CHAPTER 5
GRAYSON
ONE MONTH AGO
“G rayson, honey, can you take this down to the firepit for me please? Your father was supposed to come back for it while I finished preparing the salad, but he’s been gone thirty-minutes,” my mom says in exasperation as she loads my arms up with plates of food.
“How many people are you feeding, mom?” I ask with a raised brow.
She turns to me, her eyes confused, “Hunter’s bringing some friends home with him, and everything has to be perfect.”
“You mean, Savannah, Olivia and Reign?”
“Don’t know their names. All your father told me was he was bringing friends home and he was blushin’ like a teenage girl,” she says, turning her back to me and continuing her earlier task.
I leave the room without a word, arms laden with enough food to feed this whole damn town and then some, before depositing it in the back of my truck and making the short drive to the firepit nearest to Hunter’s house.
There are two firepits on the ranch; this one, and the one outside my house that I built purely for my own use.
There’s something therapeutic about sitting in front of the flames alone with a beer. The only time I feel like I can think clearly and feel what I need to feel is when I’m staring into the flames as they dance with reds and oranges. The smell of burning wood tingling my nostrils and staining my clothes. The heat against my face serves as a reminder that I’m alive.
I pull up to the firepit, finding my dad and Killian already firing up the grill and I climb out of my truck, taking the food with me and laying it on the bench that’s been covered with a tablecloth.
“Your mom about done?” Dad asks approaching me wearing the apron Noah brought him for Christmas a few years back that says, ‘STOP STARING AT MY MEAT’. Conveniently, he only chooses to wear it when we have guests coming for dinner and if I had to guess, I’d say he’s doing it to embarrass my brother in front of his new friends.
“Yeah. You going to pick her up?”
“Yep,” he nods, pulling the keys to his truck out of the little pouch at the front of his apron and heading towards his truck.
“I’ll be back in five,” he calls over his shoulder before climbing in and tearing off towards to main house.
I make myself busy, sorting and uncovering the food my mom prepared while Killian runs a brush over the grill, removing any remaining char from the last time we had one of these barbecues .
“So, he’s introducing them to the parents, huh?” Killian says, flicking his head towards Hunter’s house where him, Noah and the girls stand petting Luna, Hunter’s horse.
My eyes zero in on long black hair and tan legs and my dick twitches in my pants. Annoyance follows quickly, because as much as I find her attractive, I don’t want to.
I don’t want to wonder what my name sounds like falling from her lips on a moan. I don’t want to think about how smooth her skin would feel under my fingertips. I don’t want to dream about her eyes, and the way they seem to see further into my soul than anyone has before. But since the day I pissed her off on the Ferris wheel, every time I close my eyes at night, there they are.
Blue.
I tear my eyes away, focusing back on the food. “Yeah. Looks like it,” I reply to Killian.
“You think it’s serious?” He asks.
“Don’t think he’d bring them home if it wasn’t.” I shrug. If I’m being totally honest, I think my brother is head over ass in love with the girl, and her kid, but I don’t think he’s realised it yet, so I keep that thought to myself.
My parents return a few minutes later, my brothers’ and the girls arriving on their heels. Introductions are made and I take a seat in front of the fire, beer in hand, in the hopes of avoiding another awkward encounter with Olivia.
It’s gonna be a long night.
***
She’s three sheets to the wind. Again.
“Anyway, I just wanted to apologise for the other day. I was drunk and you were rude, and I get a little feisty sometimes.” Olivia slurs with a laugh .
The other day that she is referring to was actually a month ago. The day we met at the fair. When she got shit-faced, and I somehow drew the short straw and had to drive her home. She made me pull over twice so she could throw up on the side of the road and then proceeded to half insult, half compliment me as a way to say thanks.
“No worries,” I say, taking a mouthful of my beer and hoping that’s all she came over here to say.
Her face falls. “Aren’t you going to say sorry, too?”
Clearly not.
I raise a brow at her. “And what am I saying sorry for, exactly?” I ask, confused.
I’m not confused. I know what she wants an apology for, but she’s not getting one. And the reason she’s not getting one is because of the way her eyes just changed from glassy and happy, to burning with fury.
Fuck, I love how the blue changes when she’s mad. It’s almost like the rings around the outside get darker, but the inside becomes brighter, if that makes sense.
“You called me annoying! For no reason! Don’t you think I deserve an apology for that?”
Probably.
“No,” I say, drinking my beer again and moving my eyes back to the flames, feigning boredom. In reality, my body is thrumming with excitement thinking of all the ways I can piss her off.
She laughs. Loud. But it’s not a genuine laugh. It’s more like a witch’s cackle, evil and cunning.
The unexpected sound has me frowning and I open my mouth to ask her what she finds so funny, but I’m interrupted by Hunter. “Hey, Gray. Liv. Savannah and Reign are gonna spend the night at my house, so would you be able to take Liv home?”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me .
“It’s fine. I’ll get Noah or Kill to take me,” Liv says instantly, and my frown deepens at how quickly she suggested someone else.
Not that I want to be the one stuck with driving her drunk ass home again, but it pisses me off that she was so quick to discard me, nonetheless.
“Killian already left, and Noah’s had too much to drink.” Hunter informs her and I watch her shoulder sag. I fight to hold back a smirk.
She doesn’t want to be alone with me. Good.
“Seriously?” She whines and Hunter gives her a tight-lipped smile.
“You could always crash at my place,” he offers and her lips curl in disgust.
“And hear you two going at it like rabbits? No thanks. Think I’ll take my chances with the grump over here,” she hooks her thumb towards me and Hunter chuckles before turning away, but I don’t miss his whispered ‘good luck, man’ as he does.
Asshole.
“Come on, then,” I say, pulling my keys out of my pocket and standing. I think about offering her a hand up but decide against it seeing as she just insulted me, again.
She follows me with a grumble, climbing into the passenger seat and fastening her seatbelt. I tear across the familiar grounds, deliberately taking the bumpy route and earning a few curse words from the beautiful whirlwind on my right.
We spend the first ten minutes of the journey in silence before Olivia speaks again. “What happened to you?”
Her question takes me by surprise, and I swing my eyes to hers briefly, finding her watching me, before turning back to the road.
“Nothing happened to me.” I lie .
I see her shaking her head in my periphery. “You’re lying.”
I raise a brow at her. “Am I?”
“Mm-hmm. The look in your eyes is one I know well, Grayson Calloway.” She doesn’t offer more, just crosses her arms over her chest and glances out the window. I don’t ask her to elaborate. Doing so would open a can of worms neither of us are ready for, so I stay quiet as the streetlights whizz by us in a blur of whites and yellows.
We pull up in front of her house shortly after and I park, climbing out and rounding the truck to open her door. As much as I get a kick out of pissing her off, my Mama raised a gentleman.
I walk her to her front door in silence, and as we reach the top of the porch steps, Olivia spins unexpectedly, launching herself at me. I stumble back slightly at the force of the contact, and it takes me a moment to realise that her lips are on mine.
I stand there frozen for a beat, my lips tingling where they connect with hers. My fingers twitch at my side, wanting to reach up and grab her, pull her into me and deepen the kiss. But I don’t.
I can’t.
Instead, I reach up and grip her wrists gently before prying them from around my neck and taking a step back. Olivia’s chest rises and falls with her heavy breaths, her face flushed an impossible shade of red with embarrassment and her eyes cast down.
Without another word, I turn and hightail it back to my truck like a fucking coward.
I climb into the drivers’ seat and pull away from the curb, my tyres kicking up rocks as I go.
What the fuck is wrong with me ?
There’s something broken inside of you. My subconscious answers as I tuck tail and run.