The next morning, I wake up to the sight of Grey’s tatted chest. He’s staying in the room a few doors down but managed to sneak in late last night. I let out a sigh and gently trace the words spanning his upper chest. My finger trails along his bicep, light as a feather. As I do, I think of what my mother said.
All of those things…couldn’t be true. He’s told me he’s been arrested before, but four times? And for dealing drugs? And what about a mental institution? Expulsion two times? It all makes him out to be just what she’s been saying about him…an untrustworthy delinquent.
But I refuse to reduce him to anything less than the man he’s shown me he can be. I at least want to draw my own conclusions after I ask him about it.
His nose twitches, and I hum contemplatively and lay my hand against his cheek stubble. He’s waking up. I turn around and stand up. His black shirt basically swallows my body and stops around my mid-thigh. He shifts in the bed. I freeze, glancing over my shoulder. I turn back around and pad over to my ensuite and close the door behind me. I lean against the door and close my eyes for a while.
I hate that I’m growing cold toward him, paranoid that he’s going to fuck me over because of his past, but how can I not feel this way? He probably did the same thing to that Rose girl, and that’s why he’s keeping so hush-hush about her…I am insane. I should just grow some confidence and trust him.
“Don’t be an idiot, Liv,” I whisper to myself and suck in a deep breath. I take off his shirt and slip off my undergarments, then turn on the shower. As it heats up, I brush my teeth and take my pills. I take a rubber band from inside the medicine cabinet and put my hair up so it doesn’t get wet.
I get inside the shower and stand under the warm water pounding against my body.
The water helps to ease my muscles and relax my neck. I’ve been curled up against his chest, torturing myself with thinking about my mother’s intrusive information. I can’t believe she dug up his past and threw that information at me, hoping I’d make him out to be a no-good delinquent. But she doesn’t know him like I do. He loves me. And with a little pushing, he’ll open up to me. He has to. He will…right?
I jump when the sliding door is pulled back but calm down when I see it’s just Grey. He’s naked and rubbing his eyes in an exhausted manner. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asks in a groggy voice, thick and accented deeply. It makes me flush and turn to face the beating water.
“I wanted to let you sleep,” I tell him honestly. He looked tired. And I wanted to clear my mind for a bit.
He gets in behind me and closes the door. “I’d rather be holding you,” he says and wraps his arms around me.
I merely smile and continue to run a bar of soap across my skin.
After a few minutes of silence, he growls impatiently and nips at my neck. I smile and close my eyes, enjoying his rock-hard body pressing against my soft skin.
“Hey, you okay?” he mumbles against my neck, then places a soft kiss on my skin. I shiver and turn around to face him. I curve my hands around his neck and let out a deep sigh of contentment as he picks up the soap and rubs my chest. His fingers pass my hardened nipples, and he smirks knowingly. I narrow my eyes at him and press my chest against his. He pulls my hair out of its bun and gently rubs my back.
All the questions my brain is dying to ask run wild. But I don’t ask him about any of it. I want to get through today first, then I’ll ask him. I know that if I confronted him about any of it yesterday, we would have most likely ended up fighting, and I don’t want that. Not today. Today is the day meant for family and being together. Not fighting and going back to how we were—dysfunctional. Today is Thanksgiving.
“I’m perfect,” I tell him and lean up to press my lips against his.
***
I can hear Grey shouting downstairs. As I helped Louise and the other chefs cook in the kitchen, Grey took to chatting—or at least trying to since my father wasn’t much of a talker—with my father and watching a football game. Apparently, he’s a huge fan of the sport. He even played, but for some reason, he just stopped. I wondered why when he told me that, but I couldn’t get anything else out of him.
I hate that he won’t talk to me. I hope that the longer we are together and he gets more and more comfortable with me, he’ll finally tell me more about himself.
But a part of me thinks it’ll be next to impossible to have him open up to me. It already is in the present, so why should it be easier in the future?
Anyway, I’ve been helping prepare for tonight’s big dinner, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what my mother told me and had to stop. I told Louise that I had to get dressed for dinner, but the truth is, I needed a break before I broke.
A frustrated sigh leaves me. I take out the last item from my luggage and neatly place it in the last free compartment in my dresser. I run my hand across the velvet-like fabric of the cashmere top.
A knock sounds on my door. “Are you decent?” The door opens, and Grey pokes his head in. “I’m hoping not.” The smile splashed across his face and the information I just learned make for a deadly combination.
He falls back onto my bed with a contented smile. I smile half-heartedly and turn back to the drawer. I finish setting out my clothes for the rest of my time here before standing.
