After
AFTER
Grayson shows up bearing gifts—a brown paper bag that smells like an overworked fryer, a bottle of Scotch, and more Cabernet, to be exact.
“Grease and alcohol,” I say when I swing the door open. “It’s like you’re trying to charm me.”
He does an obvious double take. “Wow. Yes. I am. Though if I’d known you were going to answer the door looking like that, I would’ve brought you the whole damn cow. The whole damn liquor store, too.”
A flutter races up my spine. How does he do that? I say something innocuous, and he escalates it with no apparent effort.
I do my utmost to sound unaffected. “Actually, kettle corn would’ve been the likeliest way to get results. But now you know.”
His eyes rove. “Now I know.”
The words sound completely different in his throaty purr, and I succumb to a full-body shiver. Great. We’ve exchanged roughly ten sentences and I can already tell I’m playing with fire.
Some irredeemable part of me decides that means I should pull the door open wider. “Would you like to come in?”
“Hell yes,” he says.
Yep. Definitely in trouble.
Inside, I lead Grayson to the kitchen, where he sets down the food while I pull paper cups from the cupboard. “Sorry I don’t have any glass—”
When I turn, he’s standing close, hemming me against the counter with a wall of muscle and sparking eyes. Whatever I was about to say evaporates.
“You look incredible,” he says.
I take the flimsiest of breaths. “Thanks. So do you.”
“I want to touch you.”
He says it just like that, hoarse and heated, and makes no move to step away.
I pretend my heartbeat hasn’t taken up residence in the roof of my mouth. “Is it the eyeliner? Wow. I guess I know now why this stuff costs forty bucks a tube.”
He chuffs, not quite a chuckle. “No. I wanted to touch you earlier, at the coffee shop. I was dying to, actually. But I wasn’t sure you wanted that. And we had an audience. Now we don’t.”
My mind gears up for some tired calculation about what will happen if I agree. But the machinery sputters out before it truly gets started, because for once, I don’t actually care to think. I just want to feel .
As if in slow motion, I set the cups aside and reach for his chest. A breath hisses from between his teeth at the contact.
His heartbeat slams against my palm like a fist on a door, demanding entry. His hands come up to cage me against the counter. The leathery musk of his jacket hits me, undercut with a note of...something I can’t quite identify. Whatever it is, it makes my stomach melt into a delicious surge of heat.
“Tell me to stop,” he says. “Say one word, and I’ll leave you alone.”
I hold his gaze and lift my chin. And say nothing.
His oceanic eyes heat to a simmer. When he bends down, I expect him to kiss me, but he angles past and presses his lips to my neck.
Wet warmth hits my skin. A mewl of surrender sneaks out as he tongues the shivery spot below my ear. My back arches. He kisses and sucks, gentle enough not to leave a mark, but firm enough to send my rationality draining into the floor.
I clutch at his shirt and fist my other hand into the glossy temptation of his hair. He resists without even seeming to. No matter how desperately I try to pull him closer, the pressure of his mouth remains steady, a torture of nips and soft, sliding heat.
It’s exquisite. Excruciating. I close my eyes and come within a hairbreadth of asking him to hoist me onto the counter and splay me open right here. It’s been so long. Far, far too long, and I can already feel the gathering electricity at the base of my spine that means I’ll fall apart in moments.
But I want this beautiful torment to last. Because who knows when I’ll feel it again? When I’ll indulge like this?
Maybe never. Once I give in, Grayson will undoubtedly find some new conquest—maybe a mountain, maybe a woman—which suits me fine. It’ll save me from having to cut him loose myself.
He kisses his way down my neck and slides his tongue along the exposed half of my collarbone. When he pulls away, he leaves me draped against the counter like a limp rag.
“Is that it?” I say weakly.
“For now.” His tongue sweeps out over his bottom lip, as if gathering up my taste. “I’m hungry, first. For food. And I owe you a rematch.”
“A rematch?”
“At Monopoly.”
“Monopoly,” I say, apparently incapable of doing anything except parroting his words back to him.
A slow, sultry smile claims his mouth. He knows exactly what he’s doing, the jerk. “Oh, come on, don’t look so disappointed. We could play for clothes this time, instead of secrets. If you want.”
“As in...strip Monopoly?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I straighten. My fingers have left his hair a tousled golden mess, and his mystery tattoo peeks out at me again.
