After
AFTER
I don’t bother to make myself presentable. an unsatisfying nap filled with fitful half dreams, I shower, gather my hair into a bristly ponytail, and pull on electric-blue leggings and a vivid orange top. The colors war with one another, but who cares? Not me.
I eat lunch. Or breakfast. Or dinner. Or whatever the hell it is.
By the time I climb into the car again, the sun graces the horizon, and I glance in the rearview mirror as I turn the key. Puffy, bloodshot eyes stare back, but that doesn’t stop me from hitting the gas.
Near town, just as I cross into my service zone, my phone rings. I pull off onto the roadside. Not because I want to delay the inevitable. Okay, maybe. But I also prefer not to break the law. “Hello?”
“Hey, Mina? It’s Tanner. I’ve got something for you. Sort of. Sorry it took so long.”
I stare blankly through the windshield before finally remembering the favor I asked him for. That seems like years ago. “Oh, wow. I completely forgot. I’m so sorry you ended up going to all that trouble.”
“It was no trouble,” he says. “At least, it won’t be, if all you want is this email from May. Is it that one? Or the one from fourteen years ago?”
Silence stretches between us.
“Fourteen years ago?” I echo.
“Yeah. You weren’t sure of the send date, so I didn’t limit my search, and two deleted messages came up. One from a Grayson Drake in May, but also an older one, from you.”
A buzz fills the space between my ears. I never sent Grayson an email. Not fourteen years ago, at least. “ From me? Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
“What does it say?”
He hesitates. “Is that the one you want recovered?”
“Yes,” I say, without thinking.
Tanner sighs. “Well, damn. I was afraid of that. To be honest, I’m not sure I can actually retrieve it, it’s so old. And it looks like it was deleted on your end the day it was sent. But if you give me more time, I can try to get my hands on it. Just don’t expect much.”
Deleted the day it was sent. I blink, sifting through possibilities, none of which make sense. Fourteen years ago, Grayson existed as nothing more than a concept to me.
“Mina?”
I startle. “Yeah. Sorry. I’d...really appreciate it if you could get that message back. There’s no rush, and if anyone can do it, it’s you. You’re a wizard.”
He chuckles, pleased. “I’ll see what I can do. Anything for Kate’s best friend.”
I hang up and ease back onto the road, my head spinning. There must be some kind of explanation. Even if I can’t think of one right now.
At Grayson’s hotel, I park and venture through a door marked Lobby, which amounts to little more than a plain room with a check-in counter and a coffee station. A proprietor with salt-and-pepper hair watches a Bollywood musical on TV. The vibrant singing makes me feel like I’ve wandered into the wrong place. Everyone on the screen is so happy. So beautiful and perfect. Not to mention really damn good at dancing.
“Can I help you?” he says.
I turn away from the beaming smiles on television. “Yeah, I’m looking for Grayson Drake, but I’m not sure which room he’s in. Could you give me the number?”
The man does a head wobble that might mean yes, might mean no. “I’m sorry, but I cannot tell you unless you are family. Please understand.”
He looks deeply apologetic, and I do understand, given Grayson’s notoriety. But I have absolutely zero desire to stand around in the parking lot waiting or, worse, shouting his name, so I plunk down my driver’s license.
“I am family, actually. I’m his wife. Mina Drake. See? Same last name.”
The man peers down.
In the silence, I drum my nails against the Formica. Jesus. I could’ve said sister. I really could’ve said sister .
“My apologies.” He pushes a key with a wooden fob at me. “Room seventeen.”
I pause. I didn’t ask for access, but...what the hell, why not? I grab the key and head back outside.
Room seventeen awaits around the corner, at the far end of the lot. The curtains are drawn, but light leaks out from underneath, and I spot that sinful-looking red thing parked near the door.
My stomach tangles, but I knock before I can second-guess myself. When no one answers, I contemplate the key, then decide Grayson’s wife wouldn’t stand around waiting, anyway, and let myself in.
Inside, the room proves cozy and clean, if not overly luxurious. A brown, geometric-patterned rug complements a crisp white bed and two upholstered chairs. A desk lamp casts a warm net of light. Across from the bed lies a closed bathroom door; the waterfall roar of a shower drums through from the other side.
I try not to visualize too much of what’s happening in there and restrict myself to poking around out here, where it’s safe. On the bedside table, I find an antique-looking book with a fabric cover. Dante’s Divine Comedy . Not just Inferno , like most people read, but all three volumes. I wish I didn’t find that choice so compelling.
I flip to where Grayson has marked his place with a dog-eared fold. Page three hundred. When I sift through, I find a straightened crease on page two hundred and fifty, another on page two hundred, another on—
With a shudder, I snap the book shut and toss it down. Which leads me to the desk, where a laptop and a ridiculously expensive camera jockey for space. The camera looks freshly disassembled, as if Grayson has just returned from an extended photo session. His laptop lies open, sleeping. Curiosity prompts me to scribble a finger across the tracking pad.