“What do you think of this for tonight?” I ask as I pick up the red sweetheart neckline dress hanging on the closet door. It stops at an appropriate length…around my thighs, a few inches up from my knees. I face him, and he regards it with an over-contemplative expression, stroking his stubble and pinching his dark eyes together. I almost laugh. Almost.
“I think I’d like it off,” he answers with a wink.
I roll my eyes and walk over to the bed. I gently put it down and take off my clothes. After neatly folding them and placing them in my hamper, I slip on the dress and into a pair of black four-inch heels. The clinks my heels make are an obnoxious but tolerable sound as I walk over to the full-length mirror opposite my bed. I stroke my hands around my mid-waist and examine the way the soft fabric clings to my body. Hopefully this will appease my mother…
“Can you help me?”
He is behind me before I can finish. “Of course, mi amor,” he whispers darkly, locking eyes with me in the mirror. I smile and glance down shyly. His hands trail down my back before he pinches the zipper. The cool metal glides up my back, along with his long finger. I suck in a deep breath and close my eyes as he presses against me, so I lean forward and grip the sides of the antique mirror. I bite my lips and feel them twitch in a smile when he gently presses his mouth against my goose-bump covered neck, the zipper all the way up. “You are so fucking sexy, Liv.”
I am spun around and pressed against the mirror. “Grey,” I breathe, reaching up to grab his hair and pull him down to me, but something stops me. Mother’s damn words are really getting on my nerves. “Wait—”
He crashes his lips onto mine, sucking up any words and filling me with him. My body surrenders to his touch as he curves his large hands around my waist and grips my ass. I yelp and grab the dark gray silk tie I had my father lend him for tonight.
He grips the back of my thighs before pulling me up and pushing me against the mirror. His tongue glides up my neck and sucks just under my ear, torturing me. “I could just take you. Right. Now,” he groans, sucking my sensitive skin.
“N-no,” I say, pushing against his shoulders. “Dinner is soon. You’ll leave marks.”
“Fine.” He grips the front of my dress and looks up at me through his thick eyelashes. “Then I’ll just have to give you them where no one will ever see…besides me, of course.”
“Grey—” I begin, my voice a bare whisper.
He shuts me up by smashing his lips against mine and cupping my breast. I suck in a breath through my teeth, making a hissing sound. He makes a guttural sound like it turned him on and turns around.
He carries me to the bed and drops me on it. He takes off his blazer before gently pulling the short sleeves of my dress down and kissing the skin above my breast. I close my eyes and feel them roll back into my head as he sucks and swirls his tongue around my nipples. Each harden under his warm touch.
“Grey,” I moan his name and grip his shirt collar. But I let go. I can’t wrinkle it and make him look ragged. Or like he had me pinned beneath him.
“Fuck, I love it when you moan my name, princesa,” he says darkly. I arch my back and grip his shoulders. His tongue trails down to the middle of the start of my stomach, the dress descending as he does. The lower he gets, the less the dress is on me. I straddle him and press my lips with his. He smiles into the kiss immediately, and I smile back. I like—no—love the way he smiled so damn quick. Like this is what he wanted, craved.
I find it shocking he can crave me the same way I crave him. But I mostly find it sweet and undeniably satisfying.
I grip his chin, and he opens his mouth. I open mine too and find myself tasting the bittersweet toxins of cigarettes swirling on his tongue. I suck up the sweetness and revel in the way we collide and mesh so well together. Like we were supposed to be doing this and just this. His hands glide up from the back of my thighs and rest gently around my waist. He doesn’t squeeze or try to flip me back over to have his ultimate dominance he loves to wield around me, which I normally die for. He just holds me and kisses me back just as softly and with a contented smile.
Removing my lips to get some air, I kiss his neck and open my eyes. I find his eyes are still closed and his chest is rising and falling unsteadily. So handsome…He takes my left wrist and places gentle kisses down my skin. The action is so minor, but it causes my heart to quaver and my love for him to grow tenfold.
I go back to kissing his neck when I find something just behind his ear, almost etched onto his earlobe. It’s small, but it’s clear what it is. A branded image of a bird and two guns crossing each other on the bottom. The moment I see it, I know exactly what it is—a gang-initiation symbol. I learned about them for a random lesson brought to my high school last year.
I stop kissing him and lean up. I adjust my dress and quickly climb off him. I stare blankly at the floor as I try to catch my breath.
He’s been arrested four times before he turned seventeen, the last time because of drug dealing and putting someone in a hospital after nearly killing them…Still think you know him? My mother’s words resonate in my mind.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, reaching up to touch my shoulder. I unintentionally shift my shoulder so his hand drops. I need answers now. Kissing or doing anything but talking will not make my burning curiosity go away.