The quiet flames of curiosity ignite beneath my skin, clearing my mind. “Actually...I like that idea. A lot.”
With a grin, he reaches past my shoulder to grab some paper plates. “I had a feeling you might.”
Like before, we sit by the fire, but this feels different. Last night, we were exploring one another, feeling each other out. Tonight, we trade smoldering glances that have nothing to do with the heat pouring from the hearth and everything to do with the fact that we’re two adults who already know exactly how this evening will end.
Our fingers brush as we whittle down the fries. The cheeseburgers disappear, too, and when we push the plates aside, Grayson stretches out on his side to take pulls of Scotch while I sip at my wine.
He hasn’t shed his jacket. Dots of perspiration glisten at his hairline.
I imagine catching one in my mouth, how the prickle of salt would blossom on my tongue. “Aren’t you hot in that?”
“I’m roasting. But I don’t have all that many clothes on, and I fully intend to get you naked first.”
My stomach clenches like a fist. I bury my face in my wine, trying to hide the hitch of my breath.
His smile turns lazy, leonine. Clearly, he sees right through me. “Now, are you ready for the dessert I brought?”
My gaze slips down his chest and beyond. I already know what enormous pleasure lies in store for me. And when I say enormous, I do mean—
“Hey.” He snaps his fingers and points to his face. “Eyes up here. I’m not a piece of meat, you know. And I didn’t mean that .”
The burn of embarrassment saturates my cheeks. If he only knew. “Right. Sorry.”
“As I was saying, I brought you something. Do you have enough room for it?”
My face only flares brighter. “You’ll really need to find another way to phrase that.”
When his eyes round, I realize I’ve managed to throw him off-balance, for once. “I have a treat for you,” he says. “The kind that goes in your mouth.”
I shake my head, wordless.
“Jesus Christ. Does your mind live in the gutter? I’m just going to go get it.” He plunks down his drink and disappears out the front door. A minute later, he reappears toting a plastic bag from Morton’s, the mom-and-pop grocery in Millbrook. He marches past.
I stay seated until the rush of blood in my cheeks fades. When Grayson starts banging around in the kitchen, I pluck up my wine and go to the doorway.
“What on earth are you doing?”
He crouches before an open cabinet and reaches toward the back for the sole remaining pot. “I’m trying to cook. But your kitchen isn’t making it easy. Why’s this place so barren?”
“Because we’re selling the house.”
He glances over his shoulder, his scarred eyebrow skewing upward. “Really?”
“Yeah. By this time next week, I’ll be back in Seagrove, and this place’ll belong to someone else.”
He sets his scavenged pot on the stove. “Ah. So that’s why you wouldn’t give me more time?”
“No.” I tip the last of the wine into my mouth and trash the cup. I don’t even need another drink. Something far more potent than alcohol zips around in my veins. “I wouldn’t give you more time because I didn’t feel like it.”
It’s something I never would have said to Michael, but it just comes right out, like breathing. I don’t even brace for the fallout. And I don’t think I’m imagining the answering approval on Grayson’s face.
“You seem...different today,” he says.
“I feel different.” I don’t know if it’s him, or this place, but part of me is...unstretching. Flowering into the kind of woman who insists on finding double entendres where they don’t exist and getting excited about strip Monopoly.
I don’t even recognize myself.
No, that’s not right. I do. Except the girl wearing my skin today feels like a younger, lighter version of anyone I’ve ever been before. Maybe she’s who I would’ve grown into if my brother hadn’t died. Or if I’d gone off to Greece instead of getting married.
“I like this side of you,” Grayson says.
“Me, too.”
He holds my eyes for a moment, then unpacks the grocery bag. igniting the burner, he melts together butter and brown sugar, and—
No way.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
He pours in a clatter of corn kernels, then covers the pot and shakes. “If you think I’m making you kettle corn, then yes. I am.”
His oh-so-casual tone renders me speechless. When I finally find my voice again, I say, “I’ve never seen anyone do it that way before.”
“Well, I’ve never made it like this. But I did watch a YouTube video this afternoon, which is basically the same thing. No guarantees on quality, though.”
He jostles the pan with the same focus he directed toward boxing up the game last night. His muscled shoulders bunch and roll, visible even through his jacket, and it seems impossible to me that someone with such an abundance of power—enough to get him up the tallest mountain in the world, for god’s sake—would harness it for something like this.
