Chapter 27
“Walk me through it again,” I demanded once Gray had slid into the driver’s seat of his truck and cranked the engine.
“Her dad’s mafia, Peach. I dunno what else to say, other than I missed a detail as significant as that,” he said as his stare shifted my way and lingered, eyes bouncing between mine as he studied me, searching for a reaction I knew he was waiting for, since we were talking about Tessa.
But I wasn’t sure I had the mental capacity to do anything more than digest what Gray was saying—try to digest what he was saying, seeing as I was making him repeat everything he’d just told me as I’d cleaned my brushes and we’d rushed out the door.
“Well, I’m sure your thoughts were on other, equally riveting things.” The snide remark was out before I even knew I was thinking it and dripped with bitterness.
Maybe I did have the mental capacity.
“I’m sorry,” I hurried to add when a mixture of hurt, frustration, and acceptance flashed across Gray’s handsome features. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction. I still shouldn’t have said it.”
His jaw worked for a moment before he gave the slightest shake of his head. “I’ll apologize every day, for the rest of our lives, but it won’t take back what I did.”
“You don’t have to,” I assured him. At the smile that tugged at his mouth, screaming his disbelief, I leaned closer to catch his stare again when he went to put the truck in gear. “Do you need me to apologize every day for what I did to you?”
Pale eyes flashed my way again, looking at me like I was absurd for even suggesting it.
Before he could respond, I amended, “Would you ask me to?”
“Of course not.”
“And I wouldn’t ask or expect you to either,” I said seriously. “I just have my own stuff I need to work through, and I will. But it’s going to take time to stop responding the way I have for so long.”
Gray’s brows were drawn close with some indescribable emotion by the time I finished, but he didn’t say anything as seconds posed as an eternity passed.
Just when I was getting ready to snap at him to say something, he breathed, “I’ve craved this side of you.”
My head shifted back at the unexpected admission, but he spoke again before I could.
“I know you, Mallory. To everyone else? You’re ice and steel.
You’re almost as guarded and emotionally closed off as Briggs.
With me? You’re light and carefree. You’re able to relax and you smile and laugh in this way that makes me want to live in those moments.
More than that? You share things with me. ”
Gray’s palm slid around my neck, his thumb tipping my head up to better search my eyes.
“But even I’d never heard you apologize before yesterday, and now you’re doing it reflexively.
You’re painting in front of me, when that was something you kept from me.
You’re offering new, surprising pieces of yourself to me, like you’re ready for me to know everything about you—baring your soul to me in ways you would’ve claimed were weak just a couple days ago.
I’ve craved this side of you,” he repeated softly, meaningfully.
But it had every insecurity rushing back.
Because what if that side of me went away tomorrow? Or the next day?
“And if it isn’t what you think?” I challenged, my voice not nearly as steady as I wanted it to be. “If it’s just . . . due to things I can’t currently control?”
If I hadn’t been studying him so intently, I might’ve missed the slight hardening of his features. But I was. I always had.
“You’re cutting open veins and bleeding in front of me, Mallory. That has nothing to do with what’s going on in your body. If you want proof? Go back to your memories of Aruba because, from what you told me, you did the same then. But even if it was only a result of that?”
His throat shifted with his next swallow, but he just cocked his head as he straightened and shifted the truck into reverse.
Seconds passed as we idled there before he said, “Fight me, Peach. Fall apart in my arms. Argue everything I say.” Gray’s eyes drifted to me again.
“Tell me things you won’t let the rest of the world know about you, or hide them from me because you’re worried you’ll appear weak.
It doesn’t matter what you do, I’ll always crave every part of you—especially the parts you keep from me—because I love you. ”
I sat in the following silence, the chaotic pounding of my heart threatening to give away everything I was feeling.
Just as I began, once again, wondering how it’d taken us so long to get here, to confess truths we never should’ve buried, Gray glanced out the windshield before looking over his shoulder to back out of the spot.
But just as he let his foot off the brake, the truck jerked to a stop again when his head whipped forward, his expression hard and eyes narrowed as he searched for something that already had me on alert.
“What?” I quietly asked as I straightened in my own seat, my movements slow and careful.
“David home?” he asked on a low murmur.
“Davis,” I corrected irritably, even as my attention swept across Davis’ empty parking space, as well as the surrounding ones. “Why?”
“Thought one of the slats on his blinds was lifted.”
“His car isn’t here,” I said as my focus went to the condo beside mine, which looked like it did every other day. “The blinds aren’t even moving.”
Gray didn’t respond or look away from the condo for nearly a minute before sighing in acknowledgment.
“Look, I know you’re waiting for him to give you a reason to fight him, but I’m telling you, he’s harmless. I put him in the middle of us when I shouldn’t have, but the only faults you’re going to find with him are that he’s extremely nice and a little awkward.”
“He doesn’t have a problem with repeatedly asking you out,” Gray mumbled as he finally reversed out of the spot and started driving away.
