Chapter 22 Everly
EVERLY
For hours now, I’ve been breathing in Grey’s woodsy air fragrance, reminding me of fresh split cedar or cypress. I think it, or the long day of travel so far, has me thinking sideways or upside down.
I don’t know why I told him about my personal life and past. Smoothing a fresh page in the Cookie Dough Diary, I write an entry about the last twenty-four hours, pouring out my confusion, but also that I’m grateful Grey stepped in when Todd threatened me because I don’t know what he planned to do or how I would’ve gotten out of it.
“Did I say too much?” Grey’s voice floats to me.
“Are you over there overthinking? That’s my gig.”
“You’re an overthinker?”
“Over analyzer. Over feeler. Over everything. Over and over. Probably used to be an over spender, but I don’t have that problem anymore.
Though when I got my first paycheck from Blancbourg, I did buy an adult-style pair of pants, shorts, and a couple of tops because I’d started to consider fashioning a frock out of the drapes in my suite a la the film Gone with the Wind. ”
The corners of Grey’s lips tease a lopsided smile, which is a step up from the ghost of a grin I usually see.
This is progress, people!
“Since we’re going to be together for the next few weeks, I, um, thought we should try to get to know each other better.” He seems nervous, like there’s something else he wants me to know, but isn’t sure how to say it.
If the guy can tell me I’m hot—I have to fan myself just thinking about it—I’m sure he can come clean about whatever other secrets lurk in the recesses of his mind.
“Want to play two truths and one lie?” I ask and explain the rules in which we each reveal two facts about ourselves and one fabrication that’s outrageous but plausible.
“I was thinking more like twenty questions.”
“How long is this flight?”
Grey takes my diary and opens it to a new page. He writes the numeral one and then proceeds to write a list, numbering each one. “This is what I want to know about you.” He gives me the notebook back.
“You want to know about my relationship with Todd?” I read the first one.
“When we got hitched, I didn’t realize you were engaged before.” His eyes land on the ring he’d given me on that very strange day several months earlier.
“Does it matter?”
“If the guy is threatening you, yeah. It’s my business.”
“Might I remind you of the MOC Club rules?”
“And one of mine is no woman in my life, least of all my wife, Marriage of Convenience Club or not, is going to be threatened by some jerk knob.”
“Fair enough. Don’t Hulk out here, we’re in a metal tube hurtling through the sky, thousands of feet in the air, no trapeze net below.”
“My Hulk days are behind us.”
“You want to know if I’m afraid of Todd’s blackmail and threats?” I don’t even pause to think. “When I’m with you, no. With him? Yes.”
He stiffens beside me.
I read the next item on the list. “You still want to know what I did wrong.” My lips turn down. “I told you. I almost married Todd. Didn’t think I’d get a second chance at marriage.”
“So, you believe in second chances?”
“To a fault. Sometimes third and fourth chances, too.”
“Are you referring to Todd?” Grey says my ex-fiancé’s name with disgust.
“But there’s no chance I’ll ever give him the time of day again. Okay, if he was waiting for a train, I’d tell him because that would mean he’d be traveling away from me.”
Grey runs his finger down the paper. “My mother taught me to make lists. She said it keeps the head organized. Out of the mind and onto paper. Frees up space for creativity.”
“You don’t strike me as a particularly creative guy. More strategic. Analytical.”
He wears a lopsided smirk. “Ah, that reminds me. I have one more question. Your father and our marriage. How will that go over with the Ice King?”
At the mention of my father, my insides freeze like I’ve been tossed into a vat of dry ice. Fitting, since Dreven Lefevre is the Ice King.
I write my own list of questions on the page and Grey reads them.
“I’ll tell you about the scar if you answer one more item from this list,” Grey says.
There’s more I want to know about him than that, but it’s a start.
Turning to face Grey, I take in his distinct cheekbones, the crystalline gray eyes that see more than I expected, and then land on his lips—they’re perfectly proportioned, only interrupted by the scar running across his lower one.
