Gray
After sitting on my couch getting seriously drunk last night, I woke up late, hauled my ass into the shower, and then drove to Tessa’s. There was no point in dragging this out. I rang her doorbell and waited, my hung-over stomach and headache not even coming close to the pain in my chest.
Her door opened and I had to ignore the clench in my gut from her bright green eyes and sweet smile.
“Hi, Gray. This is a nice surprise. Come on in.”
“No thanks.” I stood on the top stair to her porch, needing to keep my distance. Afraid I’d reach for her. “Do you have a second to talk?”
“Sure.” She frowned and stepped outside, Sully on her heels. “Is everything okay?”
Her eyes searched my face. Worry settling in the longer she looked at me.
“Fine. Everything’s fine. I just need to talk to you.” How the fuck did I get here? How did I get to the point where this would be hard? But it only took the image of Ryker’s face, half covered in scars, the image I couldn’t drink away last night, or even the memory of Ry’s face the last time I saw him when he fucking begged me to go with him to pull myself together. Nothing like the sharp slice of pain to remind a guy of his failings. “I can’t—”
Tessa reached out, placing her hand on my forearm. I stared down where her fingertips touched me. I wanted to lose myself in her softness and warmth—in her touch against my skin, but it was already too much and more than I deserved. I carefully pulled my arm away, shoving my hands in my pockets. I found the button and wrapped my fist around it, clutching it tight and holding on with an iron grip.
“Tessa, I can’t do this anymore. Us together. It’s not fair to you. I don’t have my head in the right place. I mean it’s really been a selfish dick thing I’ve been doing. So I need us to go back to a professional contractor-client relationship. From here on out it’ll only be work between us. If you’d prefer, I can even hand your job over to Eli. He can finish it from here. It might be easier—fairer to you.”
“Eli told me about Ryker when he was here this morning. Is this about him?” She stepped closer, until I could see the flecks of yellow in her green eyes. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Gray.”
“No, Tessa.” I cut my eyes away to the azalea bushes next to the steps before looking back at her. “This is about me. What I have to do. I’m sorry. This is all on me. I shouldn’t have started this. Should’ve kept this professional.”
“Is that how you feel toward me? You can turn it off that easily?”
“It’s not you, Tessa, it’s—”
“You. Got it. You don’t do relationships. I’d heard that, but I thought what we had was different. I guess I was wrong.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Believe me, this is not your fault. This is all on me.” She glanced down at her feet, then back up. “I have messed with your life enough, Gray Thorne. I’ll respect any decision you make as far as how you want to finish out my house. If you’d rather one of your brothers take over for you, that’s fine with me. I’ll understand. It would probably be best all around.”
I stared into her eyes, my chest feeling like it was a tin can and someone had just stomped it flat.
“Sully and I have our volunteering to get to, so we’ll see you later. Maybe. Or…not.”
Tessa gathered up Sully, carrying whatever crazy outfit she was going to stick on him for the day, and left through the front door. I needed to say something. I wanted to say something, but I had no words. I felt a cold numbness settle in my gut as my gaze followed her across the porch, past me, and down the drive. Wouldn’t you know, fucking Paul was at the end of the driveway.
“What are you doing here?” Tessa asked as her ex strolled up closer.
“I thought we could talk. I called you yesterday. Left a message.” Paul shoved his sunglasses up on his head and smiled at her, ignoring the fact that I stood only feet away from her. “You’re going somewhere?”
“Sully and I volunteer at Meadowbrook. We—” Her phone sounded an incoming text and she paused to read it. “Drat. Joe’s got a dead battery and can’t drive today.”
“I’ll drive you,” Paul said. “It’ll give us a chance to talk. And I’d like to learn about your volunteering.”
The only thing stopping me from giving in to my urge to punch ol’ Paul right in his bread basket was the look on Tessa’s face. She didn’t look happy. But then I remembered her anxiety and trust issues with not just driving a car but riding as a passenger too.
“Tessa, if you need a ride somewhere, I can take you.” I stepped down off the porch step, moving closer to her.
“Thanks, Gray. I think I’ve disrupted your life enough. I’ll just get a ride from Paul since he’s here.” The look of sweet sadness in her green eyes ripped at me. I fucking hated watching them walk down the driveway together. Watching him use his Southern manners to help her into the passenger seat.
And as if I didn’t have enough reasons to grind my back molars together, Paul came back up the driveway until he stood a few feet away, staring at me until he knew he had my attention.
“Just to let you know, I’m planning on asking Tessa to marry me.”
I crossed my arms over my chest rather than knock his teeth down his throat.
