt inevitable.
Fierce and passionate.
Gentle and adoring.
Fueled by longing and pain and suppressed love set free.
We fought to get closer and for control of the kiss, both giving as much as the other demanded, until my body was buzzing. Until I was breathless and drunk off the way he held me and the way his mouth moved against mine. Strong and sure and like it’d never be enough.
Gray’s low, hushed laugh crept up his throat and got lost in the kiss when we stumbled against his truck, and then his hands were moving. Racing down my sides and curling around the backs of my thighs to lift me. A move that felt as natural as it did familiar, even though we’d never done—
I broke from the kiss on a gasp when a hazy memory pushed to the surface.
I lightheartedly shoved Gray as we hushed each other, which only sent us into another fit of laughter before he pulled me into his arms.
Back. Back into his arms. Because I’d been there.
Right there.
“We’re going to wake everyone,” I playfully admonished, my smile wide and unrestrained as I eagerly met his next kiss.
“Then they can celebrate with us,” he mumbled against my lips before slanting his mouth over mine again. Stealing the sweetest, most torturous kisses, that did the wildest things to me.
Each one made me feel like I was at once grounded and floating. Each one made my head spin with the giddy realization that I was finally kissing that man.
They were far more intoxicating than anything we drank.
I didn’t want them to ever end, and I couldn’t figure out why we’d wasted so many years not doing that.
Because I was sure kissing Hudson Gray was my new favorite thing.
Unlike my shoes and the dress I’d been forced into for the wedding.
The other wedding—not ours. Still hated those.
Laughter burst from us when we stumbled into the wall near my hotel room door—or, maybe it was just a door. They all looked the same.
“Shh,” I murmured as I leaned toward Gray’s mouth again, only for a shock of surprise to burst from me when he suddenly grasped the backs of my thighs and lifted me.
My legs curled around him instinctively, and a giggle that I wasn’t entirely sure had come from me—because I didn’t giggle—tumbled free. “You’re going to drop me,” I teased. “You’ve been drinking.”
His husky laugh filled the hall and my soul before he leaned in to nip my bottom lip. Placing a soft kiss there immediately after, he shifted us away from the wall, his pale green eyes filled with heat and challenge. “I’ll take that bet, Mrs. Gray.”
By the time I focused on Gray, his brow was furrowed as he stared at me without seeming to see me.
“We’ve done this before,” he mumbled. Blinking back to the present, his eyes searched mine, something indescribable filling them. “You’d always loved me.”
“What?” I asked, even though he wasn’t wrong—I had always loved him. But it was the way he’d said it, as if relaying something, that had forced the question from me.
His head subtly bobbed before he clarified, “That’s what you told me. When we got into the room.”
My brows lifted and my heart pounded furiously as I worried over what he might’ve remembered. “You know what happened in the room?”
“Just getting in there.” But even as Gray said the words, a new weight seemed to settle over him that had my stomach twisting. And as he continued, he slowly set my feet back on the pavement. “I remember stumbling in and pressing you against the door. That’s when you said it.”
I studied the way his jaw flexed and his stare fell, my chest tightening as I braced myself for what came next.
Because something was clearly coming next, but I wasn’t ready for this.
Just as I started straightening my spine in preparation to tell him to spit it out, he muttered, “There’s something I need to ask you.”
“Clearly.”
He gave me a pleading look and gently slid a hand around my waist. “Don’t step behind those walls again. I’m not—I just need to know something. Something only you know.”
One of my eyebrows ticked up in prompting, forcing a heaving breath from him.
Running his free hand through his wet hair, he muttered, “Could’ve started this better,” then roughed out another sigh before releasing me and taking a step back, already knowing I didn’t want to be touched when I went into self-preservation mode—something that was as instinctive as breathing.
“I don’t know what all was said between you and Chloe yesterday, but she said you got weird when she mentioned the possibility that Lainey was pregnant.
Because of your reaction, she and Thatch both asked me if you were pregnant.
Well”—his head slanted and a grimace of a smirk edged at his mouth—“it was more of an accusation.”
