“Grayson!”
No response. Like a dead man in a warm body, he’s here with me, but something wicked is happening on the inside. I did this to him. The hurt rolling off him is palpable, and this might be shock. I don’t know what else to call it.
My hands grip his thick shoulders and shake him. “Gray. Please. You’re scaring me.” I’ve never seen anything more vulnerable than him at this moment. “Please.”
My cell phone starts ringing somewhere. It’s late, and part of me automatically fears it’s Cherry with bad news. But it’s probably the diner telling me someone didn’t show up. I’m the standard first call to fill any shift. But I let it keep ringing. If it’s Cherry, she’ll hit redial as soon as the voicemail picks up.
Grayson leans into me. His head fits into the crook of my neck, and he’s nearly dead weight. A sob wracks his powerful body, and I wrap my arms around him. I’m not sure that he’s in tears, just that he’s overwhelmed, and why wouldn’t he be? His mother’s name did him over. I didn’t know much about her, just that Calinda Ford died when we were in kindergarten. I wanted Cally to have a piece of her daddy.
I smooth a hand over the strong muscles of his bare back and up his corded neck. His blond hair is short, though I suspect it’s longer than the military would like. I coo in his ear like I do when Cally has nightmares. Hurting him was never the plan. I still love him. I want him. It’s this situation—it’s hair-trigger tense. We’re both set to fly hard in opposite directions, both needing something that can’t be had. The past can’t be rewritten, but the future… the future is always ours to change.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “And I love you.”
His arms cling to me tighter, like the night at the beach house, before we had sex, before I told him how I felt, what I wanted. If this is shock or trauma or… whatever it is, I don’t know, but he can hear me, feel me. Slowly the tension leaves his muscles until we’re tangled together on my front floor. His breathing has evened, but his green eyes are sad and downcast, not looking anywhere but at the barren floor.
We stay there for hours maybe before he shifts, letting out a barely ragged sigh. “Bet you’re a good mama.”
My God, does he always know what makes my heart explode? I nod through the pressure in my chest and the mist in my eyes. “I’ve killed myself for our girl. Second-guessed everything, pushed myself, lectured myself… ignored the looks, ignored the whispers. But when it comes down to being a good mama? I’ve given her everything I have.”
“Yeah, you’re good. I just know it… my mom was, and she wasn’t.”
I don’t remember him speaking of his mom. Whatever I knew had been instilled in my mind long ago, and I never questioned it. As just a fact of life, Grayson’s mom had died and his pops is a bastard. I bite my lip, unsure what to say. Gray still won’t look at me.
“I was a kid, so I really didn’t know better.” His eyes well, and since we’re splayed on the floor, tears leak sideways into his hair. “She was perfect. Beautiful. Funny. We were happy.” He looks at me. “Maybe we weren’t. I guess I was too young to know. I was the center of her world, but not really. Her demons were. I just didn’t understand it. But… she was the center of mine. Mama’s boy.”
His honesty shreds me. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I eventually learned that she took pills like candy. I even remember bits and pieces. Think I thought they
were
candy. God, she looked the mom part. I remember that. Fuckin’ Joan Cleaver lookalike. But something ate her up inside, and she would nap and snack on her candy. I was her little pill boy when she couldn’t stand up.”
My guts twist as I see where his explanation is going.
“I thought she was asleep. She always went to sleep, and I’d just play until Pops got home. He’d ask me about it, I think. But she always said it was our special secret.” His voice cracks. “She must’ve been dead for hours, and I was sitting at her feet, playing G.I. Joes or some shit.”
I squeeze him in our awkward hold on the ground. “It’s not your fault, Grayson.”
“Of course it is. She couldn’t even get up, and I fed her pills. Her heart stopped. Nothing violent, but she could’ve been saved if I’d picked up the phone and called 911.”
“You were a baby.”
“I was man enough to hide a secret from my father.”
