2. Meg
MEG
Gray comes home at nine forty-seven on Friday night.
Not that I’ve been watching the clock or anything.
I’ve been listening to the low hum of his refrigerator, the occasional shift of the old house and the soft rain beginning against the kitchen windows.
Those sounds happen to make the clock above the stove unusually noticeable. Ruby’s been asleep for an hour.
Kane called Gray back to the compound over trouble on the north road.
What should have taken twenty minutes turned into three hours.
Mrs. Lawson had already left for her sister’s house, and Tank and Tessa are two towns over on one of Tessa’s photography jobs.
That left me. So I stayed on his couch with my shoes near the door and a book open to the same page for thirty minutes.
The rumble of Gray’s bike cuts off in the drive, and the tension through my shoulders eases before I can stop it.
Gray enters through the side door wearing his cut over a black T-shirt. Rain beads across his close-cropped beard. His gaze finds me first before he glances around the room.
“She’s asleep,” I say.
He nods and locks the door behind him. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Keeping you.”
“You didn’t. I said I’d stay.”
His eyes settle on me. He has been quieter since yesterday.
Not cold exactly. If anything, his attention feels heavier, catching on small things before he drags it away.
The man who found me barefoot in his kitchen has returned to being careful.
I close my book. “You came home early once, and it appears to have cured you of the habit.”
Gray has always been older in a way I could feel. When I was a teenager, he was already patched, already trusted with roads and jobs Tank wouldn’t ever talk about. By the time I left for college, he had a house, a wife and the settled stillness of a man who knew where he belonged.
I didn’t spend the years away waiting for him.
I dated men my age and older, built a career, paid rent in two cities and learned exactly how little patience I have for charm without substance.
Coming home didn’t just turn me back into Tank’s little sister.
It also put me back in the same town as the man who still remembers her and knows he shouldn’t look.
Gray knows exactly who I am to Tank and exactly how young I was when he first knew me.
That’s why every careful inch between us feels deliberate.
Gray removes his wet cut and hangs it over the chair.
He treats the leather with the same unconscious care Tank does, smoothing the bottom edge so it doesn’t fold.
“Kane kept me at the compound.”
“Something serious?”
“Could be.”
“And how about earlier in the week?”
“Those days were mostly all me.”
The admission lands. A warmer man might smile, but Gray simply holds my gaze. I rise from the couch. “How worrying is it that honesty looks good on you?”
“Depends what you plan to do with it.”
The words are low. My body hears the invitation before my sensible mind can interfere. I carry my mug into the kitchen, more for something to do than because it needs moving. Gray follows and checks the back door. He looks through the dark window and tests the lock with one hand.
“You do know I locked it, right?”
“I know.”
“You check anyway?”
“Yeah, habit.”
He reaches for the coffee pot, realizes it’s empty and opens a cupboard instead. I’ve been in this kitchen long enough to know he keeps whiskey above the refrigerator, tea near the sink and emergency chocolate behind a box of bran cereal Ruby refuses to eat. Gray takes down the whiskey.
“Bad night?” I ask.
“Long one.”
He pours two fingers into a glass, then lifts the bottle toward me. I shake my head.
“Driving.”
“Could stay.”
My pulse trips. His expression barely changes.
“On the couch,” he adds.
“Of course. Still a bad idea, though.”
He drinks and I lean against the counter and let the silence stretch until he looks at me again.
“What happened yesterday?”
His face closes by a degree. “Club business.”
“I know. I’m not asking for names or incriminating detail.” I turn the mug between my palms. “You left this house ready to bite through steel. You came back acting as if nothing happened but clearly something did. Now you keep checking windows that were already locked.”
“I always check windows.”
“Not three times. Not like this.”
Gray looks toward the hallway. Ruby’s door stands open enough to see her night light peeking through.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he says.
The answer irritates me, but not because I think I’m owed club information.
I know the line. I grew up waiting beyond church doors while Tank sat in a room I couldn’t enter.
What bothers me is the word need, as if Gray gets to set the amount of truth I can handle.
“Okay.”
He looks back. “That’s it?”
“Would you rather I interrogate you?”
“Not really.”
“Then I trust you to tell me if it becomes my business.” Something moves behind his eyes. Guilt, maybe, but it’s gone before I can be sure. Gray sets down the glass and studies me long enough to make the room feel smaller.
“You planning to stay in Ransom?” The question is abrupt enough to change the room.
“That’s the plan.”
“Permanent job doesn’t always mean permanent person.”
No accusation, only an expectation. I put down my mug. “My lease is twelve months. My contract is permanent. I turned down a district post in Columbia to take this one.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to come home.”
Gray rests both hands on the counter opposite me. “People say that when they need somewhere to land.”
“I didn’t need Ransom. I came back because I wanted to.”
“Tank said the city wore you out.”
“Tank says anything outside Missouri is trying to kill me.” I fold my arms. “The city didn’t wear me out. I liked my school. I was good there. Then Ransom advertised the reading-specialist job I wanted, and I realized I could build the life I wanted back here.”