But he has, and the realization carves out a home beneath my skin. This isn’t one of those grand gestures Michael made so freely—no bouquet of hothouse roses in December, no twinkling diamond tennis bracelet or candlelit evening at a five-star restaurant.
No, this is personal .
I step fully into the room. “Why on earth didn’t you say something earlier, when I told you that you should’ve brought this exact thing ?”
He slides a smile my way—mischievous, prideful. “Because I wanted to see the look on your face. Which, as it turns out, was one hundred percent worth it.”
A tender barb catches in my throat. One hand sneaks up to play with an earring, as if giving my fingers something to do will quell this swell of emotion.
I have no idea what to do with this man.
I thought I did, but...
Sex , I tell myself. Just have mind-blowing sex with him, maybe for a day, maybe two. Then he’ll jet off to New Zealand, and you can go home and get on with your life.
“What?” he says. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s nothing.” I play at a smile. The gunfire pop of exploding kernels ricochets off the yellowed linoleum. “I just can’t wait for my dessert.”
And then, because I don’t want him to see how deeply the simple act of him making popcorn has affected me, I add, “Both of them.”
By the time we polish off the kettle corn, I’ve managed to get myself back on track. I think.
The tide of golden light beyond the windows fades to a gleam. Grayson adds a few logs to the fire before freeing the Monopoly box, then sets the lantern back on the table. “Can we light this?”
“Sure. But why? The fire’s plenty bright.”
He stares at the battered old thing, his expression indecipherable. “I just like it. Something about it reminds me of you.”
“Of me ? A lantern reminds you of a girl you just met?”
“Yeah, why not? I mean, look at it. It’s seen some things. Been around the block a few times. But its color hasn’t faded, just gotten a little scratched up. And it still burns as brightly as ever. It might not be new, but it’s every bit as strong as the day it was made.”
I scoff. “I think you’re giving me too much credit.”
He plucks the lighter off the coffee table, then raises the lantern’s glass to ignite the wick. “I think you’re not giving yourself enough.”
“Maybe.” I lay out the game. “But if so, I’m not the only one.”
He squints. “Which means what, exactly?”
“I’m just saying...” I trail off. What am I getting at? “You burn bright. Brighter than anyone I’ve ever met, maybe.”
He gives me a long look. There’s a depth there, one begging to be explored. “You know, for years, I thought I’d destroyed myself. I knew I had, actually. I had nothing to offer anyone. But now...I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s more to me than I’ve let myself believe.”
The moment stretches, tightens. Something in my chest tightens along with it.
Sex , I tell myself. Just sex .
“I’m”—I clear my throat—“going to go put on some socks.”
He smirks. The charged tension dissipates. “Socks? As in two extra pieces of clothing? You’ve already decided to cheat, I see.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just cold.”
“Bullshit. You’re flushed.”
“It’s the wine,” I say. It’s definitely not. “Besides, you still have your jacket on. Which makes me no more of a cheater than you.”
“Fine,” he says. “Go ahead, then. I’m still going to win.”
I stick out my tongue and go to the bedroom. When I finish up and pad back to the fire, I find Grayson lying on his stomach with his chin propped on one fist. My feet break into a sweat the moment the heat touches me.
“Are you ready?” he says.
Damn. Talk about a loaded question. Unsure of what might emerge if I open my mouth, I plop down on my belly, snatch up the dice, and roll.
We play. His jacket comes off first, but after that, the tide turns. For my opening gambit, I pluck out an earring and set it on the coffee table.
“No way,” he says. “Jewelry doesn’t count.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Nuh-uh. You can’t just make up rules like that after we’ve started.”
His eyes narrow, but when I flutter my lashes in a show of innocence, he relents. “Fine. But earrings count as one article, singular. And you have to answer a question, too.”
I consider. He drives a hard bargain, but I still have a trick up my sleeve. One that’ll get me much further than the jewelry. “Okay. What do you want to know?” I stack my other earring atop its twin.
“What were you writing today? At the coffee shop?”
I still. I should’ve seen that coming from a mile off. I don’t mind telling him, though. I even include the part where I submitted the article to Travelique.
As I explain, his eyes glint, growing ever warmer as the twilight from the window fades and the fire glow takes over. “Is that who you’d write for, in a perfect world?”
