23 - Grayson
Grayson
The bar is quieter than usual, considering it’s a weeknight, occupied mostly by regulars scattered throughout the room.
A basketball game plays silently on one of the televisions while low music drifts through the speakers, loud enough to fill the empty spaces without forcing anyone to raise their voice.
I find myself looking toward the entrance every few minutes.
I knew Avery wasn’t coming when Harper walked through the door with Wesley and Sloane trailing behind her, because Avery is almost always the first person through any doorway, usually talking before she’s even inside the room and managing to become the center of attention without trying.
Hell, I knew she wasn’t coming tonight as soon as her text landed in my messages.
There’s nothing to talk about.
Three days later, and the words still piss me off.
One minute she’s tangled up with me, looking at me like she wants to be there just as much as I want her there, and the next she’s fleeing the room, sending cold texts, and refusing to show up anywhere I am.
I’m the asshole because she told me exactly what it was, and because I’m apparently unable to stay unattached, I’ve turned it into more. Something that might actually be worth trying out if she would quit avoiding me for two fucking seconds.
Liam laughs from somewhere behind me before wandering toward the soccer table, deciding he’d rather bother them than us.
The conversation around our table continues, but I barely hear any of it, my attention drifting despite myself toward the group at the table next to ours, where she should be.
A little while later, Liam’s voice carries clearly through the bar.
“Wait. Where’s Avery?”
Every muscle in my body freezes as I listen for Wesley’s reply.
“She’s sick.”
“Sick?” Liam asks.
Sloane nods. “Hasn’t really left her apartment.”
Harper lets out a small laugh. “Pretty sure she’s surviving entirely on takeout and microwave meals.”
Either Avery is actually sick, or she’s using it as a bullshit excuse to avoid me. Either way, it stops now.
I stare at my beer for another few seconds before standing.
Nathan immediately notices.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
Wyatt raises an eyebrow over the rim of his drink, his gaze locking onto mine long enough that I know he doesn’t believe me. There’s a knowing look on his face that makes me want to tell him to mind his own business, but he’s probably already figured out exactly where I’m headed.
Whatever.
At this point, I’m done pretending Avery gets to decide this conversation isn’t happening.
If she regrets what happened between us, she can tell me that to my face.
If she thinks I’m turning this into something it’s not, she can tell me that to my face, too.
If she’s decided that sleeping together was a mistake, that we’re only enemies, that she never wants to see me again, or any of the other hundred explanations I’ve spent the last three days trying and failing not to obsess over, then she can look me in the eye and say it.
What she doesn’t get to do is disappear, not after spending a night wrapped around me.
I pull my phone out as I walk through the parking lot, firing off a text before I can think about what I’m doing.
Me: Can you send me your chicken noodle soup recipe?
The reply comes almost instantly. It always does.
Mom: Of course, sweetie. If you’re feeling sick, make sure you get some rest too. Love you.
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth pulls upward.
The recipe follows in the next message, and I use it as a grocery list twenty minutes later while walking through the same store where Avery nearly ran me over with a shopping cart back in January. Somewhere between grabbing carrots and egg noodles, I realize it’s been four months since that day.
Last year, I promised myself to give it a rest. Dating women who don’t feel right and trying to bend the relationship into what I wanted it to be never got me anywhere.
Is that what I’m doing with Avery?
She’s spent four months telling me exactly what she doesn’t want, but I’m still fighting for her to let me in.
She says there’s nothing to talk about, and I’m standing in the produce aisle buying ingredients for homemade soup.
Maybe she was right about the hero complex, because even knowing that I might be doing the same shit I’ve always done, I can’t fight the urge to check on her.
Maybe she’s avoiding me because she felt the same shift I did, or maybe I’m too much of an asshole to take a hint. Either way, I’m finding out tonight.
I toss the last item into my cart and check out without hesitation.
Groceries fill the passenger seat beside me as I park outside of Avery’s apartment with the kind of determination I usually reserve for playoff games.
