Chapter 8
Iknew a message from Briggs wouldn’t work twice, but I was hoping Mallory’s obsession with chicken shawarma outweighed the tension between us, and her frustration with me.
So, with wraps from Mallory’s favorite place in hand, I drew in a fortifying breath and reached for the handle of my door just as my phone vibrated in my pocket.
Something I nearly ignored until it vibrated again just as I was about to step out of my truck.
With a heavy exhale, I paused with my door fully open and pulled the device out of my pocket, all thoughts of talking to Mallory, of getting anywhere with her, abruptly disappearing when I saw the messages waiting for me.
Thatch
I didn’t tell Chloe anything about Aruba. But she just filled me in on what went down earlier.
Be straight with me . . . is Monroe pregnant?
My chest pitched as I stared at the screen without actually seeing it anymore.
In an instant, I was hit with the same vision from this afternoon—Mallory pregnant with my child.
Just as quickly, I was consumed by overwhelming grief and unexpected loss because, not only was that not our future, but I was rapidly losing the only woman I’d ever loved.
Every attempt to prevent it only seemed to make it worse. I briefly wondered if tonight would end the same.
By the time I managed to tap into the messages and respond, it felt like a barbed knot was choking me and my lungs were being crushed under a vice-like grip.
Me
No.
Told you we were dressed when we woke up. And Monroe wouldn’t do that.
I didn’t explain more than that.
It wasn’t my place to tell anyone that Mallory had never slept with anyone, and it wouldn’t help convince Thatch, since he knew we’d woken in the same bed. But I knew Mallory, and I knew me.
With how much she hated the thought of us together? She wouldn’t have slept with me.
With how much I loved her? Even if she’d given me the green light, I wouldn’t have slept with her when she was too wasted to know what she was doing—let alone remember.
Thatch
You sure? Because Chloe said Monroe was asking odd questions about pregnancies.
Sometimes people get dressed afterward Gray.
I went still as I read the next messages. My heart skipped painfully before pounding too hard. Too fast.
But as I quickly went over that morning in Aruba, and what little Mallory had said to me this weekend, I knew they had to be wrong.
She would’ve said something.
Me
Don’t put that in my head. You know what that would mean to me.
Thatch
I also know what that would mean to her. And now she’s trying to leave.
His text came just as I made it to Mallory’s door, and it had ice settling in my stomach. But just as fear and anger started growing, I shook off the thought and tapped out responses before pocketing my phone.
Me
We didn’t do anything. She isn’t pregnant.
Drop it.
I fought to regain control of my racing thoughts and chaotic pulse and toxic, conflicting emotions as I took slow, steadying breaths. Right there. In front of her door. Bag of food in hand.
Once I was back in the same headspace I’d been in when I’d pulled up, and once I was mostly sure I wouldn’t demand to know if Mallory was pregnant as soon as I saw her, I rapped my knuckles against the door.
Worry, uncertainty, and the smallest whisper of hope battled in my veins as I waited for the sound of the lock, my pulse jumping once it finally came.
And then the door was opening, and all thoughts of her potentially being pregnant, along with my argument just to get in the door, died on my tongue when I saw her. Tall and lean, with subtle curves, and so beautiful it hurt . . . and not at all her.
“Whoa . . .”
Mallory’s expectant expression abruptly fell into a look of stunned apprehension when she noticed me standing there, but I shot out a hand to stop her from slamming the door in my face.
“Leave,” she demanded in that tone that was like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Stiff. Formal. Withdrawn.
“Are you wearing makeup?” I asked as I pushed the door open with barely any effort, letting me know she hadn’t been actively trying to keep me out.
My brow furrowed when my gaze finally drifted to take in the rest of her.
The delicate gold chain around her neck that dipped beneath the material of the low-cut—“Are you wearing a dress?”
“No one can say you aren’t observant,” she muttered, then hurried to shove me back when I took a step inside her condo. “What are you doing? Leave.”
“We need to talk.”
A stunted laugh bubbled past her full, glossed lips, cracking that infuriating facade. “We—”
“Are we staying in?”
If I hadn’t been so focused on the fact that Mallory was wearing a dress and makeup for the second time in all the years I’d known her—one of which had been the day we eloped—I would’ve noticed the person walking up beside me.