“Definitely. I’ve always loved their content. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on their website, but—”
“I have. I did a project for them once, actually.”
My teeth snap together. “You did?”
“Yeah. They’ve been bugging me to do another one ever since, but I’ve been so swamped with Nat Geo that I haven’t gotten around to it. They’re great to work with, though. Really accommodating. If you want, I can drop Siobhan a line and tell her you’re a friend. You having the same last name might make her wonder, but she’ll probably do you a favor if I ask nicely.”
My fingers flutter against the base of my throat. Briefly, I wonder whether I should insist on succeeding on my own merit, but I’m not twenty-two anymore, and I’ve been around long enough to realize writing’s a brutal business. A nobody like me needs all the help she can get. “You’d do that? For me?”
“I’d do—” He bites his lip. Changes course. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I mean, thank you thank you. This is...” I cast around for more.
His lips cock into a smile. “This is...what? A writer at a loss for words?”
“This is...extraordinarily kind of you,” I enunciate. “A staggering and unprecedented demonstration of generosity.” Then, more normally, “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“You’re going to repay me in about ten minutes.”
I shift, but no amount of rearranging will calm the sudden flutter his confidence evokes. He’s doing it again.
“Maybe five,” he says.
A tiny, eager sound climbs up my throat, and our eyes lock. His fill with a naked, scorching desire that carves a smoking path down my middle.
And then there’s no pretending anymore. No stalling. The entire room heats, melting to a liquid swirl of supple light and blue-green eyes that make me go soft around the edges.
Grayson licks his lips and tosses the dice. And lands on Marvin Gardens. Which belongs to me.
He’s already left his shoes and socks by the door, but instead of peeling off his shirt like I expect, he stands up and shucks his jeans, revealing bright red boxer briefs and long, muscled legs. His quads are so defined that they curve inward above his kneecaps, two halves of an inverted heart.
My god. Between that and the bulge...
I don’t know what to do with my eyes, so I just leave them where they are. Screw it. It’s not like he would look away.
With a knowing smile, he sits back down—cross-legged this time, probably so he can taunt me with the visual feast. “Your turn.”
I tame the tremble in my fingers long enough to roll, then land on his property, of course. Baltic Avenue. Damn. I’ve always mocked those cheap purple ones, but not now.
When I don’t move, he asks, “Do you need help with that sock?”
I roll off my stomach and mirror his sit. “Actually, yes.” Extending a leg over the board, I set my foot in his lap.
He takes hold of me and frowns, clearly realizing by touch alone that something isn’t right. Sure enough, when he peels off my sock, another one awaits underneath.
His brow crinkles. “What the hell? How many of these are you wearing?”
I lift a shoulder, let it drop. “Five pairs. Give or take.”
“Shit,” he breathes, respect blazing in his eyes. “I’m screwed.”
“Yes,” I say. “You absolutely are.”
Instead of giving my foot back, he circles my ankle with his fingers. “I should’ve known you’d play dirty.”
My breathing gathers speed. “I told you I was putting on socks. I just didn’t say how many. And you didn’t ask.”
His smile spreads like a slow pour of honey. “You minx.”
For half a heartbeat, I stumble over the fact that Michael used to call me that. But a moment later, the thought loses form.
The man sitting across from me is nothing like my husband. Maybe he used to be, back when they were young and hadn’t broken each other yet, but now...
Nothing about Grayson reminds me of the man I spent fourteen years with. Only of the kind of openhearted man I wish Michael had been. The one I thought I saw, but who went into hiding before I could be sure.
Grayson’s fingers inch upward, catching at my socks and tugging them off. He tosses the pile aside, then pulls my other foot into his lap and frees that one, too.
“You just took nine things off me.” I sound breathy, my protest about as powerful as ten-second-old tea. “Who’s playing dirty now?”
“I’m just leveling the playing field.”
“You’re cheating. At least give me one thing in exchange.”
“Fine.” His eyes glimmer. “Boxers or shirt?”
Boxers or shirt . My mouth goes as dry as the Sahara. I can barely get my answer out. “Shirt.”
A half smile digs into his cheek. He pushes my legs apart, then rises onto his knees and pulls his shirt over his head.
It’s like one of those art-gallery scenes in movies. The ones where someone whips a drape off a masterpiece and earns a gasp from the entire crowd.