The screen flares. An array of snapshots greets me, all taken somewhere nearby, in the woods.
I sink into the swivel chair, clicking from one to another as if lured. The photos are magnificent. Living, pulsing slices of a world both timeless and untouched. I can almost hear the burble of birdcall, the trickle of streams underfoot. One picture seizes my attention and hangs on. In it, trees arc high overhead, bathing the forest with sapphire shadows. Above the latticed canopy, the sky appears to have caught fire. Light pours through the branches in rivers, waterfalls , even, filling up the frame, reaching and reaching for the forest floor but never quite making it.
I stare until the space between my ribs hollows out. The light raining through the trees sifts in to fill that up, too.
How beautiful must a man be inside , I wonder, in order to see the world this way?
Somewhere to my left, a door opens. I hadn’t noticed the shower turn off, but now the creak of a carpet-clad floorboard warns me, followed by a sharp intake of breath.
Briefly, I consider snapping the laptop closed, but I can’t bear to disrespect the photo that way, so I leave the evidence of my snooping as-is and swivel the chair.
The sight of Grayson hits me like a bullet to the chest. Not because he’s half-naked, towel clad, and glistening—he is, but I barely see that, because I can’t get past the look on his face. Someone’s smashed hope, dread, and adoration all together, tossed them into the oven to bake, then pulled them out again still raw and unfinished.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”
I drag my teeth over my bottom lip. “I decided I should at least hear what you had to say.”
“Oh,” he says. “Good. That’s good.”
Neither of us seems to know what to do next. He tucks his towel tighter, then takes a few halting steps to where his suitcase lies by the bed. “Um...do you mind if I put on some pants?”
“Go ahead.” I tent a hand around my eyes and angle away.
Clothes rustle. The towel thumps against the rug. “Okay. I’m decent.”
I look again to find him wearing a pair of black joggers with white stripes down the sides. No shirt. I wonder if that’s part of some diabolical strategy, but if so, I’m not about to be swayed by the swathes of tattooed muscle and ropy sinew he’s putting on dis—
Okay. I’m getting distracted.
Grayson takes a seat on the edge of the bed. I spin the desk chair to face him, close enough that I could reach out if I wanted.
Which I absolutely don’t.
“I’m sorry.” He clears his throat. Crystal droplets spangle his chest and cheeks, each one competing for attention in the overly cheerful lamplight. “It’s the first and last thing I’ll say, because I want you to know that above all else. I’m so sorry, Mina. I never meant to lie to you, or hurt you. I know I’ve made some terrible choices— really terrible choices—but they were never malicious. And I never had anything but love for you. I still have nothing but love for you.”
I gulp against a prickly throat. “You’ll forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe.”
“I know.” He finger-combs his wet hair back. A few strands fall right back down to kiss the end of his nose. “So I’ll try to explain in a way that makes sense. I just don’t know where to start.”
I consider. Not at the beginning. I’ve already deduced that much myself—namely that Grayson came to Seagrove on a work retreat, just not his work retreat. It must have been Michael’s, because Brooke and Sarah and everyone else at Forsythe & Winter thought that’s who he was. He was using Michael’s name. Driving Michael’s car. Living Michael’s life.
“How about you tell me why you were impersonating your brother when we met?”
He nods, short and precise, as if in relief. “That’s easy. Because Michael was in rehab, and he didn’t want anyone at work to know. He’d only been at Forsythe & Winter for two years, but he’d already made a name for himself—big-shot architect with big-shot potential, that kind of thing. He had a lot to live up to. But his drinking had gotten bad enough that he had to do something about it, and he wasn’t the kind of person who could bear to show weakness. So instead of asking for personal time, he came to me.”
I frown. “Okay. Go on.”
He sighs. “At the time, I was just this broke, hungry kid who liked to take pictures. I had nowhere to be, and I would’ve done anything to fix things between us. So when he asked me to pose as him for a couple months, I jumped on it. All I had to do was show up at his office, be a dick like he would’ve, and pretend to know what the hell I was talking about. Which was surprisingly easy, considering I know nothing about architecture. Meanwhile, Michael did all the actual work, from his treatment center.”
I nod along, taken aback only by how much sense that makes. I recognize Michael’s reasoning all over it. And what Sarah and Brooke said all those years ago about him acting strange... “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that, though? When I got in the car with you?”
Grayson’s mouth pulls into a wistful curve. “I tried.”
I glower. “You’re supposed to be telling me the truth right now.”
