Chapter 28
Just as Gray started looking my way, Briggs demanded, “The truth, Gray. Pretend Monroe isn’t sitting across from you.”
“I was planning on giving it to you,” Gray seethed.
“When you hesitate and look at your wife before answering, that’s an indication that you’re about to protect her,” Briggs informed him.
“As we already discussed in yesterday’s super fun meeting,” he drawled sarcastically, but there was an undertone of warning in his voice, “she’s painfully aware of everything I’ve done.
There is no protecting her. That doesn’t mean I enjoy talking about this in front of her.
That doesn’t mean I’ll stop checking on her to see how she’s handling everything.
” Jerking his chin at Briggs, he added, “It’s been well over three years, maybe even closer to four. ”
I didn’t look away from Gray, but from the silence that settled over the conference room, I knew Briggs was debating whether or not to question Gray’s answer before he finally loosed another sigh and said, “We need to check the apartment. She lives at the house her dad bought her, but the apartment she was in is still there, in her name.”
“And she was making sure the people around her thought she was being stalked by a guy in her building,” Rush cut in, picking up on Briggs’ thought process. “She might’ve been trying to leave hints because she knew it’d get back to Gray.”
Thatch held out his hand next to me. “What am I missing? The last I heard, she was hanging out with Daddy Dearest at the club. If that’s the case, why would she be trying to help us figure things out?”
“They were fighting,” Briggs and Rush answered at the same time, only for Briggs to continue. “Tessa might know what’s going on, but she might not agree because she was very obviously mad at her dad. She might’ve been trying to warn Gray because of their history.”
Pale green eyes flashed my way and held, searching my expression until Briggs called his name.
“Call your cousin, or whoever would have gotten the most information from Tessa. We need to hear it all again.”
Gray’s only response was to pull out his phone and tap on the screen. Within seconds, he had his phone on the table and the sound of ringing was filling the conference room.
“Did you find her?” a panicked, feminine voice asked in greeting, the sounds of multiple conversations and soft music drifting in from behind her.
Gray scratched at his temple before muttering, “Not yet, Em.”
A worried sound filled the line. “Hudson—”
“We’ll find her,” Gray said over Emberly. “But I need to make sure I know everything Tessa told you. Do you have time to go over it?”
“Um . . . yeah. Yeah, let me get to my office.” Emberly whispered to someone before she asked Gray, “What all have I told you?”
“That the guy lives in her building and shows up wherever Tessa is, but you’ve never seen him at your shop,” Gray recalled as he dragged a hand over his face.
“You said you thought she was being dramatic about the stalking because she’d told you multiple times that he was a really nice guy, and she doesn’t like nice or clingy—”
Just as he had the day before, Gray cut himself off in the middle of describing the would-be stalker. But instead of looking at me like he was hating that I knew exactly what kind of guys Tessa did like, awareness slowly spread across Gray’s expression before his panicked stare snapped to me.
“Nice or clingy guys,” he finally muttered. “You said he repeatedly asked Tessa out.”
Emberly had been humming affirmations as Gray spoke, then gave a defeated sound when he finished. “That’s really all I know. She never described him physically.”
“Em,” Gray began, then let his eyelids shut as he struggled to swallow. “Emberly, when did this begin?”
“Um . . .” Emberly drew in a deep breath as she thought before apologetically saying, “Hudson, I have no—oh! It was last fall.”
Gray’s eyes snapped open and focused on me, wrath and fear seeping from him and crawling to me as I finally realized exactly what he thought was happening.
What he was incorrectly putting together.
My head started shaking as Emberly continued.
“I only know that because we were setting up for Amber Fest, and I jokingly asked Tessa if we needed security for our booth.”
“Thanks, Em,” Gray muttered, his voice cold and chillingly lifeless. “I’ll keep you updated.”
Before they even hung up, Evans hissed a sharp, “Where are you?” startling me from my irritation over Gray’s obvious jealousy.
I looked at Evans to see his own phone lifted to his ear, a look shockingly similar to Gray’s on his face.
“If you ever listen to me, I need it to be now,” he ground out.
“Do not go back to your apartment. Do you hear me?”
“Someone loop me in,” Briggs ordered.
The argument I’d originally been preparing for Gray came out slow and almost confused as I tried to make myself look away from Evans. “It’s a coincidence.”
