Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Grayson found Maverick exactly where he’d expected him to be, clipboard in hand, pretending to do a quick inventory of the wine barrels when he was really texting Ella.
No one was happier for his brother than Grayson, but the guy was so disgustingly over-the-top in love with his fiancée, it was a wonder any work was getting done around here these days.
“Say hi to Ella,” Grayson said, in pure smart-ass fashion.
Maverick glanced over his shoulder and smirked. “Busted.”
His brother’s grin faded quickly when he saw Grayson’s face. He’d been out in the vineyard helping with the last of the harvest when Maverick arrived at the winery this morning, so despite it being nearly eleven a.m., they hadn’t seen each other yet today.
“You look like shit.”
Grayson scowled. “Thanks.” Nice to know his outside matched his inside, because he felt like shit too.
He’d barely slept a wink since that run-in with Wren at the library on Friday.
Instead, he’d worked himself into exhaustion in the vineyard, picking grapes from dawn to dusk all weekend before falling into bed, where he tossed and turned and cursed the world in general.
He’d been in such a foul mood, he’d even played sick, bailing on his family’s Sunday dinner.
“You still feeling bad?” Maverick asked.
Given the fact only a plague would keep Grayson from his mom and Mila’s pot roast, it made sense his brother had bought his excuse for skipping.
“Because if so, bro, I can hold down the fort here. God knows you’ve been covering for me a shit-ton the past few months. ”
Prior to Ella reappearing in Maverick’s life, his brother rarely took a day off, so Grayson hadn’t minded covering for him while Maverick wooed and won back the heart of his true love, then flew to Seattle for a week to pack up all her things and deal with her asshole family.
Though, the only reason he was in this boat right now was because he’d worked the wine festival so Maverick could plan a bunch of wedding stuff.
“I’m not sick,” Grayson grumbled, walking into the barrel room, leaning on an oak cask filled with last year’s Merlot.
Maverick put the clipboard down, tucked his phone in his back pocket, then approached him, assuming a similar pose across from him, leaning on the same barrel. “You didn’t come to dinner last night because you were sick.”
He shrugged. “I lied.”
Maverick’s eyes widened. “On pot roast night?”
Grayson chuckled miserably. “Yeah. I’ve got some shit on my mind and…” He wasn’t sure why he was hesitating. Maverick was his go-to when he had a problem, and he needed advice.
“Woman shit?”
He nodded.
“Lark?” Maverick asked so quickly, Grayson suddenly realized he hadn’t been as subtle about his feelings for “Lark” as he’d thought. Especially if Maverick, whose head was so far up in the fucking clouds, had managed to notice.
Grayson shook his head. “Not Lark. Wren.”
That response took his brother aback. “Lark’s sister? I didn’t know you even knew her that well. Hell, I don’t really know her, either. Isn’t she the librarian now?”
“Yeah. She is.”
Maverick stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something meaningful. When the silence drifted a few seconds too long, Maverick cracked. “And?”
“She and I worked that wine festival together a few weeks ago.”
Maverick grinned. “I heard.”
Of course, he had.
“Lark confessed to Nora and Remi,” Maverick explained. “They told all of us the tale last night.”
No doubt his family had had a great time, laughing over how he’d been duped by their prank.
“She and Lark swapped places. Played an identical twin joke on me.”
Maverick chuckled. A prank like that was right up his fun-loving brother’s alley. “Good for Wren, managing to pull it off for a whole weekend. She and Lark must be birds of a feather.”
“That’s just it. They aren’t. In fact, they’re pretty damn opposite, if you ask me.”
Maverick looked way too impressed now. “Well, then, even more kudos to her. So what’s the problem? You said the festival went really well, so apart from Wren pretending to be Lark, seems to me it was a case of no harm, no foul.”
“She lied to me,” Grayson replied darkly.
“It was a little white lie, Gray. I’m not sure I understand why you’re so pissed off about this.
You love a good joke as much as the next guy.
Hell, you and I have played more than our fair share of pranks in the past ourselves.
Remember that time we hid a Bluetooth speaker in Jace’s bedroom when he was younger and played odd sounds until he was convinced the farmhouse was haunted? ”
“This is different,” he grumped.
“How?”
Grayson blew out a breath. “There was some flooding at the hotel we reserved for the festival. Wren and I ended up sharing a room.”
Maverick’s eyes widened. “A room? Or a bed?”
“There was only one bed.”
Maverick rubbed his jaw. “Wait a second. Did you have sex with Wren, thinking she was Lark? Because, bro, that’s not okay and I totally get why you’re mad.”