“I am, I am. I promise.” He raises his hands, fingers spread. “I was going to give you the whole story right then and there. But then you asked if I was Michael, and I asked whether you’d still come to Seattle if not. At which point you tried to get out. So I did lie, at least a little bit, just that once. Because I really, really didn’t want you to get out, Mina. Believe it or not, I already knew. I already fucking knew you were going to break my heart, and I was such a cocky bastard I thought everything would turn out fine. I was looking forward to it, actually. I thought it might be fun.”
“And was it? Fun?”
His hands flop into his lap. “No. It was horrible. Zero out of five stars. Would not recommend.”
The glimmer of humor eases me into the conversation. Maybe I can do this, after all. “Okay. So you were young and hopeful. Keep going.”
“I don’t know about hopeful.” He scoffs. “More like arrogant. If I could go back and slap twenty-five-year-old Grayson, I would.”
“No, don’t. He was charming,” I say faintly, then mash my lips together. Am I... defending him?
“He was an idiot.” His tone grows clipped. “He was still young enough and stupid enough to know everything, and he thought he’d already overcome life’s biggest challenge. He figured he’d been knocked down and gotten right back up again. He had absolutely no idea how wrong he was.”
“What had knocked you down?”
He pierces me with a look. “You know.”
“Right. Lily.” When my lips finally shape her name, it’s like letting go of a weight I’ve been carrying around for a decade and a half. “You loved her a lot, didn’t you?”
“What?” He braces his hands on his thighs and frowns. “No. Michael did. I explained that to you. When we met.”
I flick my head a few times, trying to clear the haze. I remember coming across Grayson’s license in the Audi’s glove box, but... No, that was Michael’s wretched pain captured on film. Which means... “You’re telling me my husband had a fiancée? A woman he was supposed to marry before me? Who died? Because he never mentioned that, not once.”
His eyebrows crook. “Probably because he realized I’d already told you the story from the other way around. So he couldn’t, really. Not to mention he wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming guy in the world.”
I sit back like he’s just knocked the wind out of me. That...can’t be right. “But if Michael was supposed to marry Lily, does that mean she died because of you?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Like I told you in the car that day.”
“ You killed her?”
He flinches. I consider rephrasing, but this isn’t the time for pulling punches. It’s time for us to drag every ugly, cringing truth into the light.
“In a way,” he says, “you could say we both did.”
“How? How’d she die?”
“We...had an airplane.”
I nod. Somehow, I knew this would have something to do with it.
“Michael funded it, but I built it. Which worked out—he had the money, I had the time. And we both loved to fly. Cars, planes, whatever. If it went fast, we liked it. Except when I built us that plane, I put the boost pump switch in a different place than he was used to. In our first one, it’d been on the panel. In the second, I put it on the joystick. But I forgot to tell him about the change. And one day when he and Lily headed down to Oregon for the weekend, the mechanical pump failed. Which shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. They would’ve been fine if he’d just found the damn switch. But he didn’t. He looked all over and didn’t know where it was, and they crashed. He lived. She died.”
Silence blossoms between my ears. So much of that has gone right over my head. “You’re a pilot?”
“Was. I haven’t flown since Lily died.”
“And you built a plane? Just built a plane? Like that’s a normal thing that people do?”
“It’s really not that hard.”
I gape at him. “And Michael was a pilot, too.”
“Yes.”
“Who crashed. And killed somebody. Which is why he was so terrified to fly.”
He gives me a sad, spare smile, and waits for me to sort the facts into their proper columns and rows.
“I don’t know anything about airplanes,” I eventually say. “But it seems like...if Michael was the one flying, shouldn’t he have, I don’t know, figured out where everything was before takeoff? Isn’t there a checklist, or something?”
Grayson laces his fingers between his knees. “There is. At least there’s supposed to be. And you could argue that it was his fault for skipping it. But if I’d just put the stupid button in the place he was used to, none of it would’ve happened. Lily would still be alive. Michael never would’ve blamed me for the crash. He never would’ve started drinking, never would’ve started hating me so much... So many things could’ve been avoided.”
“And you and I never would’ve met.”
A sharp, blue-green glitter leaps in his eyes. “No. And trust me, I’ve already tortured myself into circles with that one. A million times.”
“Okay. But I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me who you were, once we got to Seattle.”
His look turns rueful. “That’s even easier. Because I wanted to impress you. I saw your reaction when you walked into Michael’s condo. That place wowed you.”
I think back. I would’ve been too self-righteous to admit it at the time, but... “Okay, yeah, it did. But that had nothing to do with why you became the love of my life.”
He stems a breath, and my gut clenches when I realize what I’ve said. But he moves on, leaving it blessedly alone.
“I was going to tell you.” His burnt rasp tugs at something inside me. “That last day. I was going to take you to my real apartment, the one with the taped-up Ansel Adams posters and the twin bed with the busted spring. I was going to explain everything, make love to you if you’d’ve let me, then put you on a plane to Greece.”
