Chapter 19 Grey
GREY
Everly’s eyes are damp, but her hand is still in mine, clutching tightly. I didn’t want her to see me Hulk out again, but wasn’t about to let the loser manhandle her. Taking a cooling breath, I move us toward the gate in front of the manor, eager for this to be over.
But it isn’t, as Todd quickly gets back to his feet, glaring and snarling. He looks me over carefully, warily, perhaps realizing that I’m a real-life Hulk. As though shifting tack, he slowly, methodically brushes off as though no harm was done.
I’ve been around every kind of machismo with guys posturing and puffing up like they’re the alpha dog. I know Todd’s brand well—he makes other people feel vulnerable and powerless to build himself up because, in reality, guys like him are cowards.
“Have we met?” Todd asks, extending a hand.
I angle myself protectively in front of Everly and ignore his gesture. Forget manners, I won’t dignify the guy with a handshake.
His lips pucker with superiority. “I’m Everly’s husband.”
I scoff. “I’m her husband and if you ever touch her again, I’ll introduce you to Lightning and Thunder—” At least, that’s what the Bruisers call my fists.
“You’re her what?” Todd thrusts his chest out and sneers. “I thought it was for show. Who’d actually want to marry you?”
A growl grows inside. “She broke up with you. She moved on. Try to keep up with the times, buddy.” I say, once more shifting toward the gate.
“You haven’t seen the last of me, Everly.” He stabs the air, pointing at me. “You’re going to be hearing from my lawyer.”
His threat to Everly and his arrogance toward me cause my caged rage to boil to the surface. “You think money and the lawyers it can buy will protect you from me if I ever see you near her again?”
“She’ll have no idea what hit her,” Todd hisses.
I turn to Everly because those words alone sounded like a slap, when a pair of arms wrap around me. Todd is like a toddler trying to move a football sled across the field during practice. I don’t budge as he attempts to take me down. I almost laugh, but spare him the embarrassment.
Instead, I turn around slowly and pick Todd up by the scruff of his neck. The guy’s feet dangle in the air as he kicks out.
“Dude, I suggest you give it a rest.” My voice is a growl. To make my point, I say words that I hope the Good Lord will forgive. After I lower Todd down, he twitches but acts like I didn’t intimidate him at all. Apparently, Everly’s ex is a bully and an idiot on top of being a coward.
I take her hand because I need something soft and strong to hold onto otherwise, I’m going to pound Todd into the ground.
“She’s mine,” he shouts. “You haven’t seen the last of me.”
I stop mid-stride and bellow, “I heard the entire exchange before I stepped in. You’re using her and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll listen to what she said and get out of her life.”
“This isn’t over. I’m going to prove she cheated on me with you,” he says as though thinking up the scheme on the spot. “I’m going to ruin her life...and yours.”
I laugh darkly. My life has already been ruined. There is nothing Todd could do to compare with what I recently experienced.
“You already ruined my life, Todd,” Everly says as tears make a slow crawl down her face.
“I know people in high places and they’re going to make you both pay,” Todd shouts.
Everly throws her hands in the air. “Haven’t I paid? Haven’t I suffered enough?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right.” Todd’s laugh echoes in the night. “I guess I ought to find myself a real woman.”
“She’s every bit a real woman,” I growl. “Come on, let’s go.” Once more, my hand closes tightly around Everly’s.
She sinks into herself. I want to get her out of here immediately. There is no sense in hearing any more of Todd’s poisonous words.
“Oh, I guess you don’t know about her surgery.” Todd’s lips slide into a sinister smile. “Strange that a married couple doesn’t share a room. Though I guess with a house that big, you can afford all the space you desire. Speaking of money, you can buy my silence,” Todd says.
“The only thing I’ll be buying you is a knuckle sandwich with your name on it. Now, get lost.” I shake with anger. I turn to Everly, who grips my hand. “This guy doesn’t quit, huh?”
She shakes her head. “No. He doesn’t.”
But I’m not going to give him another inch or second of my time.
With Everly close by my side, we return to Blancbourg.
Preoccupied with the conversation I heard between her and Todd, the threats the idiot made, and the fury knocking around under my skin, begging to be let out, I don’t stop until we’re in front of the door to my suite.
It’s much smaller than Everly’s but has a living area and an adjacent bedroom and bathroom.
I’m not going to lie, my space isn’t the picture of tidiness. Dirty athletic clothes hang off a chair, several cups of water litter the table, and I haven’t made my bed all week.
“I should go to my room.” Everly lingers in the doorway.
“How’d he know we don’t share one?” I ask, pacing in front of the windows where I’d seen her leaving the school and then returning when Todd appeared from the shadows.
“Good guess?”
“Has he been up here? Maybe you’re better off with me for now.”
“He’s as perceptive as he is manipulative. You’re not wearing a wedding ring. But he hasn’t been up here that I know of.”
“How’d he know you’re here to begin with?”
She shrugs. “He’s been texting me.” Her face falls as if she realizes something and scrambles in her purse for her phone. “He set up my phone, so he’d know where it is. Where I was.” She taps it a few times and then closes her eyes briefly as though recovering from the encounter with her ex.
A dark thought stops me in my tracks. What if I hadn’t seen her at that moment? What if I’d ignored the urge to run to her aid? What would that despicable man have done?
I guzzle a glass of water to cool myself off because I have a mind to go find the guy and make sure he never sees the light of day, or night, again.
