Chapter 17
Eleanor
“Hello?” My voice cracked as I said the words. It was three in the morning as I answered my cell phone, and after a day of crying, my vocal cords were exhausted.
“Hi, Ellie.” Greyson’s voice was low and tired. For a minute, I thought I was dreaming. “Were you sleeping?”
“No.” I sat up a bit in bed. “I can’t.”
“Yeah. That makes sense.”
“What are you doing up so late?”
“I couldn’t sleep. So I checked my email and figured I’d call. I just wanted to make sure you were breathing.”
Tears began rolling down my face as I clenched the phone to my ear. I closed my eyes. “I can’t talk, Grey. It hurts too much to talk.”
“That’s fine. We don’t have to talk. We can just keep our phones pressed to our ears. OK?”
I nodded as if he could see me. “OK.”
I lay back down and kept the cell phone glued to my ear. His breaths were light through the receiver, but I was thankful for them. At some point, I fell asleep, and when I woke up again, his snores were still coming through the speaker.
It was quiet, and he was snoring, and tears were falling down my cheeks as I listened.
That was the very minute I knew I loved him—when I was brokenhearted at four in the morning and he still showed up for me.
Even though he hadn’t said it, I was certain he loved me too. People didn’t have to talk about love to know it existed. Love wasn’t only real because someone said it out loud. No, love just kind of sat there quietly, in the shadows of the night, healing the cracks that lived in our hearts.