Pieces click together in my head. “You mean that was the big secret? The thing you were going to tell me before we slept together?”
“That was it.”
I press my lips together and drag a breath through my nose. That line Michael fed me about being an alcoholic...true, but also a lie. “Except you went to jail that day.”
“Yeah. Though Michael must’ve told you the story inside-out. It took me forever to figure out what was happening, what he’d said to you. But yeah, I got into a fight trying to defend some woman I didn’t even know, and when I got booked, all I could think about was making sure you still caught your flight. Michael was checking out of his program that day, which was where I’d gone. To pick him up. But instead, I had to use my phone call to explain everything to him, and he promised me, Mina. Even though things were still terrible between us, I’d just done him this two-month-long favor, and he said he’d walk to the condo if he had to. Find a way to get you to Sea-Tac. And at first, I had no way to know he hadn’t done that, because I didn’t get released until the next day.”
I worry at my lip with my teeth. “But when you did get out? Why didn’t you call me?”
His gaze softens. “I did. Right away. But you want to know what happened? What still happens?”
I lean forward. I can’t seem to help myself. “What?”
“I’ll show you. Do you have your phone?”
I dig around in the side pocket of my leggings and pull out my cell. Grayson plucks his off the bedside table, then tilts his screen toward me and punches buttons.
“You know my number by heart.” My frown fills my voice.
“I do. Now . Not then.” He clicks Call and puts it on speaker. It goes straight to voicemail.
I watch my screen the whole time. Nothing.
“At first, I thought it was because you were on the plane.” Grayson tosses his phone aside. “But it kept happening even after you should’ve landed, and I finally started wondering if maybe Michael had done something. If he’d gotten ahold of your phone and blocked me. Made it so I couldn’t call you.”
“I... No. He wouldn’t have. He wasn’t like that.” I shake my head, even as warmth drains from my cheeks. The morning after we first went to bed together, he called in to work. From my phone.
I don’t know why I still remember that.
Grayson watches my face. “Have you ever checked your blocked numbers? Even once?”
I glance down. My hands tremble, but I unlock my phone and navigate to the blacklist. There’s only one entry. No contact name, just a phone number with a Seattle area code.
One I didn’t put there. I’ve never blocked anyone in my life.
“That’s you?” My question sounds tiny. Shrill.
“That’s me.” He reaches over, clicks Unblock, and releases a long exhale. “I have to say, I’ve been wanting to do that for fourteen years.”
“But you still could’ve reached me.” My words come out small, stunted. “From another phone. Don’t even try to pretend like this somehow kept us apart.”
“No, you’re right. Although I wasn’t thinking clearly that first day. When I realized I couldn’t reach you, I went straight to the condo. Except Juan refused to let me up, and when Michael came down...” His jaw hardens. He glances down, curling one fist into the opposite palm. “I knew. The second I saw him, I just knew. I could smell you on him. And I completely lost my shit. That whole month you and I had spent together, all that waiting... I’ve hit my fair share of guys in my life, but never like that. Never, ever like that.”
I do a quick calculation and try to keep my chin from trembling. “Oh, god. This means...”
He tenses. “What?”
I swallow, my throat raw. “I had sex with Michael like five minutes after I met him. Five actual minutes.”
He winces and closes his eyes. I suspect if Michael were here right now, Grayson would hit him all over again—back from the dead or not. “He shouldn’t have done that to you.”
“No. Well, I did kind of throw myself at him. And beg. In my underwear. I was just so relieved you’d come home. That you were okay.”
“All he had to do was tell you his name,” he grinds out.
That draws a hiss from me. “All you had to do was tell me yours . Or pick up a freaking phone that belonged to someone else.”
He averts his gaze, as if he can’t bear to meet my eyes. “I know. But I couldn’t, not then. Because that day, I went to jail for the second time.”
My jaw slackens. “What? Why? For beating Michael up?”
“Yeah. And those charges took a lot longer to sort out, because I’d just done the same thing the day before, at least in the law’s eyes. I was in for over a month that time. And while I was there, Michael came to see me.”
My chest rises and falls, its tempo building. Until a few days ago, I’d never thought of my husband as conniving. Or manipulative. But it seems I had no idea who I was married to. “What did he say?”
Grayson recoils from the icy venom in my tone, but I don’t have the wherewithal to tell him it’s not him I’m angriest at right now. “That he’d told you everything. That you’d slept with him knowing who he was. That you hated me for not being up front with you and that you’d blocked my number. That you never wanted to see me again.”
Silence floods the room. “And what? You just... believed him?”
“Not at first. But it was the exact thing I’d been so afraid of. And it fucked me up, Mina. Screwed with my head. But that wasn’t all. Michael told me I’d taken Lily from him, and it was only right that I let him have you.”
I gape. I can’t picture my own husband speaking about me that way.
