39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Thirty-Nine
T aking one last look at Grey in his fitted black suit, my heart sank. The connection I had with him was something I didn’t think I’d ever understand. It was undeniable, insatiable, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say magical. But as with anything in life, sometimes the hardest things didn’t make any sense at all. The culmination of emotions left me breathless.
Grey’s eyes met mine, and in that moment, we said more with our locked gaze than any words would’ve. I tried to smile but couldn’t manage anything more than a small curl of my lips, tears brimming to the surface.
I needed to get the hell out of there.
I shimmied my way through the crowd, keeping my head down and doing my best to blend in until I found the door.
I gasped as the nighttime air coasted through me, the coolness sending a wave of comfort through my tense body. I realized I didn’t have a way home, and on top of that, there were still a few determined cameramen waiting to catch a glimpse of something, anything.
Wiping away any remaining tears, I looped around the front porch and out of sight. I spotted a walkway hidden from the moon’s blinding reflection.
I ducked behind a few bushes and found myself on a path that led straight to the beach. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do from there, but at least I would be alone and away from all the people. I paused to rip my heels off, allowing the cool sand to take up the space between my toes.
The waves got louder, and so did the adrenaline pumping between my ears. It was so loud I thought I might drown in it. Treading through the sand, I marched to where the waves met the beach and froze. I couldn’t move. I was afraid if I did, I was going to break into a million pieces.
If I was doing the right thing, why did it hurt this bad?
But I already knew the answer.
First, I lost Liv. And it was a pain that I quite honestly thought I would die from. A pain that tore me up and left me broken. A pain that kept me from allowing anyone in.
Until him.
Over the course of a single summer, I’d let him in. Fully. And now, just like Liv, I was losing him too. Except this time, I was the one choosing to walk away, and that somehow made it worse.
“Liv, I need you,” I pleaded with the stars. “I just need you here with me.”
“She’s closer than you think,” Grey said, his voice soft behind me.
Swallowing, I turned to look at him. There he was, standing five feet away. The sight of him alone almost brought me to my knees. His eyes, once so intense, looked lost as they met mine.
His lips tightly pulled down as he said, “MJ, please.”
I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to keep it together, so I spoke quickly. “Grey, I’m sorry. I just don’t think I can do this.” I motioned toward the commotion of the party. “This world. Your world. It’s all-consuming. It makes good people turn ugly, makes happy people angry, and I can’t bear witness to that happening to you. You’re too good and too kind. I want to remember you that way.”
“It won’t happen to me. I have a plan, MJ; I promise you that. I’ve been working my ass off to create something I’m proud of, and I just need a little more time. I’ll do this campaign, and then I’ll tell my father I’m done. I—”
“I wish it was that easy, but I can see now that it’s not. Your father has his claws in so deep, I’m afraid you’ll never get out. From where I’m standing, I can’t even tell if you really want to.”
He stepped toward me, almost too close. His hand reached for my cheek, but I stepped back, afraid that if I felt his touch, I might not have the self-control to leave.
“It doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You’ve already made up your mind. You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”
The desperation in his voice broke me and a single tear trailed down my cheek.
“I have to,” I breathed. “If I don’t go now, I never will, and if we don’t take this time to figure ourselves out, we’ll never have a real chance. Because of you, I’ve come so far out of my comfort zone this summer that I’m desperate to keep going, to see what else I can do.”
“But you said it yourself, you’ve always wanted to live in New York. Isn’t that part of your dream?”
I smiled unevenly, but it wasn’t enough to stop another tear from streaming down my face. “Yeah, it is. It really is. But I need to do it on my own terms.”
“But then what if you never do it,” he said, his voice teetering, his words rushed. Like he was grasping for anything that might make this make sense.
“Then I’ll have myself to blame, but if I do it on your terms then I’m not really doing it for myself and it’s no longer my dream,” I said. “But what about your dream, Grey?”