“We didn’t have sex,” he corrected quickly. “But we talked and…kissed.”
Maverick nodded slowly. “Ooookay…”
“She pulled away, so it didn’t go beyond that.”
Maverick waved his hand, as if that fact solved some issue. “So there you go. She knew it was wrong, so she stopped it.”
Grayson wasn’t entirely sure why Wren had stopped that kiss. There were a few times during that weekend when she’d acted, well…skittish. But stronger than that. Sometimes he got the sense she was downright scared, which had bothered him a lot in the weeks since the festival.
“The thing is, I didn’t really know Wren before that weekend.
I mean, I knew who she was, but before the festival, I doubt we’d said more than a dozen words combined in our entire lives.
Then Mom asked me to return a library book for her, right after we got back from Norfolk. Wren acted like we were strangers.”
Maverick frowned. “I wonder why they kept the joke going. Do you think they thought you’d be mad?”
Grayson shrugged. Wren tried to explain why they’d pulled the prank, but he’d been too pissed off at the time to hear it. “I have no idea. But I went to the library twice more and she never confessed.”
“Why did you go back to the library? I thought you read books on your phone.”
He grinned, despite his misery, recalling Wren giving him shit for reading eBooks. “I went to see Wren.”
“Is that why you went to Whiskey Abbey last week? Because it’s usually impossible to get you down to the bar.”
He grimaced. “I went because I thought Lark would be there. I still thought…” He cursed under his breath at his own stupidity. “Lark did show up. With Wren. I spent most of the night talking to her.”
Maverick crossed his arms. “Dammit, dude! Stop feeding this story to me piecemeal and fucking spit it out.”
The truth lodged in Grayson’s throat. He’d spent days trying not to say it anymore, trying not to believe it. Since his conversation with Jace, he’d worked overtime to convince himself he’d imagined that overpowering, soul-shattering feeling. But he hadn’t.
The second he held Wren at that festival, something happened. And it happened again the other day in the library, when he kept her from tumbling off that stool.
“When I touched Wren at the festival…” Grayson raked a hand through his hair. “She’s the one.”
Maverick whistled low and slow, and for nearly a full minute, he simply stared at Grayson. Then, “Well.”
Grayson scowled. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me? Well?”
Maverick smirked. “Well, that changes things.”
“No shit,” he spat.
“You really felt it? The lightning? The electricity? The sparks?”
Grayson didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Maverick could read the truth written all over his face.
“Yeah,” Maverick said quietly. “You did.”
Grayson looked away. “I thought it was Lark. For weeks, I thought it was Lark. Even though everything about her felt wrong after we got back home.”
“And when you went to the library and saw Wren…”
“Everything felt fucking right! But I was convinced I was wrong about that, because they’re twins and they look alike and because it’s a douchebag thing to do, to kiss one sister, then pursue the other.”
“Except you weren’t,” Maverick pointed out.
“And I didn’t fucking know that,” he bit out hotly. “Because she lied to me!”
Silence settled between them, only broken when Maverick snorted.
“That’s funny to you?”
Maverick shook his head. “No. It’s a Shakespearean tragedy. Or it would be if there wasn’t such a simple solution.”
Grayson felt the first inkling of hope, and he was suddenly grateful he’d come to his big brother for advice. “Lead me to it.”
“Go get her.”
Grayson scowled. “What?”
“She’s the one,” Maverick said, as if those three words were the answer to life itself.
“And she lied,” he reiterated.
Maverick shrugged. “So what?”
“She switched places with Lark at the festival, then kept the lie going. For three weeks,” he stressed.
Maverick rolled his eyes. “Big whoop.”
Grayson closed his eyes, wondering how Maverick could say that. His brother had been around when Dara broken his heart all those years ago, and he’d been the first one he’d turned to when Staci hit him with that pregnancy whopper. Maverick knew just how much Grayson hated being lied to.
“Big whoop?” he repeated, with a healthy dose of disgust.
“Gray, if that’s the biggest problem the two of you ever face, you’ll be the luckiest bastard on the planet.”
“You don’t get it,” he declared.
“No,” Maverick said, pointing a finger at him. “You don’t get it.” His brother’s expression shifted, the teasing and humor vanishing, replaced by something…sadder.
Maverick suddenly looked more serious than Grayson had seen him in a very long time.
“I spent fifteen years trying to convince myself that I could live without Ella.”
Those words landed heavily between them, and Grayson instantly regretted pushing his brother on this. Because no one knew better than Maverick what loss and regret looked like.
“I know—”