“Shit,” he says. “I know that probably sounds so messed up. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think he meant it like you were an item to barter. It was more like he thought he deserved you more than I did, because I’d been about to let you go. He said if I actually loved you, I would’ve asked you to stay, and the fact that he hadn’t let you go proved you belonged in Seattle. I think, in his mind, you were going to save him from landing back in rehab, and after how much I’d hurt him, I owed him that. The world owed him that.”
“You should’ve told him to fuck off,” I scrape out, wishing I could unhear this story. And yet I can slot it right in among the strangeness of the day I met the man who would become my husband. Because it fits.
“I did tell him to fuck off,” he says. “Multiple times. But right before he left the visiting room, he told me to check my email when I got out, because that would explain everything. So that’s exactly what I did. The officer kept telling me to clear out, and I remember standing there just staring at this message you’d sent, because it was the worst thing I’d ever read. It was my whole life ending, right there in black and white.” His eyes flick up and catch mine. I feel the impact down in my marrow. “I deleted it right then. I didn’t want it to exist. Which means I can’t prove any of this now. I can only tell you the truth and hope you’ll believe me.”
My vision blurs. A fourteen-year-old email. From me to him, just like Tanner said.
Really, Michael could have sent one so easily. I never set a password on my laptop, just left the thing lying all over the condo. “What did it say? The parts you remember, at least?”
“Oh, I remember every word.” He shivers and closes his eyes. His voice drops. “‘Dear Grayson. Forgive me for doing this by email, but I don’t want to see your face after you spent the last month impersonating your brother. Thankfully, the real Michael was kind enough to tell me the truth. He’s been kind about everything, actually. And after having a few weeks to think about it, I’ve decided to make a go at things with him. I shouldn’t have to tell you I deserve a man who’s honest from the beginning.’”
Grayson makes parentheses with his hands around that last line, and I recoil. I use parentheses in email all the time. Which Michael would have discovered if he’d gone snooping through my outbox.
“‘Our time together was nice,’” Grayson continues. “‘And I’ll always think of it fondly. But remember when I said you could go broke, gain a hundred pounds, and lose your home, and I wouldn’t stop loving you? Well, I should’ve qualified that with the one thing that would matter. Because it was you lying to me.’”
A broken sound slips out. I repeated that to Michael—the real Michael—the day I met him.
That fucking asshole.
The world tilts, the tapestry of my life coming unraveled in a hundred places at once. Even if I wanted to doubt Grayson’s truthfulness, the carven line between his brows and the wobble in his voice would convince me.
He scrapes in a breath and soldiers on. “‘If you care for me, you’ll stay away. This will be the last time we communicate, though I wish you the best. Hopefully you’ll treat the next girl better than you treated me. Take care of yourself. Mina.’”
Seconds crawl over my skin while I sit unmoving. “I didn’t write that.”
His eyes snap open. “No. But I thought you had. I mean, the part about me going broke and gaining a hundred pounds... I don’t even understand how Michael did that. But he made absolutely sure I believed that message had come from you.”
I make a pained sound. “So you left.”
“Yeah. You’d asked me to. I had no other choice. And I was so young and dumb that I thought maybe I could find another you somewhere. You’d ripped my heart out, but I tried anyway. I went all over the place. Looked for you in every backwater village and remote jungle I could find. I climbed mountains on the other side of the fucking world looking for you. And by the time I figured out that you were never, ever going to be there, three years had gone by, and you were getting married.”
A wretched whimper coalesces in my chest.
“And then I called you,” he says, hollow. “From Mongolia. I was in Ulaanbaatar, and I’d drunk way too much because of what day it was, and I couldn’t hold back anymore. I was going to beg, Mina. I had this whole speech mapped out, about how if Michael ever did anything to make you question his love, make you feel... kept , I’d be waiting. I’d swoop in and take care of you, even if I couldn’t buy you all the shit that he did. Except then he answered your phone. I asked if you knew who was calling, and he told me yes, you did, then I asked if I could talk to you, and he said no. And then you came on the line, and...”
I press a fist to my mouth. “Told you never to call again.” I nearly choke on the words. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know . Michael told me you were a telemarketer.”
“I figured that out,” he says. “Like, last week. But at the time...you sounded happy. You sounded like you didn’t need me. Much less want me. So I spent another seven years stumbling around the world trying to find some reprieve. Then, one day from out of the blue, Michael called me about Hawaii. Which I know I shouldn’t have agreed to. But I’d spent the last decade pining away for this woman who wanted nothing to do with me, and things had never felt even remotely over. I just thought that if maybe I could see you one more time, I could finally be done with it. I could prove to myself that we’d both changed, that the magic was gone. I could put everything in the fucking ground where it belonged. But the second I saw you at Sea-Tac...” He presses his palms into his eyes. “I was fucked. Royally, completely fucked. It was worse than the first time I saw you. Like ten years apart had made me love you more, not less.”