“My dream will come with time.”
“And so will mine,” I added. “Your world and mine are very different, Grey Prescott. Maybe one day they’ll intertwine, but not now. Not yet.”
The outside air was dense as silence fell between us.
“MJ, there’s something I have to tell you. I should’ve told you before, but I didn’t know how. I needed time to process, and honestly I still do, but on the off-chance this is my last opportunity, I can’t leave anything unsaid.”
The seriousness in his voice was heavy, and my attention was his.
He stood there, staring blankly into the darkness, watching as the waves smashed against the shore, dissipating into nothing. The tension in his body was so apparent, I thought he might literally shatter.
Finally, his hand rose to his chest, forcefully palming the spot above his heart.
His voice was low, somber even, as he said, “You know that inexplicable pull that seemed to gravitate us toward one another? All those feelings that neither of us could justify? The ones that made us feel familiar to one another, even when we’d only just met…”
I looked at him, confusion flooding my face. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with—?”
“I didn’t either, but now I do.” He paused, wiping something from his forehead. “That night we had dinner at your parents’ house… Remember after our run that morning, I said there was something I needed to do, something important? The real reason I’d come back to Montauk…?”
I nodded, not wanting my words to interrupt his thoughts.
“That day, after I left your apartment, I went to meet with the parents of my donor. Who at the time, I knew very little about.” The words left his mouth in such a hurry that I almost missed them. He was speaking so fast I could barely keep up.
“I wanted to tell them thank you, that I was sorry it took me so long to come. To promise them that I’d do my best to honor their daughter. To tell them that not a single day goes by that I don’t consider myself the luckiest person on the planet. To share the things that I’ve been able to do because of the selfless choices both they and their daughter made.”
“Donor?” I questioned. “What do you mean donor?”
He rushed on, ignoring my question. “I was terrified of what they would say. Worried they would think I was selfish for taking so long to visit. But I couldn’t have been more wrong about them. They were graceful, kind. They’re just good people. They couldn’t stop thanking me for coming. They told me their daughter would be proud that her heart was working for someone like me.” The last words barely made it out before getting caught in his throat. “They talked about her in a way that made it feel like she’d been able to live on through me. For once in my life, they made me feel like I had a purpose.”
“Grey, I still don’t understand. Why didn’t you just tell me all of this before?”
“Just wait. Please…” He paused to collect himself. “After I left them, I was on top of the world.” He smiled, clearly reminiscing, but then his happy expression vanished. “But then we walked into your parents’ house, and there they were. My donor’s parents. I had no idea the name of my donor or anything about them, really. I’d chosen to stay in the dark, because selfishly that was easier.”
“Wh-what?” I stuttered.
Everything muted.
I couldn’t hear the waves pounding the shore. I couldn’t hear the wind whipping through my hair. I couldn’t even hear my own breath as it desperately tried to escape my mouth.
“I… I don’t—” I cried out. “What do you mean?” Clamoring my hands harder into his chest, I wanted a better explanation than what he’d given me.
Grey grabbed my hands, guiding them to that spot right over his heart.
There it was, even in this uncharted moment. That familiar, constant rhythm of his heartbeat. The one that had tied me to reality and made me feel safe so many times. The same one that had reassured me that everything was going to be okay, just by existing.
He gripped my hands tighter, staring right at me as tears filled his eyes. “That day, I found out that my heart donor was eighteen-year-old Olivia Mitchell.”
“No.” I stepped back. “No, no!”
I violently shook my head as the air was ripped from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I inhaled, hoping for something, anything, but all I could find was the weight of a thousand bricks slamming into my chest. Every fiber of my being was breaking, one by one. The weight was unbearable, forcing my legs to give out, bringing me to my knees.
I was hyperventilating, and it was fucking terrifying. A suffocating feeling that no one should ever have to endure.
“I… I can’t breathe,” I said, frantically grasping at my throat, cries slipping through each rapid breath.
