Chapter 20
Not one of us stopped going from the moment Gray announced Tessa was missing, until Briggs finally forced everyone from the office a little after one in the morning.
Between researching this new club and looking into whether Tessa had been taken by her potential stalker, or if she’d just coincidentally skipped work for the first time, it’d been the fast-paced sort of chaos we’d always thrived in.
But even though Gray and I were, essentially, working together on the club case, we’d barely spoken.
He’d spent most of the time talking to his cousins, people around Amber, and law enforcement there. And I’d tried not to analyze and worry over his stress and guilt over a woman who’d jumped into his arms just that afternoon.
I hadn’t succeeded.
When Gray pulled up in front of my condo, I automatically unclicked the seatbelt and reached for the handle, my chest tight and stomach twisting as I went through the whiplash of the past twenty-four-ish hours.
When we left yesterday morning, I’d been worried things between Gray and I would only get worse.
Worried the arguments would continue until we broke for good.
By the time we made it back to Dallas, I’d been sure this drop off wouldn’t end up being a drop off.
I’d thought the night would play out so differently.
And now? I couldn’t even get my strained throat to form a goodbye.
But before I could push open the door, Gray turned off his truck and reached for his own door handle.
“What are you doing?” The automatic, snappish demand came out more of a strangled plea, and I wasn’t sure if I was thankful or not. The last thing I wanted was to argue with Gray when things, once again, felt so uncertain between us, but I also hated how vulnerable that question made me sound.
His gaze slowly shifted my way, searching me out in the glow of the interior truck lights for what felt like an eternity before his low, smooth voice filled the cab.
“You’re out of my sight too long? I start looking for you.
We part ways? I wonder what you’re doing.
A mission goes wrong? I need to get to you.
Do you understand? You have always consumed every part of me.
So, I’m going in there because wherever you are is where I want to be. ”
Hanging one arm over the steering wheel, he twisted so he was fully facing me.
“Not to mention, your walls have been solidly in place all night, Peach, and I have an idea why.” One of his dark brows ticked up, but he didn’t wait for me to defend myself.
“And after all we just got through, you’re insane if you think I’d drop you off and leave when you’re in your head the way you are.
” He reached back for the handle again, letting the door open just slightly as he continued.
“So, even though we should, we don’t have to talk when we go in there.
You can go to your room and shut the door, if that’s what you need.
But now that we’re done keeping things from each other, what I need is for you to know there’s nowhere else I want to be. ”
Gray slipped out of the truck before I even finished processing his words, and then I was scrambling after him and catching up to him at my door.
But as with the rest of the night, as soon as I got to his side, keys in hand, invisible fingers slowly curled around my throat until every word, every thought, was stifled by the memories of Tessa in Gray’s arms, and the look like he was dying over her disappearance.
Pressing my lips firmly together, I let us into my condo. Even though no one had ever set foot in here before Gray the other night, this felt different. The uncomfortable silence pressing around us only amplified that.
It was different because we’d laid our souls bare. It was different because of the kiss.
It was different because of Tessa.
I straightened my back as I tried forcing away the toxic thoughts, tried replacing them with everything Gray had just said in the truck, but a couple conversations and life-altering kisses weren’t going to magically erase decades of insecurities.
With a slight nod at Gray, I pushed from the spot and did exactly what he predicted I would—went to my room.
I even shut the door, closing out the disappointment I could feel creeping from him and reaching out to me.
Closing out the conversation we should have, but I didn’t know how to let us have.
Closing out all those vulnerabilities that made me feel so, so weak.
But throughout changing and getting ready for bed, every exhausted part of me begged to go back out there.
Like Gray, I’d always wanted to be wherever he was. And I knew shutting him out now would only push us back to where we’d been.
I couldn’t go back there.
So, with a steeling breath, I stepped out into the living room, and immediately regretted the decision to leave my room when I found myself in too-still darkness.
But as if sensing I was already planning my retreat, a hushed, amused voice drawled, “Cloud couch fits twelve.”
My eyes rolled, even as I started making my way there. “It does not.”