“And then we had that incredible vacation together,” I say, partly to myself. “And somehow I never noticed you weren’t actually my husband.”
“Yeah. Michael made sure you didn’t. He got in shape before you left, then made me cut my hair and wear those stupid khakis.”
“That picture of me on the beach,” I murmur. “ You took that. And sent it to yourself from Michael’s phone. While we were on the plane.”
“Yeah. I remember that right then, I was absolutely fucking dying inside. I knew how much that picture was going to hurt to look at later, but I sent it anyway. Because really, I just wanted to stay there with you forever. Except I couldn’t. You hated me, and I knew if I told you who I was, it would ruin the last moments we’d ever have together.”
“And the necklace?”
“I pretended to lose it. So I wouldn’t have to hand it over to Michael once we landed. I still had my first one, actually, but after that, I only cared about the one you’d given me. Not that I’ve been able to wear it since the whole Everest thing. I always worried that if you saw it on TV or someone took a picture of me with it on... Well. If you ever found out about Hawaii, I wanted it to be from me. I needed it to be from me.”
I nod. Not that I forgive him—none of this is that easy. But I can’t ignore the desperation saturating his every word. And god, he could have slept with me so easily.
Like Michael did.
But Grayson didn’t even kiss me on that trip. Instead, he stayed up with me all night. Stared into my eyes and told me he loved me in a thousand different ways. Called me his one in seven billion.
“ Hawaii was when I really fell apart,” he says softly. “I got a bunch of tattoos, started drinking too much, crashed my bike in Tibet. Went to Everest, got caught in an avalanche, almost died. And even then, all I could think about was the fact that I was never going to see you again. Because for some reason, saying goodbye to you the second time was so much worse than the first. Maybe because I was old enough to realize you were it for me, forever. And I’d fucked it all up, and you hated me, and you were happy with my brother. And I had to respect your wishes by staying away.”
“But I wasn’t happy,” I whisper. “Not really.”
“I realize that. Now.” Grayson’s voice hitches. “I wish I had then. I would’ve done everything differently.”
Jesus. I’m a mess. He is, too. I can see it on his face, and I’m raw inside, breaking beneath the burden of all those lonely, squandered years. But I reach out, very gently, and take his hand.
He runs a thumb over my fingers. I sense no hope in the touch. Just a despairing sort of apology. “When Michael died, I told myself it didn’t change anything. But deep down, I kept hoping that maybe enough time had passed for you to forgive me. Or at least let me back in your life, if only as a friend. So I caved and sent you that email. Except when you wrote back saying you’d only found out I was Michael’s twin three years ago...”
I squeeze his fingers. No wonder his emails sounded so apologetic.
“I always knew he was a selfish motherfucker, but even he couldn’t have done something that messed-up. Or so I thought. I had to call you to be sure. I had to hear you tell me yourself that we’d never met.” All the emotion drains from his voice, as if Michael’s betrayal has bled him dry. “I may have punched a wall. While we were talking.”
I turn over the hand I’m holding and suck in a breath. In the lamplight, faint bruises outline his knuckles. That thud. I thought he’d dropped the phone.
“I know I should’ve told you everything then,” he says. “But I had to see you, Mina. I felt like I was going to die if I didn’t. At the very least, I had to be sure you were okay. And, if I’m honest, I think part of me thought that maybe... Maybe...” He looks away, his eyes bright.
“Maybe?” I say gently.
“Nothing. You had every right to react the way you did.” He blinks furiously. “Back in my twenties, I was so convinced there was no such thing as yesterday, but now I know better. I get that we can’t start over. I can never undo what’s happened, or fix the fact that I could’ve done right by you and didn’t. But I am sorry. If I could live my life all over again, I’d do it completely differently. I just hate that I’ll never have the chance.”
I don’t speak. I can’t. The truth crowds in, pressing all the air from my body. Grayson traces the tendons of my hand, but absently, as if in his mind, I’ve already gotten up and left.
Breaking the silence requires all the breath in my lungs. “The way you felt about me never changed?”
He looks up. His eyes gleam like a knife’s edge, the agony there so sharp and bright it slices into me, too. “Never.”
“Even now? I mean, do you even recognize me anymore? The girl you fell in love with was a completely different person.”
“Yes, Mina.” He sounds hollow. Scraped raw. “I recognize you. I’d know you anywhere. I think the bigger question is, do you recognize me ?”
I look. Really look. He never used to have all these razor edges, and this version of him possesses a hardened, sinewy power that makes him look so much older than the boy from the Canadian fairy cave.
But I do recognize him. I’d know him anywhere. Maybe I recognized him from the first moment I answered the phone.
“You’re different now,” I whisper. “But yes. It’s still you.”
