39 - Avery
Avery
Can you give me a ride?” I ask, my voice shaking with nerves.
It’s not what I planned to say, but it’s all I can manage when he’s looking at me like I might disappear.
He opens his mouth to speak but closes it, shifting the bag on his shoulder and settling for a single nod. Then, he’s walking past me and out the door. Even now, after the night he’s had, he holds the door open for me and waits for me to catch up to him.
The walk to his car feels longer than it should, probably because neither of us utters a single word. Every single step Grayson takes feels careful, as though he’s expecting me to bolt the second he looks away.
I don’t blame him for it, but it stings and causes guilt to settle heavily in my stomach.
This night was supposed to be exciting. The Blades were going to win, and I was going to watch Grayson get one step closer to his dream. I still don’t know how the hell it’s turned into this.
Instead of enjoying any part of the night, we’ve both spent hours thinking the worst about our future together.
The silence stretches between us as we move through the nearly empty parking lot, tension thick enough that each breath is heavy with it.
Grayson doesn’t look at me once, not when he unlocks his car or when he opens the passenger door for me. He doesn’t look at me when he climbs inside or when he starts the engine.
All I want is for him to look at me.
But instead, I stare out the windshield while my pulse pounds wildly against my ribs.
This is fucking ridiculous.
I sat outside the locker room for nearly two hours thinking about exactly what I needed to say. Now that we’re alone, though, the words feel stuck somewhere behind my lungs.
His car rolls out of the parking lot and onto the freeway, the city glowing around us.
My hands twist together in my lap.
Say something, Avery.
Anything.
Every time I open my mouth, I’m haunted by the look on his face outside the locker room when he looked at me like I was already gone.
“How bad is it?” The question slips out quietly.
Grayson’s fingers twitch on the steering wheel, but his eyes stay on the road.
“The suspension?”
“Yeah.”
His jaw flexes. “Won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but Coach thinks three games.”
My stomach sinks. Three playoff games could change everything. Three games because of Damon. Because of me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” His grip tightens on the wheel.
The single word lands like a brick.
“What?”
“Don’t apologize to me. You literally warned me against this exact thing.” His voice is flat and empty.
My chest aches because I’d prepared for frustration or anger, but I hadn’t prepared myself for complete resignation.
The silence returns thicker this time. The city keeps passing by, and if I let this continue, he’s going to drop me off at home still believing I’m not in this.
Still believing I might not want him anymore.
The thought makes my pulse spike, something frantic clawing up my throat.
“Grayson.”
“Hm.” The noise hardly sounds human.
I shift in my seat, staring at his profile and taking in the exhaustion dragging down every feature.
I watch the man I love. The same one who thinks he’s already lost me, and seeing him like this hurts more than anything else that’s happened tonight.
“I need you to talk to me.”
He snorts, a low, humorless laugh slipping from deep in his throat. “What more is there to talk about?”
My heart drops. “Are you serious?”
“What exactly do you want me to say, Avery?”
The way he says my name makes my stomach twist. It’s not baby or Chaos. It’s not soft. It’s just Avery.
I don’t want to be just Avery to him.
Panic starts climbing my spine.
“Pull over.”
“What?” He finally glances toward me.
“I said pull over.”
“Avery–”
“Pull the damn car over.” The words come out sharp.
Grayson lets out a loud exhale before flipping on his turn signal. Once there’s a break in traffic, he pulls into an empty parking lot beside a closed pharmacy.
The car rolls to a stop, and his hand flexes on the gear shift as he puts it in park.
I turn toward him, but he doesn’t budge, instead staring straight out the windshield into the parking lot.
It looks like he’s bracing for impact, and I don’t know how to talk to him like this. Grayson is the one who’s good at this kind of shit. He’s the one who knows how to talk about his feelings. He’s the one who climbs my walls until he really sees me.
“Why are you acting like this?”
That same stupid, dark laugh slips off his lips.
My voice drops. “Stop being like this. Please.”
“Being like what?”
“Like you’ve already decided what happens next.”
That finally gets him to look at me, and the hurt in his eyes is so raw it knocks the breath out of me.
“Like I’ve decided what happens next?” His brows furrow. “I never decide anything here, Avery. You do. You decide. And you made it pretty clear what that decision was.”
“Grayson.” My voice shakes.
“Can we just not do this tonight?” He asks, his eyes glistening.
“I’ve been sitting outside that locker room for hours waiting for you, and you’re acting like you don’t even want me here.”
His jaw clenches. “Why are you here?”
I push my hair out of my face, fingers digging into my scalp. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.” His voice cracks as he scrubs a hand down his face. “Do you feel guilty? Or like you owe me some sort of conversation for closure?”
The blow hurts enough that I physically flinch.