I touch my finger to it from where it runs through the scruff of his beard across his lips. My entire body quakes.
For once, Grey doesn’t frown. “The story goes, I wasn’t born as a boy, but as a fish. My father had been out in his boat one day on Lake Superior. My mother was home with my older brother, Bran, and pregnant with me.”
He says his brother’s name with a mixture of affection and something else I can’t identify.
“Dad cast his line and almost instantly the bobber disappeared. Whatever he caught fought with him, practically dragging the boat through the water. At last, Dad let the line go slack. His catch also went still as though Dad and the fish had reached an agreement. The man could catch the fish if he did it peacefully, reverently. So, he said a prayer and when he finally pulled in the line, it was a massive sturgeon—the biggest he’d ever seen.
By his estimate, it weighed about two hundred pounds.
He released it, of course, but—” Grey taps his scar. “Not without leaving a mark.”
I lean close, transfixed.
“I was born on the same day. The fish and I were one and the same. Big, strong, and tranquil in our own ways.”
I have to agree. Well, except when he Hulk smashed the salon and nearly broke Todd in half. I’m making a list of my own about him. What changed that made him go from peaceful to enraged?
“Okay, your turn,” he says.
I’m sure that isn’t the real story of how he got the scar—a fishing accident, maybe? Brothers horsing around? I, too, have a vivid imagination and like the fish version better than whatever probably sent his mother in a panic to the emergency room.
Now it’s my turn to bear my secret. My hand drifts to my chest. “I have scars too.”
Grey stiffens.
“Don’t worry. They’re not from Todd, but they explain his comment about me being a real woman.”
Grey’s eyes shadow. “Everly, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay.” I’m going to try to be strong like the ant and want to tell him. “Even though Todd’s comment was intended to hurt me, I don’t believe what he said. I know the truth, even if it’s a tough one. I want you to know that.”
He nods.
“While Todd and I were engaged, I went for a regular checkup and learned that there were some concerning results to my blood work. Ultimately, I learned that I had abnormal cells in my breast tissue. To spare you the details of the doctor’s visits, the anxiety as I waited for test results, and discovering Todd’s multiple cases of infidelity, I was officially diagnosed with breast cancer. ” My voice falters.
It still doesn’t seem real, but I’m not removed enough from it yet for the words themselves not to have an effect.
Grey’s hand grips mine, strengthening me to go on.
“This isn’t true for everyone, but in my case, the clear way to proceed was a double mastectomy because I carry a unique gene that could cause a mutation, putting my life at risk in the future.
I didn’t think I’d have to face something like that so young.
It was my first screening for breast irregularities.
” I pause and swallow back the tightness in my jaw.
“Turned out, Todd was already cheating, but he was appalled. I was also already on his health insurance. When I didn’t say, ‘I do,’ we reached an agreement.
Kind of like your dad and the fish. He’d leave me alone if I walked away quietly, leaving everything to him.
In the process, I lost my home, my health insurance, friends, family. ..”
“That’s where I came in. Health insurance.”
I nod. “I’d exhausted all of my options. Partly because of the cost, but also because it just didn’t feel like the right choice, I opted not to have reconstructive surgery.” I glance down at my mother’s pale pink scarf draped over my shoulders and hanging across my chest.
Grey fills the space in front of me as he inclines his head and then tucks a piece of hair behind my ear.
“You are so brave and every bit a woman as there ever has been, Everly. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, inside and out.
I didn’t mean to push you, but thank you for sharing that with me.
Now I understand why—” He loops his finger around my fourth finger on my left hand, squeezing it.
“And thank you for your generosity and understanding.”
I rarely tell anyone, but he offered me his hand in marriage and thereby his insurance with very little explanation.
He flashes his lopsided smile, and with it, I risk telling him anything...even the tickly tease coming from low in my belly, the hidden chambers of my heart, and the back of my mind.
I like Grey Adams. I like him a lot.