Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GREYSON
Savvy rolls over, and it sounds like water sloshing around in a half-empty bottle.
“How much water do you drink?”
“What?” She sounds as pissed off as I do.
She shifts in the bed again. We might as well be on a cruise ship for the ocean-sized waves moving around in her belly. I swear to God, if she filled up on water so she wouldn’t have to eat, I might strangle her myself.
Instead of bickering with me, she laughs. The sound hits me hard in the chest—it always does—and knocks the air out of my ire. All I have left is a heavy sigh.
“I didn’t drink enough today, so I chugged a few glasses before bed. I guess it hasn’t settled yet.”
The moonlight slips in through the cracks of the curtains, highlighting her face.
I don’t bother with the pillow wall anymore. I want her next to me.
Lifting the covers, I slide all the way across the bed and then take it a step further until I’m hovering over her.
With my weight resting on my forearms, I stare down at her, loving that I’ve caught her off guard.
Loving how her chest heaves. Loving how she licks her lips and arches her spine—subconsciously pressing her chest into mine—right where it belongs.
“What are you doing, Grey?”
I shake my head because I don’t fucking know.
“You said our physical relationship was over, that you had more restraint than me.”
Leave it to her to continually call me out on my bullshit, even after sleeping together nearly every night for the last two weeks.
“And then you went and begged.” My words skim across her cheek. If I just lowered my lips a little more…
She smiles, but there’s a sadness to it that guts me.
“I say a lot of really dumb shit, Monroe. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“You do,” she says, her voice low and throaty but distant, as though her mind is a million miles from here.
I lower my hips to hers, slowly enough that she can push me away if that’s what she wants. Her lashes flutter, but she doesn’t look away, and she doesn’t try to move.
“But maybe you were right,” she says. “This is already too complicated.”
My mouth inches closer to hers. “Or maybe I’m just an idiot.”
“Finally,” she whispers, and my cock jumps in relief. “Something we can agree on.”
Such a ballbuster. But I laugh, and her smile presses her cheek to mine.
A rumble like thunder works through her belly, and we both freeze.
“Tell me,” I plead.
“Tell you what?” She’s no longer soft and pliant beneath me. She’s shoring up her walls again.
I know she should come to me on her own. I know what all the research says—it’s not about me. But I’m an asshole who’s silently falling into madness because I don’t know how to help, so I ask the one thing I definitely shouldn’t.
“Why are you starving yourself?”
With my weight holding her down and lying cheek to cheek, I feel the instant she stops breathing.
Pushing her isn’t the right step. I’ve read every article I could find on disordered eating.
I fucked up. Again.
“Move.” The fear and anger in that one word lights a fire in my chest.
I don’t move.
“Greyson.” My name sounds like gravel on her lips. “Move.”
Using my forearms, I lift my weight off her, then stare down into a sea of green.
“More.” She blinks slowly and stares at my ear, my nose, my throat—anything to avoid my eyes.
“My sister did it for control when she had none.”
I’m sorry for sharing your secrets, Violet. I hope you understand why I am.
Savvy’s body locks beneath me again, nervous green eyes slowly dragging to mine, and I nod. “I pay attention, Sav. But I also recognize some of the signs.”
Moisture pools in her left eye, and she turns her head to hide it from me. My shoulder burns from the odd plank position I’m holding myself in, so I shift back to sit on my heels between her thighs and give her some space.
“I’m not starving myself,” she whispers into the silent night. The rest of the inn has been in bed for a while now.
“Then what are you doing? I know exactly what you’ve eaten for the last two weeks, and it’s not enough to sustain you, Sav.”
“It’s not what you think,” she bites back.
“Then help me understand.”
She finally turns her tortured expression my way. “You have to stop trying to fix me.”
My shoulders sag. I know that’s what she thinks. And for the most part, she’s right. I am a fixer. I have been for as long as I can remember, but with her, it’s different.
“It’s not you I want to fix, sweetheart. It’s your demons and the shadows that haunt you that I want to destroy.”
I hold perfectly still as she drags herself up to sit against the headboard.
“You’re so confusing, you know that, right?”
A smirk tugs at my lips. “Confusing is the least problematic thing you’ve ever called me.”
She playfully shoots a bare foot out to push me away, but I grab it in midair and hold it to my chest, right above my heart.
My thumb drags over her tiny tattoo of a cartoon firefly. I really should have caught on sooner that she was both Savvy and my Firefly.