“Where are my manners?” I mutter.
I pass Everly a glass of water. Our hands brush when she takes it and she’s still trembling. More than anything, I want her to return to her sunny, smiling self.
“I only have water and beef jerky. Want some?”
A faint grin flits over her lips. “You were more than a gentleman back there. A dangerous gentleman. Thank you.”
I brace myself on the back of an armchair. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Tears fill her eyes.
“I’d like to know what’s going on. I heard what he said.”
My brother once told me there are three kinds of people in the world: wolves, sheep, and sheep dogs.
The wolf, not to be confused with Connor Wolfe, is vicious and not to be trusted with sheep.
The sheep will blindly walk into the wolf’s den.
However, sheepdogs are there to protect them and will do so viciously, if necessary.
Bran said we’re sheepdogs. I may not have joined the military, but I am here for Everly.
Todd pushed me to the edge and the teeth came out.
“You heard everything before you Hulked out again?” She avoids looking at me. Is she ashamed? Embarrassed? Hurt?
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” My tone is as solid as rock.
“Didn’t I?” she asks in a small voice.
“I heard enough to be certain that there is nothing you could do to satisfy a guy like Todd. He’s a monster and only wants power over you.”
A sad sound of affirmation breaks loose and she presses her hands to her face.
It hollows me out seeing her so upset and thinking she did anything wrong.
I crouch down in front of her, gripping her hands. “Everly, please talk to me. Let me help you...” I hesitate before saying the next part, but seeing her small hands nestled in mine and wearing the ring draws them out. “I’m your husband.”
At that, the tears fall. Once again, she seeks refuge in my embrace. I bring her into my arms and hold her, keeping her safe while she cries.
I despise the idea that Todd caused her any amount of pain. I want to drain it all away, so she can be her energetic, carefree, tear-free, bubbly, dream girl self.
Time doesn’t matter as I keep her in the shelter of my embrace. But when she does stop crying, she says, “Now I have something to add to my thankful three of the day. You, you, and you.”
Me?
“I don’t know what sewer that guy crawled out of, but if he ever comes around again—”
“Thank you,” she interrupts as if not wanting the details of what I’ll do to Todd’s face if he so much as looks at Everly again.
A beat passes, and I ask, “Where’d you find him?
She snorts. “Todd was the original marriage of convenience. Er, engagement of appeasement. When Todd expressed interest, my father, for the first time in years, paid attention to me. He strongly urged me to go through with it. Looking back, they arranged it all before Todd and I met at a dinner party, hosted by one of my father’s associates.
It was a business merger with me in the middle. ”
“I take it you didn’t bring along one of your tattooed biker boyfriends.”
She sniffles a chuckle. “No, this all happened well after that phase.”
“Did you love him?”
“Todd? No. He was toxic, ornery, demanding, and deceitful. T-o-d-d. I ran out on our wedding and I gave up on love, figuring it’s not going to happen. Coming here was my chance to start over. Funny, it led me back to you.”
Our eyes drift together, not sure where to land.
Everly bites her lip. “I got a second chance at life, but I’d never give Todd a second chance.
I didn’t love him in the first place, but thought it could grow into love.
” She lets out a breath, then adds, “What about you? Did you get hit by the unrequited love arrow or are you walking around with a wounded heart?”
“More like a cold heart.” I press my hand to my chest. “A lifeless lump.”
“Sounds like you’re describing a dead fish.”
“May as well be.”
“Oh, come on. Did some gorgeous vixen trample all over your ego?”
“Hardly. I was engaged once, too. Life happened and—” I pause, tentative about whether to share more. I brush a loose wave behind Everly’s ear. “I wasn’t in love, though.”
“Sounds like you have a story there.”
“A story for another time.”
“I’m in your debt, Grey. Twice now.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say softly.
With us seated on the sofa and my arms wrapped around her, she nestles in. It’s pure comfort. Everly takes my hands in hers and studies the callouses and lines. “You sure I can’t do anything to help you? You have big hands.”
“They’re full.”
“I can try to lighten your load, but they don’t look full.”
“Trust me. They are.”
Through long, feathery lashes, she looks up at me. I take flight in her sunny green eyes.
She says, “I do trust you.”
I crash land and say, “That’s probably not a good idea.” The guilt about my ex and Sonny takes swipes at me. But I’m too tired to fight back at the moment. Too comfortable. Too lost with this woman in my arms.
We both must doze off because the grandfather clock from downstairs in the manor strikes midnight.
I don’t sleep much as my mind winds around what I overheard and witnessed, the threats Todd spewed, and Everly’s response.
I’m on alert and watchful, even though Everly is with me here and not alone in her suite. Protecting her reminds me of how my brother always looked after me when we were growing up.
I arrived late to my girth and strength. I’d been relatively scrawny through middle school and the first couple of years of high school. Then I had a huge growth spurt, shocking my brother when he came home on leave.
Bran wasn’t afraid of hard work and taught me everything he learned in boot camp—when most guys on leave would be lounging around and relaxing, he was exercising and studying.
Bran’s influence served me well afterward when all I could do to keep going was to continue lifting, running, and working out. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane.
The sense of protectiveness for Everly collides with a new, unfamiliar desire to see her lips lift into a smile and for her to be able to take a deep breath and feel calm. I want to do whatever I can to lift this burden, to see her happy.
But how can I do that if I’m as grumpy and grouchy as a guy can get?