“Gray—”
“I killed Calinda Ford, the woman you named the child I didn’t know after. And Pops—damn me, I think he was normal before that. But that night, he spanked the shit out of me for killing my mom. I deserved it, I get that. But for a man who’d never touched me like that before… I didn’t go to school for two weeks. Everyone thought I was mourning Mom, but truth was, I couldn’t sit down, couldn’t move without crying.”
Tears pour down my cheeks, into my hair. The burden he’s been carrying all these years is that he somehow believes that guilt is deserved. I flash back to the night in his trailer after the Sadie Hawkins dance, when Grayson said he’d first stood up to Pops. We were eighteen, or almost. My heart bleeds for him. More than a decade of that drilled into him…
Grayson pulls a long breath. “I’m not sure Pops had it in him to be a dad. Never seemed into it. Never looked me in the eye. But the day Mom died, I became the enemy. The bastard child he didn’t want and couldn’t get rid of because I was his last tangible memory of her.”
“I didn’t know.”
He blinks wayward tears away and locks his gaze on me. “And now you do. Won’t change anything, but maybe you understand.”
“Understand… what?”
“Everything about me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Grayson
I’m spent. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally. I’ve tapped my reserves, and I’m depleted. But I do have Emma in my arms, lying on her hardwood floor. It’s more comfortable than living in a dug-out burrow in the desert. It’s more peaceful than my time spent alone in a hospital bed. Emma shifts, and I reposition us so that she’s not bearing the burden of lying on the hard floor.
“You okay?” she whispers.
“No.”
“You’re going to be though.”
I nod. “I know.”
The night crawls by, and I can’t tell if she’s asleep. Her breathing pattern never changes, her muscles don’t relax. Finally, I shift to see her face. She’s out.
“Emma?”
Nothing. The girl doesn’t budge. Then I realize she’s fallen asleep clinging to me. Her fingers are flexed into my muscles, and her body blankets me in a way that I can’t peel away from. Not that I would. For the first time, everything is laid on the table, and I can breathe.
I stand, and she holds onto me tightly, still sleeping. As carefully as I can, I make my way to her couch, where our night started. I’m not sure why, but I can’t head for her bedroom. I don’t have permission or some shit. I can’t explain it, but it’s hers to invite me to. Just like the rest of this house, the rest of her life… I want in, and as evidenced by earlier tonight, I can’t ram my way in.
She stirs when I lay us down. Her cheek is glued to my bare chest, her soft hair tickling me.
“You okay?” she asks again, voice sleep-soaked.
“Getting there.”
She takes a deep breath as she fully wakes. “I’ll tell you a story.”
My heart squeezes. “Yeah. Could use one of those.”
Silence lingers, and I’m sure it’s close to dawn. The night is still dark through the windows, but there’s the slight hint of morning.
“Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She has blond hair and green eyes.”
God, Emma’s stories always take me away, make me feel better. This one feels as if it’s going to kill me, but I keep quiet, trying to trust in her to save me from tonight.
“Every day, she wakes with a smile. She puts on her princess hat and lines up her princess dollies, giving them each a good morning hug. With worldly two-year-old advice, she tells each toy to have a great day because the sun is out.” Emma sighs. “The sun will always rise, Gray. Even if we have to be saved from ourselves, there’s nothing a little princess charm and a hug can’t help.”
I let her words coat me, sink in. I don’t need to be saved from tonight. I’ve never needed the here and now more than right this second. “True enough.”
Her hand gingerly slides up my stomach, her palm drifting over my light smattering of chest hair. “What I said earlier… I was unhinged. Awful and angry. I’m really sorry.”
I kiss the top of her head and inhale the sweet sunshine of her scent. “I deserved it.”
“Oh, Gray. I think you think you deserve more than you actually do.”
Maybe. “Another conversation for another night.”
“I didn’t know about your mom. I wanted a piece of you with me every day.” She sucks in a heartbroken breath. “You were with me every day. Every night. I couldn’t let you go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Maybe.”