Grayson Drake is so beautiful it makes my eyes water. There’s a sort of...ruthlessness to him, too, his muscles so crisply defined that the firelight etches shadowed lines across his skin.
He must run like a demon to look like that , I think. I can see it in my mind’s eye—him pushing himself to the point of punishment, sprinting after something he’ll never actually catch. Something that escaped him a long time ago.
He drops onto his hands and knees and stalks toward me. The symphonic grace of all those ridges and angles shifting in concert steals my ability to think.
He flings the game board aside. I don’t look to see where it ends up. There’s just a clatter of plastic and paper, and then he’s prowling through the buffer zone between us like it doesn’t exist.
I barely have the wherewithal to scan the tattoo inked over his heart before he reaches me. One arm wraps tight, lowering me to the floor beneath him.
I gasp. I’m falling, falling and falling and he’s there with me and then I’m flat on my back with my legs hitched up around his waist while his lips dive down to fasten against my neck again and I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I can’t do anything but keep on falling, straight through the floor, all the while wondering if I’ll ever stop. Grayson’s hand twines in my hair until my scalp pulls tight, and when I grind my hips upward in entreaty, he groans, a hot exhale against my ear.
“Grayson...” My hands trail up his bare sides, encountering one rippled ridge after another.
He suckles at my throat until I rasp out a moan, then raises his head to look at me. His pupils are shot wide, little pools of infinity beneath a scar that gleams silver.
“Mina.” He makes my name into a roughened, delicious offering. “I could spend all night listening to you say my name like that. Do it again.”
“Grayson.”
“Mmm. Again.”
“Grayson. Gray— Oh .”
Between our bodies, his fingers hitch into my waistband. Wordless, I raise my bottom and shimmy free. He tosses my pants away somewhere near the game board.
That done, he pulls my shirt up over my head. I help him with that, too, and then I’m lying there, pinned, protected by nothing but a few scraps of black lace and the red-hot glow igniting in the thousand different places my skin presses against his. I’m aching, fluttering, drunk with the feel of him firm and flush against me.
“Do I get a question now, too?” I manage to whisper. “Since I won?”
“Of course.” He stares down like he’s falling into me. “Anything.”
“Your tattoo... What language is that?”
The hand in my hair ravels tighter. “Arabic.”
I cling to my last remaining sliver of sanity. “Oh. You got a tattoo in Egypt?”
“No, Tunisia.”
I scan the foreign characters emblazoned over his heart. Whatever they spell, it’s short, a single word at most. “What does it say?”
“It’s...a name.”
“Whose?” I don’t know why I ask. I already know. Lily’s.
The fingers on my hip tighten. “Does it really matter right now?”
I drag my eyes back up to his. Strangely, it does. It’s part of what makes him so painfully beautiful—this unguarded brokenness, all the ways in which his past has wrecked him, none of which he bothers to hide.
“Kiss me,” I say.
“Fucking hell,” he growls. “I thought you’d never ask.”
When he bends and slants his mouth across mine, the world dissolves into glittering darkness.
It’s so...different.
Where my husband was a frantic, lightning-storm crackle, Grayson kisses like he’s filling a years-deep hole drop by drop. His tongue sweeps against mine in long, worshipful strokes. The Scotch makes him taste as smoky as he sounds, like a spreading flame consuming the dark.
I kiss him back. A wave builds and builds, a tsunami that tugs at something rooted so far down I can’t tell where it ends. I finally admit, then, what I’ve been avoiding all evening.
This is not just sex. I trust him. He hasn’t once rolled the shutters down. He hasn’t closed me out. He’s let all his jagged edges show, and that makes me feel safer here in this vast, empty forest than I ever did in my fortress of glass.
I bury one hand in his hair and skim the other down his backside.
His tongue plunges deeper, a slow and inevitable devouring. I open as fully as I can. Yet it’s so much more than just my legs widening to accept his weight or my lips parting to welcome him in. It’s a baring of myself, an offering up of my shadows in exchange for everything he’s allowed me to see. It’s a recognition .
No kittens here, after all. Just a pair of battle-bruised, still-fighting tigers, willingly engulfing each other while the world dims to a crackling glow behind us.
He releases my mouth. His hair drags against my neck as swollen lips kiss a path toward my chest, where his teeth tease me right through my bra.