I stare down at him, watching as he looks up at the high, carved ceiling, before catching my gaze.
“What?” He laughs nervously.
I stay silent for a beat longer before asking, “You told me everything about you…right?”
He squints and nods. “Yes…well, everything except my Social Security number. Why? Planning to high-jack my identity?” He laughs, but I don’t even smile. That’s when he sits up and looks at me oddly. “Okay, what’s wrong? I made a joke-joke and you didn’t laugh-laugh.” He smiles and pokes my belly button.
“My mother dug up information about your past,” I blurt out and feel my flesh tighten as his face hardens.
“Oh, did she? I knew she was crazy, but not that crazy,” he says and pauses. The silence kills me with each nanosecond passing by. “Which part of me has you second guessing me the most?” His voice is soft as he prepares for me to say “everything.”
“None,” I answer with a nervous chuckle that dissipates. I face forward, and he watches me. I close my eyes and shrug. “Just—just tell me everything. Clear things up so I don’t have to tell my mother she was right…”
“So you do agree with your mother,” he says roughly with a small scoff.
“No. Of course not. But you have been keeping big things from me.”
He jumps up from the bed and throws his hands around. “I wasn’t keeping anything from you. They just haven’t come up.”
“How can they if you never speak about any of it?” I question. The more he tries to divert from talking about this, the more I’m starting to see him as the person my mother thinks he is. “Grey, don’t let this break us apart. Not again. Just tell me. I won’t judge you, I swear it.”
“I was fucked up,” he says. “That’s all you need to know.”
“You’re being fucked up right now by holding back on me.”
He stares at me, bewildered, before muttering under his breath and rubbing the back of his neck.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice so low I barely hear it. He sighs and puts his hands on his hips. “I just…my past is too messed up for you to know. I’m afraid you’ll leave me.”
Is he insane?
“How could you possibly think I would leave you, Grey?” I breathe out and stand. He takes a step back and rubs his face frantically. He’s going to have a breakdown. It’s common for people with bipolar disorders. I haven’t dealt with something like this before, but I think I’m about to learn how to. “Grey, please, calm down.”
“You haven’t even seen the real me,” he says, gesturing wildly.
“Yes, I have. I’m looking at the real you right now,” I try to reason. I can see the wildness in his eyes.
“No, you aren’t,” he argues, glaring at me.
“Yes, I am!”
“I have been showing you a side of me that only exists around you. Trust me, before I met you, you would have stayed clear of me. If only you did, if only…” He breathes through his nose and punches the wall before leaning against it, gripping his hair.
I jump at the sudden blow up and rush over to him, taking his hand in mine. I examine the redness around his knuckles, but he pulls his hands away, moving to the center of the room.
“Just tell me what happened, Grey,” I plead, walking over to him, but he takes a step back and glances at me with a warning look. I take another step forward, and he rolls his eyes. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because I know you will leave me!” he shouts. I groan and shake my head. I’m growing frustrated beyond words. He is so goddamn stubborn, it hurts.
“Bullshit!” I snap and grab his hands. “I would still love you—”
Oh. My. God. Did I really just say that? Out loud? I didn’t mean to; it just came out! Will he say it back? We haven’t even known each other for that long! He must think I’m insane! I think I’m insane myself. Because this couldn’t have been any worse of a moment to reveal it.
Why is he looking at me like that? Why isn’t he saying anything? Can he please say something? I feel like I am going to pass out. Oh god, oh god, oh go—
A knock, followed by Louise announcing, “The guests are here, Liv. Come on down.”
“Coming,” is my shaky response.
The door closes, leaving us in an uncomfortable silence. I can hear my heart beating in my ears. My skin feels hot, and I fiddle with my charm bracelet. I want him to say something. Anything. He’s killing me here!
“Grey, I—” I begin to say.
He drops my hands and storms out of the room, slamming the door after himself. My heart plummets to the floor. I can’t believe I just said that. I stand here for what feels like an eternity before I suck up a deep breath and tell myself I can’t just let him walk away. Not that easily.
“Grey, wait.” I fling the door open and step out. I find him standing in the middle of the hallway, looking toward the staircase with a look that sends chills up my back. It’s like he’s seen a ghost and is stuck in a deep trance. “What’s wrong?” I walk up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
I turn my head and find a girl standing at the other end of the hallway. She has bright red lips and flaming red hair. And something about the way she and Grey are looking at each other gives me the chills.
“Grey?” Her voice bounces off the walls and hits home base in my gut.
No…
“Rose?” His voice breaks.