“Peach,” he mumbled doubtfully in the darkness. But the way his low voice wrapped around the ridiculous name had my cheeks heating and my pulse picking up speed.
I was suddenly, immensely grateful he couldn’t see me. Well, at least not enough to notice the traitorous reaction.
My steps faltered when I rounded the couch to see him shifting to a sitting position. What little I could make out from the small time my eyes had been given to adjust still let me see Gray wasn’t wearing a shirt.
A sight I’d been subjected to hundreds of times before. A sight I’d always had to force myself not to openly gaze at. A sight that felt so different after our confessions.
Yes. Suddenly, immensely grateful he couldn’t see me well enough.
Fighting the urge to look away or touch my heated cheeks, I continued through those last steps until I was seated beside him. Not so close we were touching, but not an awkward distance apart either.
I watched as he seemed to take in the way my legs were crossed in front of me on the plush cushion, so I could fully face him, before he twisted to better face me.
“Need to know if you regret what happened.” The words were abrupt and weighted, as if he’d been waiting to release them for so long, but they caught me off guard, because they hadn’t been what I’d expected to talk about.
I’d expected to talk about her.
When all I managed was a stunned, slow blink that he probably couldn’t even see, a hushed laugh tumbled from him, pained and worried. “Right.”
“No, I—” My head slanted as I quickly tried redirecting all my thoughts, because I’d bolstered myself for one very specific conversation before coming out here. Not this. “Are you talking about what we said? Before we left Amber?”
“That’s not all that happened before we left Amber.”
My heart gave a little hiccup before taking off in a dead sprint as that kiss raced through my thoughts and made my lips tingle at the memory. When the impulse to touch my lips wove through my veins, I curled my hands into fists instead. “Why would you think I did?”
“You didn’t talk to me all night,” he said as if it should’ve been obvious. “I just couldn’t figure out if it was that, or that paired with the Tessa situation.”
“It—no,” I finally said. “No, I don’t regret it. I just . . .” I drew in a deep breath, prepared to, once again, show my insecurities and vulnerabilities, and paused instead.
“Tessa,” Gray muttered nearly a minute later, understanding and remorse weaving through the name.
“Right,” I whispered. I straightened my spine and forced myself to hold Gray’s stare, so thankful that the dark helped conceal what he was thinking, and tried gathering my thoughts that seemed so childish now.
“The way you responded when you found out . . . it was like you lost someone significant.”
A thoughtful sound hummed in his throat before he reached out for me, sliding one of his large hands up my bare thigh and over my hip until his fingers were curling around my waist.
Leaving a trail of fire. Making my pulse erratic. All while I sat still as stone as I waited to see what his next move would be. As I waited for a response.
“If I’d known you had a tendency to lean toward jealousy . . .” he murmured, and I didn’t need to see the smile slowly stealing across his face to hear the amusement in the words.
“I don’t—”
“Peach,” he said in that same low, unconvinced tone. His hand flexed against my waist, the pressure there gentle but commanding as he pulled me closer and closer until I was on my knees and pressed against him.
Our lips a breath apart.
For once, I wasn’t sure I cared if he could hear or even feel the absolutely relentless pounding of my heart, giving away everything I was feeling in that moment.
But just when I thought he would close the distance, he said, “I’ve agonized over the thought of you with anyone else because you’ve always felt like mine.”
Every part of me lit up at the claim and was just as quickly extinguished at the reminder that there’d only been the thought of me with someone else for Gray. But Gray with other women? That’d been a reality for me.
“Hypocrite,” bled from me, but the accusation didn’t hold the same weight it normally did.
“I’m aware,” he mumbled sadly, repentantly. “And you’ll never know how sorry I am.”
With a heavy exhale that showed exactly how much Gray wished he could go back and change his actions over the past eleven years, he smoothly and effortlessly shifted us until we were stretched out on the couch.
Gray lay flat on his back, his arm securely wrapped around where I was curled up between him and the plush cushions, enveloping me in his warmth and that familiar, woodsy scent.