“I said he was awkward,” I reminded him bluntly, “not afraid of me.”
Gray just grunted in response, then released a conceding breath when I twisted in the seat so I was facing him again, waiting expectantly.
“I made it clear we were married, and he was still there this morning,” he explained, his gaze briefly flashing my way. “Standing with you. Trying to protect you from me. I’m allowed to hate the guy.”
I let my own hum respond for me and sat in the clashing emotions that rose up. One side relishing in the wings fluttering in my stomach over this jealous side of Hudson Gray. The other bristling at the thought of anyone protecting me when I’d always protected myself.
“If it helps at all, I’d just told him that I’d lied to him—that you were actually my husband,” I offered on a sigh.
The corner of my mouth twitched when Gray’s eyebrow ticked up.
“But then he pointed out that we don’t live together and asked if I was afraid of you and if I was safe . . . right before you showed up.”
At that, Gray’s chest pitched as a smile stole across his face, forcing those dimples to make an appearance. “How has he missed that you’re terrifying in your own right?” he mumbled before putting the full force of that heart-melting smile on me.
“Because he only sees me come and go,” I answered the rhetorical question once my heart was beating normally again. “He hasn’t seen me take down any infuriatingly attractive SEALs yet.”
His smile slipped into a smirk that was downright sinful. “Peach,” he began, his voice low and doing unfair things to the heart I’d just tamed, “you have yet to take me down.”
“I’m aware,” I said, pretending to be unaffected. “I was talking about Rush.”
Gray’s attention shifted to me and darted over my face, taking in the small twitches of amusement I was fighting. “We’ll be having a conversation about that,” he informed me carefully.
“We’re having a conversation now.”
“When I’m not imagining punching one of my closest friends,” he argued, then shifted his white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel to one hand so he could drag the other through his hair.
His voice dropped to a murmur when he added, “And when I’m not struggling to remember why I can’t take you back to your condo and make you forget that you ever thought Rush was infuriatingly attractive. ”
I lost the battle on keeping my expression neutral and let the corners of my mouth creep upward.
This . . . this is what I’d needed.
To get away from the thoughts and emotions overwhelming me and threatening to drown me. To just talk with Gray in a way that had nothing to do with what was going on. To forget about the shocking and horrifying reality waiting for me to acknowledge it.
At just the thought, invisible hands gripped at my lungs until it felt like I couldn’t breathe.
No, no, no.
This can’t happen. I can’t be—I won’t—no.
Straightening my spine, I begged, “So, walk me through the call again.”
Since this morning’s meeting had been canceled, Briggs had called one as soon as Gray and I had arrived at the office. Not that I’d minded, considering it’d be another thing to keep my mind occupied.
Until he’d started talking . . .
Safe to say, only Gray was happy with the news waiting for us.
“Neither of you are going into the club,” Briggs repeated in a tone that left no room to argue, which meant, I argued.
“Briggs, you can’t—”
“Monroe, even if you weren’t pregnant, I couldn’t let you go in,” he ground out unapologetically, not seeming to notice or care that I fell into a spiral of denial and trying not to panic at the way he confidently and casually said pregnant, like that hadn’t always been a death sentence for me.
Or, at least, my career.
“Tessa doesn’t just know Gray, she knows you too,” he continued. “Which means, you’ll be found out before you can get any useful information. At the very least, you’ll be gravely injured.”
“So, who’s going in?” Gray asked in a straightforward tone that didn’t match the relief flooding his features.
Briggs studied his tablet for a moment before sighing when he glanced at Gray. “No one.”
“So, let me go,” I said through the emotions trying to suffocate me, and sent a scathing glare at Gray when he joined every other member of our teams’ emphatic refusals.
“If anything, it’s most dangerous for you or Gray to go,” Briggs added.
“If the Wreckers are backing this, Rush and I can’t go because we’ve been on their list for years and just saw all of them last fall.
Evans is too well-known from his family being part of them.
Thatch would be the only one they wouldn’t immediately clock, but .
. .” His head slanted as he loosed a heavy sigh.
“I dunno. This feels wrong now. Like we’d be sending someone into a trap. ”
“Then how are we going to find out where they’re keeping the women?” Thatch asked before hurrying to add, “I agree with you—I don’t think we should send anyone in. Just wondering what the new plan is.”
“Keep searching everything about them,” Briggs mumbled on a sigh that almost sounded defeated. “See if something comes up. A warehouse, a storage unit, something . . .” His brow furrowed as he looked between Rush and Gray. “The apartment . . . Tessa’s apartment, where is it?”
“Just outside of Amber,” Gray answered as he leaned forward in his seat.
“When was the last time you went there?”
It didn’t matter that I already knew the answer, my stomach still twisted at Briggs’ question. Like, even though I’d fully believed Gray when he’d told me in Aruba, and even though a part of me believed him now, that guarded part of me was afraid of when he’d hurt me next.
And I was worried next was right then.