My spine bows. He tugs the fabric aside and sweeps the peak of my nipple into his mouth, drawing a luscious sound of unraveling from my lips.
I slip my hands into his boxers and clutch at his ass, grinding my pelvis upward in a mindless demand for completion. He submits, if only partly. His hand strays downward, cupping between my legs, where his thumb draws maddening circles right through my panties, in a place that makes me want to hit the ceiling.
I cry out and hold him tighter. He levers upward and kisses me again, stealing one gasp after another from my lips as his fingers flick aside the narrow strip of fabric and slip into me. I tilt my hips up, giving him access, and I coil and burn and forget myself and care about nothing but the way he feels around me, in me, murmuring my own name into my mouth.
Just when I worry he’ll bring me over the edge too early, his hand retreats to the curve of my waist. I ache with the sudden emptiness.
He pulls back and looks me in the face. “Fuck,” he says. “I’ve dreamed about this for so long. You have no idea.”
I gaze down my cheeks at him, not bothering to fight the drunken weight of my half-slitted lids. If he drags this out any longer, I might actually die. “You don’t have to talk.”
“I know,” he says. “But I want you to know...this isn’t just me trying to get into your pants.”
“It’s fine, if it is.”
“No, it’s... I’m...”
A frown steals in from around the fringes of my bliss. He looks so...resolute. Like he has something to accomplish before we go any further. “You’re what? Why’re you looking at me like that?”
“Because.” He studies me from inches away, his attention jumping from one of my eyes to the other. All the depth from earlier is back, but this time, it’s like it has no bottom. “The truth is, I’m so in love with you I don’t know what to do. I’m so fucking in love with you it hurts.”
“You...wait, what ?”
“You heard me.”
It’s like he’s flung a bucket of ice water straight at my face. I snatch my hands free and scramble backward, laying one palm against his chest to press him away. “You don’t mean that.”
He cringes. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. Shit. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just needed you to know.”
“What, that you’re somehow in love with me? Even though we just met?”
“Jesus, don’t say it like that. Like it’s ridiculous. And it’s a little more complicated than—”
“No. It’s not. I mean, I get that you’ve looked at my picture on your phone a few times, but that doesn’t mean you understand me well enough to be able to be in love with me. I think you’re...getting confused.”
“You’re pissed,” he says.
“No. I’m freaked out. I mean, is this why your girlfriends never last? Because whenever you get a new one into bed, you profess your love?”
“Damn it.” He retreats, pinching between his eyes. “I’m doing this all wrong.”
“Is there a right way to tell someone you’ve known for two days that you’re in love with them?”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s just not like this . I even told myself to wait. To make sure you were okay, first. But you seemed better today, and then...I honestly didn’t think you’d still react to me this way.”
All the blood in my veins drains away. A horrible, weighted quiet descends. “What do you mean, still ?”
“Oh, Christ.” He springs up and paces tight circles. Enough energy pours off him to make the room feel bathed in daylight. “Why the hell did I think this was a good idea? You’re going to hate me once I tell you. I can tell by your face you’re never going to talk to me again.”
My mouth tightens. I clamber to my feet, unwilling to grant him the upper hand by letting him tower over me, even though he still does. “Can you please explain what’s happening right now?”
He stops pacing. One hand dives into his hair, making the fringed ends stick up through his fingers. “I’m too much of a coward to say it. Just...look in my jacket.”
“What?”
“My jacket pocket. There’s something in there you need to see.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. And while I don’t consciously decide to move, my feet propel me toward our discarded clothes, where I slip a hand into his coat. Cold metal meets my palm.
I pull the thing out and stare.
“What the hell is this,” I say, only it’s not a question, because I know exactly what I’m holding. A twisted silver chain, complete with the very same puka shell I once plucked from the sand in Oahu.
“I’ve been carrying that around for four years,” he says. “I’ve tried to get rid of it. Even managed to throw it away a few times. But I always ended up diving through the trash afterward, so I eventually gave up trying.”
My eyes snap up. “Why would Michael have given this to you?”
“He didn’t.” He swallows. Hard. “You did.”
“What.”
“Yeah. You...sat in my lap and put that chain around my neck. I’ll never forget it.”
All the air in my lungs billows out. I have the sudden, blinding urge to throw the necklace into the fire, but instead, I tilt my palm and let it clatter to the floor. “What are you saying? That you went to Hawaii with me? Not Michael?”
