CHAPTER 81 LYRA
LYRA
Lyra was going to kill someone if the waiting didn’t kill her first. The worst part, the very worst part was that when Grayson had texted her, she’d had a chance to tell him not to do it.
He’d given her that chance, but Lyra had known damn well that if it had been her family in danger, she wouldn’t have held back.
If it had been her mom or her dad or Cooper, if Lyra had believed she had any chance of saving them—she would have taken that chance.
That was who she was, and it was who Grayson was, too.
“Call,” Lyra said fiercely, staring at her phone. “Right damn now.”
As if the universe had no choice but to obey, the phone rang—but it wasn’t Grayson. Lyra almost rejected the call, but she knew her dad. He’d only keep calling. Keith Kane might have been a man of few words, but he was also a man of conviction—and seemingly endless patience.
He was her dad, so Lyra answered. “I’m alive and well and kind of in the middle of something, Dad.”
“Can’t say I’m shocked.”
Something in Lyra gave a little just hearing her dad’s steady, no-nonsense voice. Seconds passed in comfortable silence with neither one of them saying a thing. Lyra’s mom was the type to fill silences, but Lyra and her dad had always been able to sit with them for a bit.
“You eating okay?” her dad said finally.
“Probably a few too many cupcakes.”
“No such thing.”
“How’s Mom?” Lyra asked after a moment.
“Tying herself in knots.”
“Plot hole?” Lyra guessed.
“Something like that.”
Lyra took that to mean that it wasn’t writing that was gnawing at her mother. “Is it the press? The tabloids? Are the paparazzi bothering you guys?”
“A couple of them might have stepped foot on the property, but it just so happens it’s water balloon season here at Mile’s End.”
“Cooper?”
“Having the time of his life.”
Lyra’s lips betrayed her by curving very slightly upward. She couldn’t help feeling like even that, even a moment’s distraction on her part, was the worst sort of betrayal. “Dad—”
“You’re my girl. You know that, right?”
A knot formed in Lyra’s throat. “I’ve always known that.”
“You’re our girl, Lyra, your mom’s and mine. But there’s something I need to—”
Another call was coming in. Grayson. Lyra’s heart stopped. “Dad? I have to go.” Lyra switched calls and answered in the same breath. “Grayson?”
“You aren’t my Lyra.” His voice was familiar in all the right ways.
It had been, somehow, even the very first time she’d heard it.
“That’s what I kept thinking to myself when we listened to that message of the old man’s, when I heard him refer to Alice over and over again as his Alice.
You aren’t my Lyra, because you are no one’s to possess. You simply are.”
Questions—so many of them—flashed through Lyra’s head at the exact same time.
What happened?
Do you have Avery?
Are the others okay?
Are you?
But what came out of Lyra’s mouth was: “Why does this sound like a good-bye?”
This thing between Lyra and Grayson had started with phone calls. His voice and hers and just a few words exchanged on the phone. It had only been nine days since they’d met in person.
Nine days.
“Things went south.” That voice, that voice, that voice. “Xander and I got out. Jameson didn’t. The men who were supposed to be waiting for us on Rohan’s boat—they’re gone. All of them are gone. I knocked Xander out so the duchess can get him the rest of the way to safety, but I’m—”
“You’re going back in.” Lyra didn’t even make that a question. How could she when she knew damn well who he was? When it felt like somehow she had always known?
“Alice’s ring is yours to keep,” Grayson said quietly. “Nan gave it to Nash. Nash gave it to me. And I gave it to you. Promise me you won’t try to give it back.”
“I’m not keeping the damn ring,” Lyra choked out.
“Perhaps I misspoke. You aren’t keeping it. You’re accepting it as a gift, selling it, and saving Mile’s End.”
This is good-bye. “Is that an order?” The words caught in Lyra’s throat. “Or a suggestion?”
“Let it be an order. Just this once, Lyra. Let me go back in knowing—”
“Don’t.”
“I have to, sweetheart.” He was real. He was so damn real, and Lyra knew exactly who he was. And she knew who she was, too.
“This isn’t me telling you not to go back in, asshole.
I am ordering you to stop acting like there is even the remotest chance that you won’t come out on top of this.
” Nine days, only nine days, but I know.
“I am ordering you to remember that you are the kind of irritating, frustrating, maddening, mind-blowing, sure-of-himself, capable-of-anything asshole who can move mountains with the flick of a single brow.” Lyra’s whole body vibrated with the force of those words.
“You want me to accept the gift of that ring? So I can sell it and save Mile’s End?
Then I guess you better find a way to come back, asshole. ”
She could hear Grayson’s next breath on the other end of the line. She could practically feel him, right there next to her.
“Three assholes in four sentences,” he said. “I believe that’s a personal best.”
“Your personal best or mine?” Lyra managed.
“I love you, Lyra.”
Lyra closed her eyes. She’d told him so many times that she didn’t fall, but she did.
She had. She might not have been his Lyra, and he wasn’t her Grayson, but the sum of their whole was greater than the parts.
“I would choose you,” Lyra told him, choking out the words.
“Not over my family but as a part of it.”
Saying I love you, too would have felt too much like good-bye, but Lyra knew to her bones that Grayson knew. He was Grayson Hawthorne. He always knew.
“No good-byes,” Grayson said quietly. “And, Lyra—no regrets.”
And just like that, he was gone.