“Nothing has to be decided tonight.” The darkness in the window is melting to a deep purple. “Go to sleep, baby.”
Her arms tighten around me. “Be here when I wake up?”
I hate that she has to ask, but I deserve it. “Promise.”
Even as my eyelids hang heavy and I feel Emma relax into a slumber, I can’t help but wonder at all the things I never knew I wanted. Holding a baby, naming her. Watching her walk and talk… I hug Emma close, hoping to hell I finally have something to dream about, and I let myself drift to sleep.
Emma
A heavy, warm weight holds me in place, and I inhale a long-ago-familiar soapy scent that makes me melt. Then my eyes shoot open, and I realize I’ve been sleeping—drooling, oh my freakin’ god—on Grayson’s bare chest. As smoothly as I can, I fix that problem and try not to panic enough to wake him. Seriously, I’m asleep on my couch with him? The last twenty-four hours have been insane. I wipe the corner of my mouth and hope I didn’t snore.
“Morning, baby.”
His greeting is grated and gravelly, sexy without trying, and I can feel the deep rumble of his words in his chest since I’m plastered against him. “Morning.”
It feels too early to be awake. The sun’s up, but it’s soft. I’m struck by how odd it feels to wake with a good morning from a half-naked man and not Cally. There’s a pang in my heart. I miss her. But this… this is nice. I can’t say it’s not enjoyable. I love my daughter, but I’m twenty years old, a day short of my birthday, and I’ve had little time to just be me, not Mommy. Though I really wish Cally was at home too.
“What’s that look?” he asks.
Oh, that’s a conversation I need a cup of coffee for before we dig in. I sigh and figure vagueness is best for the moment. “I’m off the charts on an emotional roller coaster.”
His tongue darts over his bottom lip, and he nods almost imperceptibly. “Know that feeling.” But a fire hits his eyes, making them shine like emeralds on fire.
Grayson wraps me in his thick arms, making me sigh against his chest. Our bodies entwine, and it’s so familiar. I want to melt and nuzzle.
“We need to talk about the part where you forgive me, Emma.”
Because that’s the only option. Now that he’s back, I’m not letting go even if I’m terrified of him walking away from Cally as he did me. “Working on it.”
“Then we move forward one day at a time, and it’ll be fine.”
I want that. But that’s a fairy tale, something I thought we had before. “Before… when we were in high school, my biggest fear was one day you’d find out how I felt and want nothing to do with me.”
He nods, making some agreeing-growling sound that set my insides afire.
I swallow the same fear I had when we danced around our feelings in high school. “Time changes people. You don’t know me anymore. You might not like this me.”
We lie in silence. I’m not sure if he’s readying to refute my concern or agreeing as he realizes that for the first time.
“Gray?”
“No, you’re right. But some things don’t change, baby. You’re still you. You’ve probably got a camera close by, and I bet if we unpacked these boxes, I’d find a hundred pictures of our daughter.”
Our daughter.
My heartstrings are pulled tight.
His chin touches the top of my head. “You’re still the same sweet girl who tries not to trust but can’t help it, and you know we have a history that we can rebuild on.”
He’s right… “Is that enough?”
“Has to be.” His confidence is almost enough to make me believe. “I don’t know where you work or who your friends are. I don’t know what you watch on television—”
“
Bubble Guppies
and
Mickey Mouse Club
.” I look up to appraise his reaction. I’m not the normal twenty-something. Then I remember everything he’s said and that I’m probably smashing his gunshot wound and he’s too tough to say anything. He’s not the normal-average anything. Maybe we’re in more the same place than not.
“
Bubble Guppies
and
Mickey Club
.” Grayson squeezes me tighter. “I’ll have to check them out.”
“
Mickey
Mouse
Club
.”
A heart-stalling smile breaks across his face. “Right.
Mickey
Mouse
Club
. Ten-four, pretty mama.”