The entire drive over, part of me expected my common sense to kick in. But now that I’m here, staring up at the building with her on the other side of the door, I have no intention of turning around.
I knock once, then wait so long I start wondering if she’s home at all. I knock harder, my patience thinning with every passing second.
The door flies open before I can knock a third time.
“What part of leave it at the door don’t people underst–”
She cuts herself off when she sees me, and whatever irritation I walked in here carrying disappears just as fast.
She’s wearing my shirt.
My fucking shirt.
The oversized black Blades t-shirt she’d stolen the morning after she slept in my apartment. My name stretches across the back, and the sight of it hits low in my gut.
It hangs to the middle of her thighs, the sleeves swallowing half her arms, her hair piled messily on top of her head while she squints at me as if trying to figure out whether I’m real or a hallucination.
Does she ever not look absolutely stunning?
Hope surges through me because people don’t accidentally wear someone else’s shirt. They don’t pull it out of their closet and throw it on without thinking. Especially not Avery after sending a text that basically told me to fuck off.
Maybe this whole thing isn’t as one-sided as she’s pretending.
Then she narrows her eyes and glares.
Never mind.
“I thought you were my takeout,” she says flatly.
I hold up the grocery bags in my hands. “Close enough.”
“Leave.”
“No.”
“Amazing. Glad we cleared that up.”
She starts shutting the door in my face, but I wedge my foot into the opening before she can.
“Grayson.”
“Chaos.”
“You can’t just show up at my apartment.”
“I literally already did.”
Her eyes narrow while mine drift back to the shirt she’s wearing, because she can act annoyed all she wants, but the fact that she answered the door in my clothes feels a little too significant to ignore.
“You’re supposed to be sick,” I say.
“I’m sick.”
“You look fine.”
“You’re annoying.”
“You’re wearing my shirt.”
Her expression flickers just enough to tell me she hadn’t realized it until now, a faint blush creeping up her neck before she rolls her eyes. “There were laundry-related circumstances.”
“Sure.”
“Get your foot out of my door.”
“Are you going to slam it on me?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
I shouldn’t enjoy irritating her this much. I really shouldn’t, but after days of silence, I can’t stop from gently pushing the door.
Her eyes widen. “You can’t just invite yourself into my place.”
“I’m not inviting myself.”
“Then what exactly are you doing?”
I squeeze through the gap before she can stop me.
“A hostile takeover.”
“Grayson!” She squeals, the sound echoing through her foyer.
I set the grocery bags down on her kitchen counter while she lingers in the doorway, arms folded, expression caught somewhere between disbelief and mild betrayal.
My eyes scan her space, noticing how it feels like her in a way I can’t quite explain.
It’s all warm velvet textures and soft gold tones layered through the decor.
It’s cluttered and a bit messy, but in a comfortable way.
“You told me you wouldn’t try to buy my groceries again,” she says, already digging through the bags.
“Technically,” I reply, leaning against the counter like I’ve done this a hundred times before, “I bought myself groceries. I’m just choosing to prepare and consume them in your kitchen, which is really more of a location-based decision than a violation of any agreement we may or may not have made. ”
Her eyes narrow. “You’re cooking?”
I glance over my shoulder at her, watching the way she pauses with a bag of carrots in her hand as if I’ve just confessed to a crime.
“Yeah,” I say, a small smirk pulling at my mouth, “it’s that thing where you cut food into pieces, mix it, heat it up, and somehow it becomes something people eat, unlike the trash you’re used to.”
She sticks her tongue out, but I notice a smile twitch at her lips.
“I’m making the soup either way because now I want some,” I continue, pulling a pot down from the cabinet, “but if this whole sick thing was actually just a way to get out of going out tonight, I can also bake cookies.”
Her face perks up.
“Am I baking the cookies, Chaos?”
I laugh when she nods her head vigorously, so I start pulling ingredients together on instinct.