His eyes close briefly before focusing on me. “I don’t know how many different ways I can hear you say you don’t want me before I finally believe it.”
Every ounce of air in the car vanishes, and I can’t breathe.
I shake my head. “No, that’s not–”
“What am I supposed to think when you looked at me earlier like I’d proved every doubt in your head right?”
The question is quiet and a thousand times more devastating than yelling would’ve been.
The pain behind his words slices straight through me, and I can’t even deny it.
Because I did exactly what he’s accusing me of.
I’ve let my fear rule me for so long that when everything happened earlier, I panicked.
And when I took that half step backward away from him, I’d done exactly what he was worried about me doing. But I need to make him see that it won’t happen again.
“You’re right,” I admit. “It scared me that you broke a promise to me and did something so out of character and reckless. I was angry and confused. I let that fear keep me from you, but I wasn’t trying to leave.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
I force myself to keep going.
“I’ve spent the past year convincing myself that I would never do this again. That I couldn’t do this again.”
Couldn’t hand over that much of myself ever again.
Couldn’t love someone.
“I know.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You don’t. Because the truth is that I spent so much time worrying about all of the reasons this would never work that I wasn’t paying attention to what was actually happening.”
The car feels suffocating and small. His eyes blaze into mine, still glistening with unshed tears, but something like hope flickers across his face.
It’s just us here.
There’s nowhere left to hide.
“I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was certain you’d disappoint me.”
Pain flashes across his face.
“You told me tonight that I was looking for an excuse. Maybe I was, not to leave, but to protect myself from needing you.”
“Avery–”
“Let me finish.”
He falls silent.
“I spent months looking for reasons not to love you, terrified of what might happen if I fell for you. But Grayson, I’ve already fallen.”
His entire body stills, and I’m not entirely sure he’s even breathing.
“I love you.”
“Don’t say that unless you mean it.” His voice comes out rough, like he’s close to tears.
“I love you, Grayson.”
I can hear my own heartbeat racing as the words settle between us. It feels like exhaling after holding my breath for months, so I say it again.
“I love you.” My voice breaks this time. “I love that you always show up. I love that you don’t let me run. I love your stupid sexy glasses. And your actual cooking. And I even love that you’re always kidnapping me.”
A tear slips down my cheek.
“I just love all of it. All of you.”
I barely finish the word before he’s reaching for me, and I’m reaching for him. When his lips find mine, it feels like coming home after being lost for far too long. Every unsaid thing we’ve been carrying for months dissolves like smoke between us.
It’s messy and desperate and so fucking relieved. He pulls me closer, and I move with him as if we’re both trying to make up for the last several hours in a single breath.
His hands cup my face, and mine tangle in his hair.
He fumbles with his seat, pushing it further away from the wheel as I climb over the center console and into his lap. His hands grip my waist, rubbing me against him until he groans into my mouth.
We pull back for air, and I rest my forehead against his while we watch each other.
“Who would’ve thought we’d end up here?” He murmurs.
“Not me.”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
Finally, he says the words I never thought I’d be ready to hear again: “I love you, too. I have for a while.”
His voice sounds wrecked as if the words have been trapped inside him, and he still can’t quite believe he’s allowed to say them.
I wait for the panic or the fear, but not a single doubt rings in my head. All I feel is happy.
“Say it again.”
“I love you, Chaos.”
I grin. “I hope so. Otherwise my little speech would be pretty embarrassing.”
“Now that you mention it,” he teases, planting soft kisses around my chin, then my cheek. “It might be the best thing anyone’s ever said to me; maybe we should write it down, you know, to make sure that I recite it correctly when we tell all of our friends.”
I nip his ear. “You’ll tell no one about my little speech.”
“C’mon, baby, it was cute.” He brushes his nose against mine, shifting me on his lap.
I scowl. “How about you tell them I love you, and that’s it?” I kiss his lips, slowly tracing them with my tongue as I pull back again.
“Deal. Done.” Then his hands roam over me while he flashes a devilish grin.
I giggle, leaning in to kiss him, this time falling deeper into it until his teeth nip at my bottom lip.
We aren’t trying to prove anything anymore.
We just kiss, our hands roaming each other’s bodies until eventually, I shift and accidentally set off the car horn. We break out in a fit of laughter, effectively killing the make-up make-out session that I could’ve gotten lost in forever.
I climb back over onto my side of the car, breathing hard.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I complain as he goes to put the car in drive.
He grabs my hand. “Well, you scared the shit out of me, too.”
I lift our hands, kissing his bruised knuckles. “Take me home.”
His eyes search mine.
“Your place.”
“No.”
A small smile pulls at his lips, and his hand tightens around mine. “Mine?”
I nod. “Yeah, the one with real breakfast.”