Eleven
ELEVEN
Greyson
If someone had told me that I could get as few hours of sleep as I did last night and still wake up feeling this refreshed and energized, I wouldn’t have believed them.
And considering I was standing here feeling refreshed and energized, it seemed I’d had the best night of sleep in a long time, perhaps ever. But that feeling wasn’t the result of the number of hours I’d actually spent sleeping.
In fact, I’d spent quite some time in bed last night replaying my evening with Cierra.
I’d been feeling myself growing fond of her to the point she had consumed nearly every waking thought. While she’d joked around with me, I hadn’t been convinced she felt the same toward me as I did toward her.
Despite how much I had wanted to see her on Thursday, I decided against it. I didn’t want to appear desperate.
But that desperation got the better of me when Cierra landed on top of me yesterday. I had felt it building throughout the lesson with her. There had been some unspoken tension between us, and I thought it was all one-sided. I believed it was the result of getting the chance to have my body so close to hers, touching her. I hadn’t realized that it had been affecting her, too.
But once she made it clear how disappointed she had been that I didn’t show up, I could no longer hold back, especially not with the weight of her body on top of mine.
And that kiss.
I replayed that kiss over and over, even more than the one I’d given her as we stood together in the Harper Security Ops parking lot. Never had I experienced a first kiss that was quite so good as hers.
So, yeah, I was slow to drift last night and quick to rise this morning.
But I was energized. I couldn’t wait to get back to Harper Security this morning for our lesson, because I wanted to see her again. I intended to take things to another level, and I planned to make that clear to her today.
Cierra deserved a real date. Not an impromptu one at a pizza shop simply because we were both hungry and happened to be out at the grocery store at the same time.
And I wanted to kiss her again. God, I desperately wanted to do that, doing it while running my fingers through that soft golden hair.
The sooner I got myself ready and left, the sooner I’d be able to make that happen. Of course, with it being a Saturday, I was fully prepared for—and even looking forward to—her drowsy state this morning. I looked forward to the day I might be able to see that while she was still in bed beside me.
I’d already gotten myself up and dressed to go. All I needed to do now was make some breakfast, and I’d be one step closer to seeing her.
It seemed a delay was in order, though. Because no sooner had I pulled open the refrigerator door, my phone rang. Cierra’s name was on the display, and it hadn’t even gotten through the full second ring when I answered. “Hello?”
“Greyson?”
Her voice had such a deep rasp first thing in the morning. “Yeah? What’s going on?”
There was a momentary pause. “I… I’m so sorry to bother you, but?—”
“You’re not bothering me,” I insisted, cutting her off. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I didn’t enjoy absolutely every moment I had with her, whether in person or over the phone. I certainly didn’t want her apologizing for reaching out to me, either. “I was just getting ready to make breakfast, but there’s not a chance I’m upset hearing from you.”
“Right. Okay. Well, then I guess I’m sorry for what I’m about to say, but I need to cancel lessons this morning.”
My stomach twisted painfully. This couldn’t be happening. Not now, not yet. She didn’t seem to have any reservations about us last night before she left lessons. In fact, things seemed great between us.
“You need to cancel?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m really sorry about this.”
I didn’t want to assume the worst, so I tried another tactic. “Are you too tired? Too sore?”
A heavy silence hung between us again, this one worse than the first. “No. Well, I am sore, but that’s not it.”
Suddenly, it dawned on me that the rasp I heard in her voice when she first said my name might not have had anything to do with sleepiness or exhaustion. Maybe it was about regret. Maybe, now that she’d had a few hours to think about it, she felt shame about what had happened between us last night.
I needed to talk to her. There was far too much I liked about her, about what had been happening between us. I couldn’t just pretend it didn’t matter, that I didn’t want to continue to explore that and see where things could go between us.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to not make things clear last night. Had I made her question everything by not coming right out with where I stood, how I felt?
“Cierra, if this is about what happened between us last night, I don’t want you to worry,” I started, a bit of a pleading edge and panic in my tone. “If you’d rather just get together this morning to talk about it, we can do that. But please don’t pull away from me before we’ve had the chance to talk.”
She didn’t immediately respond, which only led to me feeling even worse about the whole situation.
“This… this isn’t about last night,” she shared. “I can’t meet you this morning for lessons, because I… well, I can’t drive there. My tires were slashed last night.”