“MJ, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. It’s going to be okay,” he said, even though his voice was just as unstable as mine.
Liv , I mouthed, no sound escaping as my body trembled.
In a split second, Grey was hovering over me, his body only a few inches from mine.
“I can’t, Grey,” I wept. “I can’t do this. The parties, the lifestyle, and now this. It’s all too fucking much.”
Coercing my legs to stand, I forced myself to look at him. “Why now? Why come back after all this time?” I cried out, the sound of the waves roaring against the shoreline drowning out my voice.
My heartbeat pounded through my ears, the rhythm nauseating.
Grey approached me, stopping closer than I expected, so close I could see the devastation in his eyes. “It felt wrong for me to be here, living in a place where she should’ve been living. But something drew me back this summer.”
Hesitantly, he placed his palms on my cheeks. Part of me wanted to pull away, but the other part knew his touch was keeping me upright.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it was her. It was Olivia. She brought me back here to find you.” The last sentence barely made it out of his mouth before he cracked, his breathing labored as he attempted to calm himself down.
A man of stature, a man who seemed so unbreakable, and yet, here he was, standing in front me, completely broken.
I found myself replaying pieces of our summer, reaching for anything that made sense.
“The health issues, not drinking very much… the scar,” I whispered.
“MJ, I’m so sorry. I wish I had something else to say, something that might make this hurt less, but I don’t. I’m so sorry.”
My insides hurt, but even with all the pain, all I could think about was him. I wanted to scream at him as much as I wanted to hug him, but I couldn’t do either.
My face still hung in his hands, but now our foreheads were pressed together, our wet faces staring at each other. Grey used his thumb to wipe away the tears, but they were coming too fast for him to keep up.
We both knew what was happening, and I think it killed us both just the same.
“I’m sorry,” he pleaded, blinking the tears away.
“If you care about me, you’ll let me go,” I forced myself to say. The words splintered tiny cracks in my heart as I set them free, but there was too much here that needed processing. “You have to let me go.”
Just as quickly as the words left my mouth, he dropped his hands.
“I’ll let you go, only because it’s not fair for me to hold on. But MJ…” His hand snuck into his pocket as he pulled something out. “Until we intertwine… A piece of me and a piece of Olivia. Because you’ll never really lose either of us.”
He opened his clenched hand, and in the middle of his palm lay a gold keychain with a tiny gold pendant.
“Grey,” I said, hesitating to take it.
“I had this made the day after my surgery.”
The metal was cold as he dropped it into my hands. My fingers instinctively traced the engraved lines that decorated one side.
“I always wanted to remember the sound of the heart that gave me a second chance. Now I know that heart was from someone who was loved by you, which makes it even more special.”
The lines were Olivia’s heartbeat.
Before I could respond, Grey started trailing back toward his house. He yelled over his shoulder, “I’ll make sure Daniel is waiting to take you back to your apartment.”
The abruptness of his departure stung, but we both knew that with the way everything had played out tonight, leaving was what came next.
His presence disappeared along with my breaths, but then I heard his voice again. “And MJ?” My heart jumped from my chest. “Promise me this isn’t goodbye forever, just goodbye for now.”
I sucked in my lower lip. “I promise.”
Within seconds, the darkness consumed him. He was gone and I was left with only my thoughts. Everything in my brain was mushed together in a pile of hurt, sadness, grief, and heartbreak. A pile that, at the moment, seemed impossible to sift through.
I was completely numb, and I knew I couldn’t be here any longer. I had to get away from all of it. I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d never recover. I weaved my way back to the front of the house, adjusting my dress, putting my heels on, and wiping at my face in an attempt to appear less disheveled. As promised, Daniel was waiting for me.
“Ready to go home, Ms. Morgan?”
I took one last look at the beautiful house at the bottom of the hill before sliding into the back seat. “I’ll never be ready for this goodbye, but it’s time to go.”