My expression had to have been comical.
Of everything I’d prepared myself for Gray to say, not one of those things had been Chloe thinking I was pregnant.
“I told them you weren’t,” he hurried to clarify. “But . . .” Gray looked like he was drowning as he studied me, as if worried about what he would find out next. As if worried he’d find out we had. “I don’t remember what happened—”
“I’m not,” I hurried over him, my head quickly shaking as I struggled to choke out the lie. “We didn’t do . . . that.”
Only the smallest whisper of relief swept over his features before he reminded me, “You avoided me. You barely talked to me for three months. You planned on leaving.”
“Because I thought you slept with Wren the morning after we got married,” I cried out, giving him as much of the truth as I felt I could, but the words were barely more than a wheeze.
“I felt like an idiot, because I’d more than likely revealed what you meant to me, only for you to then remind me what I didn’t mean to you.
” Grief gripped at my chest when I relented, “I did go to you.”
Gray’s head tipped ever so slightly in question.
“When I got the call about my mom,” I explained. “I went to your room because—even though I was still panicking and worried about so many things—I needed you. But you didn’t answer, and then when I finally called Rush, he told me who you were with. What you were doing.”
Frustration and understanding fell over Gray’s features before he stepped closer, his voice filled with pleading. “Except, I wasn’t,” he said unwaveringly, repeating what he’d been trying to convince me of for days. “I told you, nothing has happened with her. Ever. And before that? Years.”
When he slipped a hand around my waist that time, I went into his arms willingly and felt every weight fall away when he pressed his forehead to mine.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he whispered. “I would’ve—Mallory, you have to know I would’ve been there.”
I wanted to believe him. I did believe him.
Up until my mom passed, Gray had been there for everything since the day I’d met him.
But it was hard to just erase what I’d been sure of for so many months.
“Where were you?” I found myself asking, even as I gripped his soaked-through shirt in my hands, pulling him even closer.
“Honestly, it depends on when you came by,” he began on a sigh.
“I passed out at some point. Other than that, I—” He went still for a second before a disbelieving breath burst from him.
“I might’ve actually been headed to your room.
” He leaned back just enough to rough a hand over his jaw.
“I went to your room a couple times, trying to talk to you. Other than that, the only time I left was for dinner that night. By then, you were already gone.”
I studied him for long seconds as I digested what he was saying, knowing deep in my soul that every word was true.
And I knew, I knew, he’d been doing exactly that—heading to my room—because Hudson Gray had somehow always shown up exactly when I’d needed him over the years. And I’d needed him then.
The truth washed over me like a tidal wave, along with the way I’d shut him out over the past three months, shaking the steady ground I’d always walked on, until I broke. Heavy, unbidden tears built and spilled over as foreign, shaky words tumbled free.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything.”
If Gray was surprised by the apology, he didn’t show it. He just pulled me close and gently hushed me before passing his mouth across my forehead.
“I should’ve known,” I choked out. “I should’ve listened. I—” A broken sob wrenched from deep in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “I haven’t been fair to you.”
“We’re okay,” he murmured, correcting himself, “and we’ll be okay.
” He tipped my head back to search my eyes, his voice lowering when he continued.
“It took us a long time to get here because we both did what we thought we had to—things that will destroy us with guilt and regret if we let them. So, don’t.
“What matters is what we do from here on out.” He placed the softest, sweetest kiss on my lips before leaning back so the tip of his nose brushed mine.
“I love you. And knowing you, those words won’t come easily for you—sober, at least.” He winked as the corner of his mouth lifted, gracing me with the barest hint of his dimples.
But when he continued, his voice was hushed and earnest. “But I know you love me. That’s more than enough to move forward. ”
I leaned into his hand when he lifted it to my cheek, brushing the rain and steady stream of tears away. “Then let’s move forward.” Just as he leaned in to steal another kiss, I whispered, “This doesn’t mean I won’t try to take you down at every opportunity.”
I felt more than saw the next twitch of his lips. “I love when you get violent, Mrs. Gray.”