“Yeah.” He stands before the darkened bay window in nothing but his boxers, and for all his athletic surety, he looks as lost as a person possibly could. “The thing is, I’ve...known you a long time, Mina. Not just two days.”
My jaw locks. “No. That’s impossible. What about your tattoos? Your scar?”
“None of them are very old.”
A keening cry slices up my throat. “You told me you got that scar riding a bike.”
“I did .” His brows tent upward. “But you didn’t ask for details. If you had, I would’ve told you I meant a motorcycle. In Tibet. Three years ago. And that I wrecked the bike because I was drunk. And I was drunk because I was trying to stop thinking about you.”
My eyes prickle. Shit. Do not cry. Do not cry . “What? Why?”
“Why was I thinking about you?”
“No, why would you have gone to Hawaii? Why would Michael have agreed to that? Because he must have, for you to pull that off. To switch with him like that.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“ Why? So he could spend that time working?”
“No.”
“Then what?” I’m screeching now, but I don’t care. “Why would Michael send his twin off to frolic with his wife on the beach? To stay up all night watching the stars with her? To tell her he loves her, for god’s sake? That she’s one in seven fucking billion? What could possibly make him okay with that?”
Grayson steps closer, but I splay out a hand, warning him off. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t.” If heartbreak were a sound, his voice would capture it exactly. “And I’ll tell you everything. Just...please understand it wasn’t my idea. Michael just called me out of the blue one day, in a panic. Well, not a panic panic, you know how he was. But he sounded stressed, which I knew was the equivalent of World War Three for him, and he said he’d made you a promise he couldn’t keep. Except if he broke it, you’d never forgive him. He said he had no choice but to ask for my help, and even then, he tried not to let you down. He really did. He had me wait in the bathroom at the airport, and I honestly didn’t think I was getting on that plane until he texted me at the last minute, saying he couldn’t make himself do it. Then he came in and gave me his clothes and his phone, and... Well. You know the rest. You were there.”
I stumble backward. One hand finds the knotted-wool blanket on the daybed purely by feel. I draw it up, hiding my skin.
I feel like I’m choking. God, that trip. That magical, intoxicating whirlwind I clung to for so many years. How many times did I forgive Michael his distance—yet again—because of the searing warmth of that week? How many times did I tell myself the man I’d fallen in love with still existed, that our vacation was definitive proof? How many times did I reassure myself that if I only tried hard enough, I could get to him?
How long did I spend chasing the wrong man?
My knees buckle, dumping me hard onto the cushions.
“I’m sorry, Mina. I’m so, so sorry.”
I look at him helplessly. “The one time I was actually happy, it was you?”
“No,” he says in a rush. “You were happy at home. With Michael.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Oh, god. I’ve never said that out loud before. Not even in the privacy of my own head. But here it is, finally, and now I want to shout it. Scream it at the sky.
“Yes, you were.” Panic laces his words. “I asked you on the plane, when we left Oahu. I know you probably don’t remember, but you said—”
“I know what I said.” I pass a hand over my eyes. That conversation plays entirely differently now, in my head. “But I didn’t actually mean it. I mean, what I said was true. In Hawaii . But not at home. I just thought if I pretended, maybe the person you’d been on that trip would come back to Seagrove with me. It was...my way of asking you to stay. Or something.”
He blanches. “I didn’t take it that way. I thought... Fuck. I know it must not seem like it now, but all I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy.”
A gnarled laugh leaps from my throat. “And you thought that’d be best accomplished by lying to me?”
He winces. “I never actually lied. I made sure not to.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “That’s just a technicality. It doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole.”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
My god. I should have trusted him on that. He told me so himself. “So that no-sex rule Michael and I had in Hawaii? That was the real reason why?”
“Yes,” he murmurs. “That was why.”
“You didn’t even kiss me on that trip.”
His eyes plead with me. “No. The only reason I did right now is because you asked me to. You knew it was me and you wanted that.”
I go quiet. The urge to cry has passed, but something worse has taken its place. Where the room felt so safe and certain a minute ago, now I feel lost inside it, just a wandering speck floating between these wide-apart walls.
“What else do you want to know?” he begs.