“Which part?” Gray challenged. “That he’s such a nice guy? That he’s been repeatedly asking her out? Or that it’s been happening since last fall?”
My stare finally met his, but I kept my voice soft, considering Evans was now in a full-blown argument with whoever he was talking to. “I told you, he’s harmless.”
“No, y’all seem to think I gave you an option just then,” Briggs seethed. “Someone loop me in now.”
“Get to your sister’s before I drag you there,” Evans shouted before ending the call and tossing the phone onto the table.
He barely took a breath before gesturing irritably to the device and explaining, “A guy moved in next to me last fall, so he’s in the unit across from Wren.
He asks her out constantly, and she obviously ate that up at first, but I kept shutting it down, because that’s my job with babysitting the flirt.
And, even though she kept trying to find ways around me, I think she eventually got tired of him.
But he’s nice—too nice. He’s rubbed me the wrong way since he got there. ”
My stomach dropped—fell straight to the floor just as Gray added, “Same,” through clenched teeth. “There’s a guy next to Mallory. Same on all counts.”
Thatch cleared his throat as he sat up, tapping on his phone as he did.
“Y’all too?” Briggs asked as he gripped the edge of the table.
“Not exactly,” Thatch answered hesitantly. “This guy moved in across from the girls sometime after Chloe and I started dating.”
“I remember,” Briggs muttered, also sounding like he wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a concern or not. Like he wasn’t sure if he’d missed something.
Which, I would’ve sworn he hadn’t—that I hadn’t—if Evans’ account hadn’t been so eerily similar.
“I think it was in the fall,” Thatch said a little uncertainly as he pocketed his phone.
“It was before Briggs and Lainey got married, because Lainey was still living there. He still comes over to talk to Chloe nearly every night when we get home, and he’s annoyingly nice, but that’s where it ends.
He’s never asked her out. Honestly, I think I’m more his type than Chloe is.
They just talk about whatever books they’re reading. ”
There was a soft knock at the conference room door before Chloe came in, smiling like the world was full of sunshine, or that she was powering it. “Yes?” she asked, as if she’d been summoned.
Considering Thatch had been on his phone, she probably had.
Thatch tipped his chin up at her, his expression brightening just looking at her, despite the tension filling the room. “Can you remember when Davis moved in?”
The conference room exploded into chaos the second the name left Thatch’s lips.
Evans and Gray shot out of their chairs and leaned across the table as they yelled at Thatch and each other because, apparently, Wren’s guy was named Davis too, before all three of them started yelling at Briggs about protection.
Briggs and Rush had shot each other knowing looks even before all the yelling had begun.
And I was going to be sick.
If this was what Lainey felt like at every minute, I felt terrible for her. But I was definitely going to be sick.
“Tell me what you did wrong,” my dad yelled from the training room, his face turning purple with his anger.
My stare shifted to my second oldest brother, who didn’t bother trying to hide his cruel, victorious smirk. “I let him sneak up on me.”
“No,” Dad shouted. “No, you look at me when you answer me. You own your failures. Now, tell me what you did wrong!”
I squared my shoulders as I faced him, my head held high and voice clear. “I let him sneak up on me.”
“You let him sneak up on you,” he echoed, disappointment dripping from his words and expression.
“If your enemy sneaks up on you, you’re dead.
Then you haven’t just failed yourself, you’ve failed your fellow Marines and your country.
” Stepping so close I had to tilt my head back even more to maintain eye contact, he jabbed his finger at me as he seethed, “Never let down your guard. Never let anyone catch you unaware. And never let your enemy—”
I turned, already swinging for the person I’d been able to sense creeping up behind me. Clipping the youngest of my brothers in the jaw, I quickly went on the attack until he was flat on his back, blood pooling from his nose.
With heaving breaths, I turned back to my dad, and felt my stomach clench and heart twist at the disappointment that had somehow deepened.
“Was that supposed to impress me?” He jerked his chin in the direction of my still-gloating brother. “Don’t forget, you would’ve already been dead.”
“Hey,” Gray said, suddenly crouched at my side, voice soft in the middle of all the madness. “It’s okay, just breathe.”
Never let down your guard.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I said through tight, thin breaths.
“I see that,” he murmured, even as his hands gently cradled my cheeks and forced my attention to him. “Look at me and breathe.”
Never let anyone catch you unaware.
“I didn’t know. How didn’t I know?”