Chapter 6 #3
“So then what?” His eyes stay on mine, steady and direct.
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to use a rental car that I will provide so you can get to the hospital and to the rink to fulfil your obligations.
You will not complain about it because you can give the car back when and if you are able to buy another one, but until that time, you will use the car that I provide.
It will be at your apartment building in the morning.
Don’t say yes or no. Don’t say anything.
We need you to be able to get to practices and this is the only way you’ll be able to do that reliably. ”
I look away, toward the play area where Ethan is hanging upside down from the jungle gym. The tight knot in my chest that has lived there for the past year presses harder.
“I don’t understand why you even want to do this,” I say, quieter now. “You don’t know me that well, Grayson. You don’t know me at all.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and my gaze flickers back to him.
His expression shifts, the easy teasing replaced by something more honest. “No,” he replies after a moment. “You’re right. I don’t. But Ethan is attached to you for some reason. My son is my whole world, Miranda. No matter what you may think of me, everything I do is for him.”
The knot in my chest loosens just enough to ache differently.
“Grayson—”
“I’m not done.” He leans forward slightly.
“You are also about to be working directly inside my pack’s—” He stops and adjusts.
“My team’s inner circle. That means your problems become visible to people I care about protecting.
Those men coming after you in that parking lot is not something I can just ignore. ”
Before I can respond, the food arrives. It’s a pizza the size of a small table, steaming and fragrant, and from somewhere across the play structure comes the shriek of a four-year-old who has apparently been monitoring the situation.
Ethan hits the table at full speed, slightly out of breath, foam block still clutched in one hand.
“Is that the pizza?” he demands, climbing into his chair with great urgency.
“Sit properly,” Grayson says automatically.
Ethan sits properly. Then immediately reaches for a slice.
“It’s hot,” I warn him.
He freezes, hand hovering, and looks at me.
“Give it one minute,” I tell him. “Or you’ll burn your tongue and then you won’t be able to taste any of it.”
He withdraws his hand and folds both in his lap with the gravity of someone making an enormous sacrifice, staring at the pizza with absolute focus, like he can cool it faster through sheer force of will.
Grayson is watching me from across the table.
I pick up a slice, check the temperature, and set it on Ethan’s plate.
“Now?” Ethan asks.
“Now,” I confirm.
He takes a bite, and his entire face transforms into pure joy.
I pick up my own slice and stare at it, the earlier conversation sitting unfinished between Grayson and me like a door left open. I can feel him still watching. Waiting.
I take a bite and say nothing.
He lets me have the silence, which is somehow the most unsettling thing he’s done all day.
The drive back is quiet. Ethan lasts approximately eight minutes before going completely limp in his car seat, mouth slightly open as he sleeps.
I look out the passenger window and try not to think about Grayson’s words or the kiss. I don’t understand this man. And I don’t want to. I especially want to forget that the kiss ever happened.
The problem is my body hasn’t gotten the memo that it was a mistake. My lips still feel the pressure of his. My hair still remembers his hand fisting in it. There was nothing tentative about the way he kissed me, and I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed like that.
The city lights slide past the window.
I press my knees together and stare very hard at a traffic light.
“You’re quiet,” Grayson says.
“I’m always quiet.”
“Not usually.” He changes lanes. “Usually you’re explaining to me in great detail why I’m wrong about something.”
“Maybe I’m tired.”
He doesn’t push it. We drive the rest of the way in silence, and it is somehow worse because the silence is comfortable. It shouldn’t be comfortable. Nothing about this should be comfortable.
We’re two blocks from my building when Ethan stirs.
“Dad.” His voice is small and urgent. “I have to pee.”
Grayson glances at me.
I look at the clock on the dashboard. Then I look at my building coming up on the right.
I know what I’m about to say, and I already regret it. “I live right there. He can use mine.”
My apartment looks worse at night.
The elevator is broken, so we take the stairs.
I’m acutely aware of every scuff on the walls as we climb.
Every flickering bulb. The carpet on the second floor landing that’s worn so thin in the middle you can see the concrete underneath.
I’ve stopped noticing these things. I walk past them every day without registering them.
But right now, with Grayson Wolfe’s footsteps behind me, I notice every single one.
I get my key in the lock on the second try.
The first thing I see when I open the door is the gap where the bookshelf used to be. Then the indentations in the carpet where the dining table stood before I sold it. Then the single secondhand couch sitting in the center of a room that is clearly meant to hold more furniture than it does.
I don’t look at him.
I drop my keys on the hook by the door and keep moving because if I move, I don’t have to stand here and watch him take it all in.
“Bathroom?” Grayson asks.
“Down the hall. First door.”
He takes Ethan and disappears, and I let out a slow breath. Then I go to the kitchen because standing in my own living room feeling self-conscious about it is not something I’m willing to do.
I fill the kettle. I pull two mugs down from the cabinet. I focus on the familiar small motions of making coffee because they give my hands something to do and my brain something to track that isn’t the sound of Grayson’s footsteps coming back down the hall.
They stop at the kitchen doorway.
I don’t turn around. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
I hear him settle into the room. I can feel him looking around, and I busy myself with the mugs and refuse to offer any commentary on what he’s seeing.
“Where’s Ethan?” I ask.
“Living room. He found the couch.”