I didn’t fight the movements, but I was sure he could feel how stiff I was, even once we were settled.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t do this, it was that I’d never done this. Well, except for one night in Aruba, apparently. But that was obviously different.
I didn’t know how to just . . . be.
Before I could fall fully into my spiral of how do I do this? Gray said, “You would’ve known if I’d lost someone significant to me tonight.” His chest rose with his slow inhale before he softly admitted, “I would tear apart the world if I lost you.”
I stared at his profile, unblinking, as the depth of his words settled over me and wove into my very soul.
Tilting his head to meet my stare, he explained, “Tonight? Tessa? It’s because I think she was trying to tell me. I think—” He dragged his free hand over his face before letting it fall to his bare stomach. “I think whoever took her might’ve even been at the festival with us.”
My brow furrowed at this new information, but I didn’t have to ask for the details before Gray launched into his entire encounter with Tessa for me.
“I was too distracted,” he admitted once he was done.
“I was so set on getting to you, that I didn’t notice her appearance or that panic as she looked around, like she was worried someone was there.
And she said, ‘there’s something I’ before I cut her off.
” His hand lifted before falling back to his stomach.
“You think she was going to tell you about the guy who lived near her.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled regretfully.
Understanding wove through my words when I assured him, “Gray, what happened to her isn’t on you.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked with a self-deprecating laugh. “All the signs were right in front of me, and I pushed her away. I walked away. And she was taken.”
“She also jumped into your arms and flirted obnoxiously with you,” I reminded him, and silently berated myself for the whisper of irritation that automatically leaked into the words.
I was sure it wasn’t fair to still hate a woman who’d been abducted.
Controlling my tone, I added, “Why would you have thought to look for any other signs?”
The corner of Gray’s mouth ticked up in the dark. “Obnoxious, huh?”
My eyes rolled, but I didn’t bother with a verbal response.
“Really, if I’d known about this jealous side . . .”
I pushed my fist into his side at the gentle teasing, but still found myself asking, “What would it have changed?”
“Everything,” he said without hesitation. “Mallory, I’ve thought you wanted nothing to do with me. If I would’ve had the slightest idea that wasn’t true?”
He let the rest of his unspoken words linger between us. But I felt every one of them.
We wouldn’t have wasted eleven years. I wouldn’t have had my heart repeatedly broken by him.
“Ditto,” I whispered into the dark and felt his hand tighten against me.
“Anyway, whatever reaction you saw tonight wasn’t because I’d lost someone significant,” he said after long moments in weighted silence, shifting the conversation back to Tessa.
“It was because I’d been right there and refused to see what was so plainly in front of me.
It was because I could’ve prevented this, and didn’t.
It wouldn’t have mattered if it was a total stranger, it was that I’d failed her.
” When I drew in a breath to argue, Gray added, “You can’t convince me otherwise. ”
I nodded subtly before saying, “You’re still wrong.”
A disagreeing hum left him. “And what do you think about the rest of the team knowing about us?”
“You changing the conversation doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong.”
His bright, yet gentle smile flashed in the darkness. My smile. “I just don’t wanna argue with you.”
“You love arguing,” I countered dryly.
“With you,” he agreed. “But not right now. So, what do you think?”
I studied his earnest expression as I considered the question. “It makes it easier, especially if . . .” Doubt swirled through me, choking back the words we last, as I thought over Briggs’ humiliating speech when we’d first gotten to the office.
Gray gave a gentle squeeze on my back, silently prompting me to continue.
“Briggs doesn’t think we’ll last.”
“He didn’t say that,” Gray countered, voice hard and cold. “I also don’t care what he thinks when it comes to us.”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” Gray said, the word full of confidence.
“He doesn’t have all the information we do.
He hasn’t been there, on either side, for the past eleven years.
He wasn’t there for all our days and nights together.
He wasn’t there for every destructive or enlightening conversation.
” Tipping his head closer so his forehead was nearly pressed to mine, his voice softened when he added, “When it comes to us? I care about you. So, again, what do you think?”