I laugh, but it sounds desolate. Not like my laugh at all. “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me when you first fell in love with me? Was it when we spent that night on the beach? When we swam with the turtles? Or maybe that dinner in Kona, when I kept my feet in your lap under the tablecloth all evening, just so we’d be touching?”
“No. None of those.”
“Then when?”
When he folds his bottom lip under his teeth, the floor drops away. I know, with absolute certainty, that whatever he’s about to say will make this even worse.
“I can’t pinpoint a moment.” If he looked broken before, now he’s shattered. “But when I look back on my stupid, fucked-up mess of a life, everything changed from the first moment I saw you. You just came walking by, threw a pie at me, and I was never the same again.”
I don’t move. Neither does he. Silence fills my ears to overflowing, and in the quiet, I can hear myself break, a soft little snap that reverberates for miles.
“That was you ? At the fair?”
“Yeah. That was me.”
Roughly a century creaks by. “But you told me your name was Michael.”
“I didn’t, actually.” Desperation surges in his voice. “That old lady said that. I just didn’t correct her. Look, I can explain. Because up until the other day, I thought you knew . All these years, I thought you knew you’d met me first. Michael said he’d told you. It wasn’t until your email the other day that I realized he’d lied. That you barely knew I existed.”
Another alien laugh tumbles out. “Oh, so this is all a dead man’s fault? How convenient.”
He flinches. “I know how it looks. And I should’ve told you everything on the phone. But you told me you hated me, and I knew if I explained, you’d hang up and that would be the end of it.”
“That should’ve been what happened,” I spit out.
“You’re right. And I have no excuse for coming here. I mean, I did genuinely want to make sure you were okay, but the rest was selfish. I just thought that if maybe you got to know me, if I could show you the real me...” His Adam’s apple bobs up and down.
I stare. “Then what? What did you think would happen, Grayson?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t tell me to fuck off, once you knew.”
For long moments, I say nothing, my entire being reduced to a whirl of hurt. “Just tell me one more thing.”
“Anything.” He sounds raspy. Ground down. “Ask me anything.”
“How many times have we had sex? You and I? How badly did the two of you trick me?”
His eyes widen, as if he wasn’t expecting that. “Zero. You and I, we’ve never... I mean, this would’ve been the first...”
He trails off. Wisely, I decide.
“Look,” he says, “I know how overwhelming this must seem, but there’s so much more. I can explain.”
“Explain? How, by blaming everything on Michael?” Cold whispers slither through me, reminders of all the secrets my husband kept. But this ... Even Michael couldn’t have stooped so low. “Because if that’s all you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.”
Grayson grimaces. “But he—”
“Right,” I say. “Get out.”
“Mina, I—”
“No. Get out. This is my house, and you’re not welcome in it anymore, and I swear if you don’t walk out that door right now, I will. I’ll drive back to Seagrove and this will be the last time you ever see me.”
The color drains from his face. I’ve struck a nerve. A deep one.
I scrounge up the strength to stand and go to where our clothes lie on the floor. I pick up everything and toss it at his feet, including the necklace. I don’t want to touch it again. “Get dressed and get out.”
“I will, if that’s what you need right now. But please, Mina...” A horrible, shuddering exhale leaves him. “You might not want to hear it now, but you deserve to know the whole story.”
“It sounds like I already do.” I turn my back and pull the blanket tighter. “You’re a liar. And you left me fourteen years ago. The end. Now leave me alone.”
He must waver, because only the chatter of the fire breaks the silence. But eventually, fabric slides over flesh. Leather creaks as he pulls on his jacket.
It takes an eternity. A hundred eternities. I don’t turn to see whether he puts on the necklace. I don’t want to know.
When he finishes, he says, “Come see me, once the shock wears off. Please. I’m staying at the Flying Dutchman.”
“Maybe,” I say, if only to get him out the door quicker.
“I’ll wait for you.” He sounds wrecked, the smolder in his voice extinguished. “However long it takes.”
With that, he pulls open the door. I don’t turn, just stare out through the bay window. I hear the carved grizzly scrape against the porch, then the scratch of the key turning in the lock.
Heavy footsteps thump down the steps and disappear. In the yard, headlights slice through the blackness and fade.
The whole time, my eyes never move. The reflection of the lantern flame shimmers on the windowpane, but I squint past it into the breathing dark, where the trees whisper.
I doubt even they can help me this time.