Chapter 10 #3
“Were you thinking forever with her too?”
Grayson shook his head. “No. I had a lot of fun with Staci, but I’d figured out by month four that things between us weren’t going to go the distance. I was going to say that to her on what I thought was going to be our last date.”
Wren tilted her head, hanging on his words.
“That was when she told me she was pregnant.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
“Oh yeah. Talk about a shocker. We hadn’t slept together more than a handful of times, and I’d always worn a condom.
She seemed thrilled, started talking about the two of us getting married.
At first, I was floored. But then I realized something seemed off.
I asked her if she’d been to see a doctor yet, and she said no, said she’d only taken a home pregnancy test. I told her that I wanted to go with her when she went, and she waved off the idea, saying I didn’t need to.
When I drove her home, she invited me in.
I refused, because my head was reeling and I just wanted some distance to think shit out, you know? ”
“That makes sense,” she agreed.
“That was when she started acting even weirder, pulling out all the stops to seduce me. Saying how great it would be, since I didn’t have to use a condom anymore.”
Wren made a soft sound that told him she knew exactly where this was headed.
“I made up a lie about needing to be up early the next morning, then told her to let me know when she made the doctor’s appointment.”
“I’m guessing she wasn’t happy about that,” Wren mused.
“She called and texted—well, sexted—daily, blowing up my phone, constantly trying to entice me back to her bed. Finally, I just came straight out and said I wasn’t sleeping with her again until after we’d seen the doctor. Because my Spidey senses were tingling hard at that point.”
“I bet they were.”
Grayson shook his head. “After a few weeks of that, I ran into the husband of one of Staci’s two best friends.
We’d done a few double dates with him and his wife.
He and a bunch of buddies were checking out the brewery on my recommendation.
That was when he pulled me aside, said he’d been debating whether or not he should tell me what he’d overheard Staci telling his wife. ”
“She lied.”
“Yeah.” Grayson was sort of surprised with himself for sharing this story.
Of course, his brothers knew because for a few weeks, he’d been all kinds of fucked up, trying to imagine spending the rest of his life with Staci.
“She was feeling left behind, since her two besties were both married and expecting.”
“So she planned to tell you that she was pregnant, then seduce you into having unsafe sex until she was?” Her tone was pure disgust.
“That was the plan. I confronted Staci, and she broke down, admitted she lied. Obviously, that was the end of our relationship.”
Wren slowly adjusted the books in her arms. “I understand why lying bothers you.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s why I value honesty above everything else. It matters.”
“It does,” she whispered.
The words sounded strange, tight, and he frowned slightly. “You okay?”
Wren blinked, as if she’d been somewhere else entirely.
“Fine,” she said. Her smile returned, but this one was weak at best. “Just thinking.”
Something that looked strangely like guilt flickered across her face so quickly, he almost missed it, then she turned away to shelve a book.
Their conversation never fully recovered after that.
Wren abandoned the cart, taking him straight to the fiction section, where she handed him another book.
She gave him a fair synopsis, assuring him this book would be as good as the last, though she was lacking the passion to sell it the same way she had the first.
“One of the volunteers can check it out to you,” she said dismissively. “I should finish putting these books away.”
Grayson hesitated. A few minutes earlier, he’d been trying to find a way to get out of here, but now he was struggling to find an excuse to stick around. Wren seemed nervous and upset, and something was pulling at him to stay, to ask her what was wrong…to take care of her.
Which was weird as shit, considering he hardly knew her. He wondered if the fact she looked so much like Lark was fucking with his head a bit.
In the end, Wren took the decision to stay or go away from him when she pushed her cart around a corner, giving him a brief wave of goodbye.
Grayson walked to the counter and checked out the book.
As he pushed open the library door and stepped out into the afternoon sunshine, he shook his head. The McCoy twins were confusing as hell.
Not that it was going to stop him from seeking out both of them again.
One thing was painfully clear. He was too intrigued by Wren to do the right thing, which was to stay the hell away from her. She was easy to be around, to talk to, and he felt this inexplicable pull whenever he was with her.
So even though it was a bad—BAD—idea, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was going to come back to the library again.