I blinked in surprise, the news sending shock waves through me. “What?”
“When I got home last night, I forgot to bring everything inside with me. So, I went outside this morning to get those things, and that’s when I noticed all four of my tires had been slashed,” she explained.
As awful as that was, I couldn’t help but feel a modicum of relief. This wasn’t about us, about her feeling regret.
This was about something happening to her car and physically preventing her from being able to meet me. It was some horrible, random, inconvenient thing she needed to deal with that was going to stop us from seeing one another.
I immediately dove into action. “How about I come over there this morning, and we can get your car sorted? Then, we can either do some lessons later, or just skip them altogether, if you’d rather we just talk.”
“Oh, Greyson, that’s really kind of you to offer, but I don’t want you to get all caught up in this today.”
“If you don’t think I got caught up in you long before this morning, pretty lady, think again. I don’t know if you really can’t see it, or if you’re refusing to believe what’s right in front of you, but I like you, Cierra. I like spending time with you. And I woke up this morning excited about getting to see you. I would be beyond bummed if you took that away from me.”
Following another long bout of silence, Cierra gave me what I wanted. “Okay, Greyson. If you want to come over to my place to help and talk, we can do that. But would you allow me to make you breakfast while we do that?”
My lips curved into a smile, warmth hitting me in the center of my chest. “I’d love that. Can you text me your address, and I’ll be right there?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon, Greyson.”
Cierra and I said goodbye and disconnected our call. I stood, motionless, in the kitchen for a few beats, thinking about how this wasn’t what I had planned for my day today. But slashed tires aside, it was working out arguably better than I had hoped.
On that thought, I unstuck myself, and before I even made it out of the kitchen, Cierra’s text came through.
“You’re not okay.”
The words spilled out of my mouth with just one look at Cierra.
The positive vibes and good mood flew out the window when Cierra opened her front door to me.
Because although I’d taken note of her slashed tires as I made my way to the front door, I didn’t think the look on her face was the result of needing to replace those tires. There was something much worse, and I couldn’t help but think she had things to say about what happened between us that I wouldn’t want to hear.
I’d believed her willingness to have me come over, inviting me for breakfast as she did, was a good sign. It seemed I was wrong.
She held my stare, her chest rising and falling more rapidly than I would have expected had she not been feeling emotional.
Yep.
There was something very wrong.
“I’m not.”
“This isn’t about the tires, is it?” I pressed.
Cierra’s head moved from side to side. “Not exactly.”
I didn’t want to panic, but it was impossible not to presume the worst. After all these years of watching my friends find women who made them happy, women they’d gone on to build lives with, I wanted that for myself.
And until Cierra had walked into my life, I hadn’t found anyone I thought had staying power. Granted, this was very early, and we were still getting to know one another, but there was something about her that just felt different, felt right.
“What’s going on?”
Worry was etched into every gorgeous feature. Cierra inhaled deeply, held that breath, and took a step back. After she exhaled, she said, “Maybe you should come inside first.”
How could I feel so eager and so hesitant all at the same time?
I stepped inside, and I couldn’t even take in Cierra’s space. I felt completely out of sorts, stressed about where things were going to go this morning.
Cierra urged me to follow her through the house and toward the kitchen. Once there, she said, “I need to talk to you about something, but it’s not pleasant. Would you rather have breakfast before we get into it?”
As it was, my stomach felt unsettled. The thought of eating at all right now was unwelcome.
I shook my head. “No. No, I think I’d rather you tell me whatever it is right now.”
She licked her lips, her eyes darting to the side briefly. When she focused her attention on me again, she took a deep swallow. “I really like you, Greyson.”
Damn.
Was it going to start like this? Was she going to tell me she liked me but wasn’t ready for anything serious?
Pushing past the nerves and fear I felt, I smiled at her. “I really like you, too.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “I love my job and my students.”
I had no less than a dozen thoughts about what Cierra was going to say to me, and not one of them was what she’d just shared. Even still, what she’d said wasn’t necessarily a surprise. “I think I already had a feeling that was the case.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek, and my fingers itched to wipe it away. “I would never do anything to intentionally bring harm to those kids. I adore them.”