“I’m serious, Patch.” She’s trying to put space between us again.
“I know.” Dropping her foot to the bed, I follow her soft skin up her shins, then plant my fists on the bed beside her, crawling as I go until I’m straddling her hips, and cup her face in my hands.
“I spent all that time avoiding you, or telling you how much I hate you, and now you don’t know how to believe anything I say. I get it.”
Her gaze flicks back and forth between my eyes. I know she’s searching for inconsistencies and partial truths, but I’m being as honest as I know how to be.
Please see that, Savvy—see me.
“It was easier to hate you than to admit I needed you.” It’s an effort to keep my tone even when my heart is pulsating with all the emotions I try to lock away.
“I pushed you away because if I didn’t, I’d have to acknowledge how lonely I was.
And I know you won’t just take my word for it because I don’t open up like this to anyone.
Braxton pulls shit from me sometimes, but I’ve never voluntarily given information, and even though I want to with you, it still feels like a razor is being ripped from my asshole with every single truth I lay at your feet. ”
“That’s…very descriptive.”
I huff out a chuckle. “What I’m saying is that I’m trying here, Sav. Will you do the same?”
She bites her bottom lip and looks away. It’s long moments with my hands cupping her face, and the longer she keeps her eyes off me, the more painfully my chest riots.
“I’m not starving myself,” she whispers. Her stomach growls loudly, contradicting her statement. “I’m not.” She meets my stare. “Not really. I have…before. I don’t know how to explain this.”
Her focus flicks to a point on my neck, but I don’t release her.
“Try.” For a man who never begs, she’s turned me into a mendicant.
Her shoulders shudder, and everything in my soul is screaming to hold her close, but I’m afraid any movement will have her shutting down again, so I remain still.
“It’s not something that ever goes away.” She meets my eye for half a second before finding something more interesting to stare at. “It’s not something I’ve ever talked about with anyone either.”
Pride and hope flare in my chest. I’ll be her first.
“You’ve never gotten help?”
She tries to shake her head, but it’s clasped between my palms.
“When I was younger, I—I took pills. Laxatives.” She winces, but I keep all judgment out of my expression. “There was also this herbal tea that made my stomach cramp so badly I didn’t want to eat.”
What the fuck was in that? I don’t ask though. I’m not sure I really want to know.
“What made you stop taking that shit?”
Something flickers in her eyes, something that haunts her, something I want to chase away.
“I didn’t want to die.”
“A—and now?” My voice cracks, but I don’t hide it from her. I’m done hiding, I just hope she can be done too.
“I’m not trying to…”
“What?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to die. I’m not taking any pills or laxatives or anything like that.”
“But you’ve lost weight you couldn’t afford to lose, Sav. I know your body better than I know my own. I see the fatigue even if no one else can. I hear the girls saying how good you look, I hear strangers praise, but I see your pain even if they don’t.”
She swallows, and I feel it against my palms.
“If you’re not trying to hurt yourself, then what the hell is going on?”
“I didn’t say that,” she snaps, and I recoil. “It’s more complicated than that, Greyson. It’s not like I can just give you an answer like, I wanted to lose fifteen pounds, so I starved myself. It doesn’t work that way—at least not for me.”
Things become clear in a flash of snapshots, and guilt seeps into my soul. “You’re punishing yourself.”
“It’s not a conscience decision I made. It just…happens sometimes, until I get a handle on it.”
“When did this start?”
“When I turned sixteen, but after Paige’s accident is when it was the worst.” There’s no hesitation. So she started punishing herself when her life felt out of control, but especially after her friend was hurt.
She was fine when I met her, wasn’t she?
Nausea swirls in my gut.
“What was the trigger this time?” I ask.
She quickly stares at a point behind me. “I’m not sure.”
It’s a lie, and we both know it.
“Don’t lie, Savvy. Not about this.” It’s nearly impossible to keep my tone light, and I hear a catch in the words. I’m sure she caught it too.
“It wasn’t just one thing, Grey. I just…I felt out of control. Too many things were broken—I couldn’t catch up.”
A memory of a teenage Violet begging me to be quiet so our dad wouldn’t find me hits me hard. She was always trying to control things too. I didn’t understand it was her way of keeping us safe until it was too late.
“Was I one of the things that made you feel out of control?”
She won’t meet my eye.
“Savannah, at the risk of sounding like a narcissistic fucking asshole, did my behavior contribute in any way to you punishing yourself?”