As it was, my head snapped to the side to find a man standing a few feet away from me, looking at Mallory in a way that had my free hand curling into a fist.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just thought we were going out.
But I’m more than fine with staying here,” he hurried to add, making Mallory’s unrecognizable look and this stranger add up in a horrifying way as he continued like he was nervous.
“But you could’ve told me, I would’ve liked to pay. ”
He held out a hand toward me, his voice dropping to an embarrassed whisper. “Can I still pay?”
I then remembered I was holding a bag of food.
He thought I was bringing them food . . . for their date.
My glare slowly drifted to Mallory, to the uncertainty flickering through her defiant stare, before settling on the man beside me again.
“What you can do is forget you ever met my wife,” I seethed as I shoved my way into the condo and slammed the door behind me.
“Gray,” Mallory snapped, her tone and expression almost identical to how it’d been this afternoon: whispers of shock and doubt bleeding into her fury—that fracturing fortress.
“This better be a joke.”
“You bulldozing your way into my condo?” She forced a huff and tried reaching around me for the handle, but I blocked her. “No, you seem to be making a hobby of it.”
I flipped the deadbolt behind me when she continued trying to reach for the handle and asked, “What are you doing, Monroe?”
Her blue glare snapped to me before quickly falling away, as if she didn’t know how to hold my stare. As if Mallory Monroe had ever backed down from anyone or anything, even a look. “I’d think it’s obvious.”
“It really isn’t.” I gestured to her. “This isn’t you. And that?” I added, jerking my head toward the door behind me.
At that, some of those shields began to solidify. “You have no room to talk,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I do when we’re married,” I shot back in the same tone.
“Hardly.” The word burst from her on a disdainful laugh, but the sound was filled with a pain I had a feeling she hadn’t wanted me to hear. “And again, you have no room—”
“Years,” I said over her, referring to our conversation from this afternoon.
“Something you clearly don’t believe, even though I’m your best friend and have tried explaining.
But, sure, let’s believe other people about me.
” I gave her a look that showed exactly how much it bothered me that she did.
“But right now, we’re talking about you, and this isn’t you.
None of this is. Not what you’re wearing, not that you’re going on a date at all, and not that guy. ”
She made a face like she had no idea what I could be alluding to, but I knew her well enough to know she was forcing it. “What’s wrong with Davis?”
“Well, for one, his name is Davis,” I said. “That’s a last name.”
“And Hudson isn’t?” she countered, but I continued over her.
“Not to mention, he was wearing slacks and a polo.”
A stunned laugh left her as she took a couple steps back that I automatically matched. “I like the way he was dressed.”
“And he was nervous,” I added, instead of responding to her outright lie.
“So?” She tossed her hands up before letting them fall. “What if I find that adorable?”
A disbelieving huff burst from me, my tone slipping into something between a sneer and a tease, “Oh, Peach, I think we both know you don’t, just as we both know you don’t want adorable.
You need someone who pushes your buttons and drives you crazy.
Someone who isn’t afraid to fight with you until your anger’s spent and you’re tapping out.
Someone who will put their life on the line for yours without hesitation. ”
Her wide, wonder-filled eyes dropped to my shoulder instinctively before darting away again. But just as quickly, she fortified those diamond-tough walls around her heart, and that infuriated stare narrowed on me. “You have no idea what I want or need.”
I bit back the response that was quick to rise because, as much as I’d always wanted it to be me, it never had been.
Still . . . “I know it isn’t him,” I said with a soul-deep confidence.
As if she’d still heard the words I’d managed to keep back, her expression slipped as the tension between us grew to a steady hum.
Subtle, hesitant, full of restrained longing, and wholly unfamiliar.
Then again, I wasn’t familiar with this Mallory.
The energy that normally sparked between us was alive and fiery and begged to be acknowledged.
One pulsed through my veins . . . the other danced across my skin.
I wasn’t sure which was more addicting.
Either way, the current buzzing along my skin was begging me to erase the rest of the distance between us.
But I knew Mallory enough to know how that would go, and I didn’t feel like blocking a strike to my chest right then, or giving her another reason to demand I leave, when I’d come for a purpose.