Jesus. What was wrong? This wasn’t anywhere close to being the conversation I thought we were going to have this morning—not before I left my house, and certainly not once I arrived here.
The fear she felt was palpable, and I got the feeling she needed reassurances from me that I understood how important her career was to her. “I believe you. I haven’t ever once doubted that for a second.”
Another tear fell, and she swiped at that one. “All I ever wanted was to be able to make a difference. I think life presents us with opportunities all the time, and we can choose how to respond in those situations. It’s a big part of the reason I chose the career that I did. But there are other times in our lives when it’s so difficult to do something brave that it terrifies us to our very cores. I had that happen to me once.”
There wasn’t anything Cierra had said that I disagreed with; yet, as it stood, I still had not a single clue what was going on. “What happened to you?”
“Somebody needed my help once, and I gave it to them.”
Nodding, I said, “I think that’s excellent. You should be proud of yourself.”
She inclined her head in agreement. “I am. I saved her life.”
Okay.
So, I hadn’t been expecting that.
“What?”
“I saw a woman who needed someone to help her, and I was the only person around who could do it, so I stepped in to help her. The doctors said I’m the reason she’s alive.”
Cierra had told me she needed to share something with me that wasn’t pleasant. This sounded like great news. “What’s the bad part about this?”
Tears filled her eyes as she looked up at me and pressed her lips together. Her efforts to hold back her emotions were futile, and the tears spilled down her face. “I stepped in to help a woman who was being stabbed to death, and then I testified against the man who did it. He went to prison, but just a few days before I showed up at Harper Security Ops, looking for self-defense lessons, the woman I saved, Briana, was waiting in my driveway when I came home from work. She got word that her attacker was being released.”
Fuck.
Now it made sense.
“You were afraid he’d come after you?”
She nodded shakily. “He made it clear that he believed I’m the one responsible for ruining his life.”
Damn it.
“So, the likelihood of those slashed tires being the result of some random act of mischief is slim?”
“I can’t be certain, but yes, that seems likely.”
My mind was racing, spinning. I couldn’t sort through all that I’d heard fast enough, and I got caught up in everything I was thinking. It wasn’t until I heard a choked sob that I came back to reality and focused on Cierra.
“Please don’t tell anyone about this,” she begged. “I can’t lose my job. I won’t survive without those kids. Greyson, please, promise me you won’t?—”
“Shh,” I hushed her as I engulfed her in my arms. “You’re not going to lose your job over this.”
Her face was pressed against my chest. “But… but what about Tucker? Aren’t you afraid for him?”
My arms tightened around her, my lips resting against the hair on the top of her head. “Nobody is getting inside of that school. I will make sure of that.”
Cierra pulled her face back and tipped her chin up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. “You can do that?”
“Yes. We have the resources to make that happen. And until I know this guy isn’t targeting you, I’m absolutely going to make sure that you and every other person inside that school stays safe.”
“That seems like a lot of work.”
I shrugged and smiled at her. “It’s not going to be a problem. Plus, there’re only a few weeks left until the school year is over, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
My eyes roamed over her beautiful face. Even with tear-stained cheeks, I thought she was breathtaking. “You could have told me from the beginning, Cierra.”
“I was afraid.”
Framing her face in my hands, I used my thumbs to wipe away the wetness. “Pretty lady, you’re going to learn really fast that I’m not someone you need to be afraid of.”
“I think I already did.”
I grinned. “Good. Now, why don’t we sit down, have some breakfast, and talk? We already had a lot to discuss, and now, there’s more.”
Cierra released a heavy sigh. “Thank you, Greyson. Thank you for coming over here this morning, even when I tried to keep you away.”
Wrapping my arms around her once more, I hugged her tightly and kissed her forehead. “I think that’s another thing you’re going to have to learn about me rather quickly. Like you, I do what I can to help people when they need it. And I’ll do that for someone whether I know them or not. But I like you, Cierra. A lot. So, if you need my help, there’s not a chance you aren’t going to get it.”
For the first time since she opened her door to me this morning, Cierra smiled. It didn’t light up her whole face like I’d seen before, but it still felt good to see. “I hope you’re the real deal.”
“I promise I’m as real as it gets. Now, let’s make some breakfast.”
With that, Cierra lifted onto her toes and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. Then I loosened my arms around her, and the two of us made breakfast together.