“You can make the food,” she says, sliding onto a barstool and watching me like I’m entertaining and inconvenient at the same time, “and then you can leave.”
“Sure,” I answer, grabbing a knife and setting a cutting board down, “we can eat, and I’ll leave. Right after we talk.”
Her expression hardens instantly. “I didn’t agree to any talking.”
“Too bad.”
She exhales through her nose, dragging both hands through her hair like she’s trying to reset her patience.
“You said you’d stop avoiding me,” I add, quieter now, because I hate how much it matters.
“I’m not avoiding you.”
I stop cutting to look at her. “Then what is this?”
“Not everything I do revolves around you, Grayson.”
It’s harsh, but her eyes hold mine, shimmering with honesty.
I stand there, knife in my hand, realizing that I might’ve walked in here ready to fight a version of her that only exists in my head.
“Okay,” I admit finally, letting out a breath as I turn back to the counter. “I might’ve jumped to conclusions.”
I dump the vegetables into the pot and turn the heat on, the kitchen filling with the faint sound of simmering water as I reach for the cookie ingredients next to busy my hands.
“It’s fine,” she says after a beat, quieter now. “I just ran into my ex while we were in New York. It fucked with my head a bit.”
“Damon,” I say as it clicks into place. I should’ve considered it sooner instead of assuming I was the center of the problem.
“How much do you know about my ex?”
“No more than anyone else.”
I roll out the cookie dough while my brain starts rearranging everything I thought I knew about the last three days.
Tearing off a piece of dough, I hand it to her without thinking. She takes it, chewing slowly, shoulders dropping just a fraction like her body is tired of holding everything in place.
“Yeah,” she mutters as if trying to make it sound like it’s not a big deal, “he’s an asshole. He said some asshole shit, so I’ve just been kind of… stuck in it. It’ll pass.”
“What did he say?” I ask, and whatever edge was in my voice before is gone now, because I just want to understand what bothered her enough to make her disappear.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Chaos.” Her name comes out as less of a demand and more of a warning because I’ve seen this pattern with her before, shutting down when she should be opening up.
“One of his teammates saw us at the club,” she says, not looking at me, “you and I dancing, and he… didn’t like it.”
I stop completely, shoulders tensing.
Everything from the last few days reframes itself. None of her silence has been to distance herself from me. It’s all been to distance herself from whatever wounds that encounter reopened.
“What did he say?” I ask, and there’s nothing left in my voice except control I’m barely holding onto.
“It really doesn’t matter,” she repeats, her voice cracking.
The hell it doesn’t.
I watch her closely, even while she avoids meeting my eyes. Then, I step away from the counter before I even realize I’m moving, circling around the island until I’m in front of her. Screw the distance she keeps trying to put between us.
“Did you text me before or after you saw him?”
She hesitates, and I already know.
“After,” she admits.
Of course, it was after. She got hit with her history and then disappeared to avoid having to deal with any of it. I don’t want her to hide away, though.
I step closer, my legs bracketing hers where she’s sitting on the stool. She freezes as if she’s bracing for impact.
“If you don’t want me,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I expect, “if you don’t like me, if I’m just some mistake you’re trying to avoid repeating, then fine, I can learn to live with that. I can do whatever you want me to do, but baby, please, I need you to tell me what happened.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, and for the first time tonight, she doesn’t have a defense ready.
“I need to understand,” I say, quieter now, “why you keep shutting people out like it’s safer to be alone than to let someone stay. Please just stop sitting here insisting you’re fine when you’re not.”
Her face cracks as she lets out a breath. I reach up, tucking a stray piece of her hair behind her ear like I’ve been doing it my whole life, even though this is still new and messy and undefined.
“It’s not the sob story you think it is.”
“I don’t care about what kind of story it is. I just care that it’s yours.”
“I’ve never really talked about it.”
“Then maybe it’s time you do.”