His mouth curls. I had no idea smiles could look so sad. “I hope you know I would’ve scaled that building and come through a nineteenth-story window for you, if I’d thought it would help. The only thing that could’ve kept me away from you was...well, you. Which I guess Michael knew.”
My throat thickens. “I guess so.”
We sit in silence. I roll the truth around in my hands until I’ve mapped the exact size and shape of Michael’s treachery. It’s breathtaking in its magnitude. My husband broke us. Stole years from us. Thieved me for himself without my knowledge. And Grayson’s right—Michael kept me. Like a pet. Or an angel on his shoulder, one he caged with pretty things and broken promises. Meanwhile, the man in front of me had always intended to let me fly.
Grayson gazes at me with naked regret. Something wakens inside me, pushing against the underside of my ribs, trying to get to him. So much has changed, and yet the same eyes that once pleaded with me inside an enchanted cave plead with me now, all these years later.
“I just need you to explain one last thing,” I say.
“Of course,” he rasps.
My eyes stray to the script inked over his heart. “If that’s not Lily’s name, whose is it?”
He breathes in hard, then lifts the hand he’s holding, pries my fingers apart, and presses my palm to his chest. Each searing black letter brands itself into my flesh. “It’s yours. Of course it’s yours.”
A tiny, broken sound flees my throat. “You mean all this time? All this falling apart you’ve done in front of the whole world? Because I thought—”
“No. It wasn’t about Lily. It was always about you. Always.” He lets go of my hand and exhales, long and shuddering and low, like a man ravaged. And of all the things that’ve come out of his mouth, that’s what undoes me.
One minute, I’m in the chair. A heartbeat later, I’m on the bed, straddling him, tipping him back onto the mattress.
He freezes, his eyes wide, like he doesn’t understand how I got to him so fast, or that I got to him at all. “Mina?”
My hands press against his chest. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I just want...”
He waits, his breath coming in ragged bursts. “What? What do you want?”
The thing beneath my ribs swells to a throb. “To stop missing you, I think. I’ve spent half my life missing you. And right now, I just want to know what it feels like not to.”
His eyes flare wider. “Are you asking me to—”
“Yes.” I pour everything inside me into that single word. Every last one of those aching, lonely nights when I ran out into the dark, searching for something I didn’t even understand I’d lost. “Please.”
He stares up, but in another second, he lets go. I catch the exact moment when his eyes darken and his lips part. The point at which he understands what I need from him and decides to give it.
His arms lock around me, pulling me down. Our lips crash together. I kiss him like I’m starving for it, like I’ll die if I don’t fill myself with the taste of him, with his smell—that incredible smell, the one I caught in the kitchen last night and should have recognized, because it’s the same deep-forest rainstorm it’s always been.
He rolls me beneath him, feasting on my mouth. We aren’t gentle this time. My fingers scrabble against the ridges of his back. He releases my lips and sucks at my neck—god, that feels like it’ll leave a mark, and I hope it does—then tears at my clothes like they’ve offended him. My orange top hits the rug, followed by my leggings. I rip at my bra and panties myself.
He rears back and stares down as I lie naked and spread beneath him. He’s breathing so hard I can’t hear myself think, but I don’t want to, anyway.
If I did, it would only be about how right he is—there’s no starting over, no fixing all the things that went wrong. The sun will rise tomorrow and everything will still be smashed to pieces. I’ll still have fourteen years’ worth of secrets and betrayals to shoulder. The past will still weigh enough to crush me.
But, for maybe the first time since a girl stood on a mountaintop and let a boy convince her they both were giants, I don’t care. What Michael stole from me, I’m taking back. I’m seizing a moment, a right now no one can rob me of, if only this once.
All my yesterdays will still be waiting for me tomorrow.
I curl my fingertips into Grayson’s waistband, hunting for the boxers underneath. Nothing meets my touch except smooth, hot skin. My eyes flare. “You’re not wearing any underwear. Why are you not wearing underwear?”
He raises an eyebrow, managing to look simultaneously provocative and uncertain. “Um...irrational optimism?”
Well, isn’t he just full of impressive choices. Ever so slowly, I draw his pants down and take him in my hands.
He makes a primal sound and curls forward, catching himself with an arm propped beside my head. His breath fans across my cheek, heated and quivering, as he kicks his pants all the way off. The whole time I touch him, he looks at me. Straight on, catching me up in that ocean of his, even while my hands coax a strangled sound of pleasure from him.
My breath picks up tempo, keeping time with my fingers. This is so different. Michael always closed his eyes. But Grayson keeps his wide open.
He finally takes my hands and pulls my wrists up over my head, pressing them into the bed. My whole body comes alive, the skin over my rib cage pulling taut as he stretches me lengthwise.
He dips his head and paints whorls of flame against my neck with his tongue. He explores the base of my throat, the ridge of my clavicle, follows the swell of my breast and pulls my nipple into his mouth.