“What life is that?”
“My own.”
His jaw tightens as I continue. “Not Tank’s spare room. Not a temporary stop until another district calls. My own rental, my classroom and a town where people know too much about me but are polite enough to pretend they don’t.”
“You left before, though.”
“At eighteen.”
“Still left.”
“Tank’s made plenty of choices you didn’t like. You still trust him.”
“Not the same.”
“Because he’s a man, or because you never wanted him?”
Gray goes completely still while rain presses harder against the windows. I can hear the seconds tick above the stove, but nothing about the silence feels empty.
“Both,” he says. The honesty warms me from throat to belly. I step closer, and Gray doesn’t retreat. He watches every inch disappear between us with the concentration he gives a road he doesn’t trust.
“Yesterday, you told me you no longer saw that teenager when you looked at me.”
“I remember.”
“You’ve been trying not to look since.”
“I looked.”
“When?”
“All week.”
His voice roughens. That’s somehow more appealing than any smooth line another man could offer me. I touch the edge of his black shirt near his waist. “Do you see why inventing club errands wasn’t very convincing?”
“Wasn’t meant to convince you.”
“Who, then?”
“Me.”
I slide my fingers higher, over the solid heat of his stomach, and his body reacts immediately. Gray catches my wrist, but he doesn’t remove my hand.
“Meg.”
“You keep saying my name like a warning.”
“It is.”
Those two words should cool me. Instead, his grip tightens slightly and his eyes return to my mouth. “No,” I agree. “This is you wanting your best friend’s sister and trying to stand still until it goes away.”
“Twelve years between us Meg.”
“I also threw up on Tank when I was little, and he managed to accept that I became an adult.”
Gray’s mouth shifts.
“Did you almost smile?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Meg.”
“There it is again, that warning.”
I catch the front of his T-shirt and pull, but this time Gray meets me halfway. His mouth strikes mine with enough force to push the air from my lungs. One hand closes around the back of my neck. The other grips my hip, turns us and puts my back against the wall beside the kitchen door.
The impact is careful. The kiss is not. I open for him, and his tongue drives deep.
He tastes of whiskey, rain and everything he refused yesterday.
His beard scrapes my chin as I drag him closer by his shirt.
Gray presses his body along mine. Broad chest, hard thighs, the unmistakable length of him against my stomach.
Heat gathers fast between my legs. I make a sound into his mouth.
His hand slides from my hip to my ass and lifts.
I wrap one leg around him, then the other, and Gray pins me to the wall with his body.
Whatever restraint he had tears wider as he kisses down the side of my neck, mouth hot and rough against my pulse. I grip the short hair at the back of his head. Gray groans against my skin, then catches my lower lip between his teeth when he comes back to my mouth.
“Still worried about twelve years?” I whisper.
He thrusts once against the place where my shorts have ridden high. Pleasure cuts through me. “Not right now.”
“Good.”
I roll my hips. Gray’s fingers bite into my thigh as he kisses me harder, suddenly, the hallway floor creaks.
We both stop. It’s just the creak of the house settling.
Ruby’s door remains still at the end of the dark hall, but the sound spooks him.
Gray lowers me until my feet touch the floor, then keeps one forearm braced beside my head while he fights for breath.
My body throbs with frustration. “If you tell me this was a mistake, I’ll hurt you. ”
“Wasn’t a mistake.”
“If you tell me I’m too young for you, I’ll hurt you even more.”
“Didn’t stop because of your age.” His gaze goes toward the hall.
“Ruby is asleep,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“She can’t hear us.”
“Meg.” He looks back at me. The heat in his face hasn’t faded. “If I take this any further, it won’t be a quick lapse in judgment in the kitchen. You have to understand, Meg, I don’t bring women into this house. I don’t let Ruby wake up and wonder who’s here.”
The frustration remains. So does the knowledge that he is right about this part. “And Tank?” I ask.
“Still my brother, still my best friend.”
“And I’m still his sister.”
“That’s the problem.”
I smooth my shirt down. My hands shake slightly, which annoys me. Gray notices. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth where his teeth caught it. The touch is gentler than the kiss and far more dangerous.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
“We need to talk about this, you know.”
“That sounds less appealing.”
“You still want me here?”
I look at the man who stopped when stopping cost him.
“Yeah, of course.” He walks me to my car even though it’s only thirty feet from the side door.
Rain has softened to a fine mist. The road shines beneath the porch light, with nothing in sight in either direction until an engine approaches from the river.
Gray’s hand settles at my back. A dark pickup slows in front of the house.
He moves between it and me before I register the cracked left taillight or the pale shape of a face behind the wheel. The truck continues without stopping and turns at the next road.
“You know it?” I ask.
“No.” He waits until the sound fades. His body remains angled toward the road.
“Could be lost.”
“Could be.”
Gray doesn’t believe it. I can tell. I unlock my car. “Does this have anything to do with yesterday?” He looks at me, and for one second, I think he will tell me.
“I don’t know.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s also not enough.