A stab of heated lightning shoots down into my center. Grayson drives it ever deeper. His tongue works at me while his free hand trails down my side, featherlight. His thumb lands against my hip bone and draws tender circles in the spot I love best. The spot I now realize Michael never found.
A wanton moan climbs from my throat, and I throw my head back. The contrast between his forceful mouth and deft fingers spills an ache through me, one that gathers into a fluttering beat between my thighs.
“Kiss me,” I gasp.
He climbs my body and crushes his mouth to mine again. He kisses me with a brutal honesty I absorb like sustenance. I let my knees fall wider, let him pinion me to the mattress while our tongues write a story with one another and heat surges in my veins.
A dark, delicious yearning takes over, a whole bottomless pit of it, a craving I might never be rid of. I kiss him harder, stealing as much of his taste as I can, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him closer until his length nudges at my entrance. I tilt my hips up, inviting.
“Are you sure?” he says into my mouth.
I open my eyes to find him still watching me. When I tug my wrists against his iron grip, he holds me fast, the muscles of his arm standing out like ropes.
I nip at his bottom lip. “What, is fourteen years not long enough?”
His pupils change, swallowing up the lamplight. Devouring it. “It’s too long,” he says. The roughest three words ever spoken. “Way too fucking long.”
“Then yes. I’m sure.”
“Oh, thank fuck,” he breathes.
With excruciating slowness, he pushes into me, in and in and in, and I whimper and arch my back, all the while holding his eyes as if he’s commanding me to. It feels like he is.
He seats himself deep and stays there. A shiver tears through him and continues straight on into me.
Fuck. I could die like this. In rapture. I would welcome it.
“Am I hurting you?” he says.
I scrape together enough air to answer, even though I’m melting inside. “Just for a second. And only in the best of ways. Don’t stop.”
He makes a sound of anguished pleasure and pulls back, then pushes in again, torturing me with his exquisite self-control. I can’t help but chase him upward every time he retreats, all the while making gasping, begging sounds. I try to free my hands, try to get to him, but he holds me in place, working up to his rhythm with maddening leisure.
When he finally gets there, it’s every bit as consuming as I want it to be. Like he’s dismantling me from the inside. He releases my wrists and I clutch at him, stabbing greedy fingers through his wet hair. His breath spurts hot against my neck. And still, he never closes his eyes.
He rolls his hips, driving into me. Faster. Harder.
I moan. The room is falling apart. Or maybe I’m falling into myself and taking him with me, because as I drown in the feel of him, I know I’ve never once had anyone fill me up this way. No one has ever surrendered with me like this.
God, I’ve missed him. My whole adult life, I’ve missed him without even realizing it, and now he’s finally here.
My fingertips dig into the back of his shoulder as he pushes a rising crash of pleasure through me. I spiral inward, wound tighter with every touch. Hands. Mouth. Wet hair pressed against my forehead. The fresh, deep forest in my nose. A warm, tropical ocean, filling me up. Heat, heat, heat.
It’s almost too much, yet I wonder if it will ever be enough.
And then I’m coming apart, bursting into the darkness like a star, only he’s there to catch all the pieces, because he’s holding me tight, so tight as he makes a sound that steals all the beauty in this world and presses it into a single moment, into this one hoarse cry coming out of his mouth.
We burn together and when the flames die back and his corded muscles unlock, I lie in the circle of his arms. Blissful ripples ebb and flow beneath my skin.
“Fucking hell.” He’s limp beside me, his face pressed into the mattress, his words muffled. “You had me so convinced I was going to die without ever getting to do that.”
When I say nothing, he raises his head. His dreamy smile drains away as he catches my expression. “But...this doesn’t mean what I want it to, does it?”
A pang slices right down the center of my chest. “I don’t see how it can.” There’s no putting the pieces back together. No starting over. There never is. I’ve known that much for years.
Grayson musters a smile that can’t quite mask the desolation behind it.
“But you can ask me again in the morning.” I reach for him. “Technically, I do owe you this one last day.”
His breath hitches as I pull his face to mine.
We have sex once more, this time long and sliding and slow, slow, slow, and he looks at me the whole time again, as if he’s memorizing every lash and the exact hue of my eyes, like he’s storing up every whimpered note he pulls from my throat.
When the wave crests and I come beautifully undone, he whispers in my ear. “All this time, I’ve loved you.”
I clutch him tighter, afraid to open my mouth, afraid of what lies behind my lips.
ward, he closes his eyes without turning off the light. I let it be and watch him sleep. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him like this, lost to the world, not so much sleeping as he is drifting back in time, the lines of his brow smoothed by the innocence of unconsciousness. He looks vulnerable. Trusting. Unbroken.
And I hate— hate —that I’ll have to ruin it all tomorrow.