“She said yes once before, so I have high hopes she will again. I think it would be best if you didn’t hang around Tessa after that. Best for Tessa.” He waited for my response, but I had none, so he nodded and walked away.
I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to. My jaw was clamped tight. I hadn’t had a fucking clue that Tessa and Paul had been engaged before. Dating yes, but not the knowledge that Tessa had agreed to be someone’s woman forever. Fuck. I was unprepared for the way that fact crushed my chest.
What I hated most was that Paul seemed like a decent guy. Except for the part where he bailed on her when she’d needed him. Other than that, he was a solid guy without any surprises or heavy baggage. A yuppie businessman who’d give her a life of luxury in one of Raleigh’s suburbs, drive their kids around in a Volvo station wagon to soccer practice, and provide her a nice life. Yuppie Paul was a sure, safe guy who could make her happy. Obviously if she’d said yes to him before then she loved the guy. Hell, she let him drive her. She trusted him.
* * * *
I drove back to the SBC offices, parking right next to the batting cage. I grabbed out a bag of balls and my favorite bat and spent the next hour hitting the snot out of every pitch while I contemplated life without Tessa.
“What’s up, Gray?” Ash asked between swings. “Madigan job going okay?”
I sucked in air over my teeth and swung at the next pitch. “The Madigan job is great. Just great.”
“That’s good to hear, because you’re acting like you do when something isn’t great. So…”
“Asher…” I rested the bat on my shoulder, throwing a warning glance at him. I did not want his shit just now. We hadn’t had a fist fight around the office in a couple of years, but if Ash kept it up, that would change today.
Ash leaned his forearms against the split rail fence outside the cage. Looked like he was in a chatty mood. Fucking wonderful.
“What’s up with you and Tessa?”
“Not a damn thing. She’s a client. I’m her contractor. When the job’s done, we’re done.”
“I’m just confused. It looked like there was something between you and Tessa—something good. So I thought—”
“You thought wrong”—I turned, pointing the head of the bat at him on a growl—“You thought wrong, Ash.”
Ash stared at me, his eyes boring into me, seeing way more than I wanted him to. Not that I kept much from my brothers. But this burning pain in my chest was something I’d like to work through on my own, rather than unload on a brother. And not Ash. Not with Ash going through some of the same crap I’d been going though. I didn’t want to drag him down with me too.
“It sucks that our parents taught us trusting the wrong person can break you. Pulverize you into dust.”
Knew that feeling. Knew it standing right where I was. I turned back to the pitching machine and pressed the remote, waiting for the next pitch.
“Watching Beck fall in love—learning to trust it—I swear I never cheered for anyone harder. And I’ve played for the Stanley Cup, so you know. But I swear, Gray, in the beginning I was cheering for Beck. Because if anyone deserves happiness, it’s him. Fuck, the things he bore, the things he did for us—I’ll never get over it.”
Yep. Totally agreed with him there. Beck was my fucking hero. But so were all my brothers.
“But as time has gone on, it’s been harder to watch him and Sam. And now there’s Wyatt and Rhia beginning the dance, not that they know it, but fuck me if I’ve got to watch this all over again while I’ve got this raw feeling in my chest—I may not make it. I’m standing in the middle of the best people I know, people I can’t live without and I love with everything I’ve got—and I’m lonely. Next thing you know, Hope and Sinclair will be joining the love fest.”
I took a quick step out of the batting box, because Ash had totally fucked up my attention with that and as bad as I already felt, I’d rather not get beaned in the head. I leaned my back against the netting, head up to the blue sky above me, and let the guilt wash over me.
“I know. I’d sell my soul to guarantee Beck’s happiness. And Wyatt’s. But watching them feels like that time we hadn’t eaten for two days, and we stood outside the Bluebird Diner, sleet hitting us like B.B. pellets, our noses pressed to the window so we could watch people eat.”
“Exactly like that.” Ash looked at me and it was clear. We didn’t have a case of man flu. Never had.
“Well, we’re a fucking pair, aren’t we?” I shook my head at him. “Shit, Ash. At least we’re in this together. If I’m going to have the man flu for the rest of my life, at least I’ve got good company.”
It got quiet between us, as we each absorbed our reality. Sucked up the pain. A long silence broken only by the sound of a truck driving by on Market Street and a cardinal chirping from the winter-naked dogwood tree next to the office.
“I called Jon,” Ash said, staring at his boots before looking back up into my eyes. “I’m giving it a shot too. I refuse to let our parents win. I’m willing to risk getting hurt to grab even half of the happiness Beck and Wyatt have grabbed for themselves.”
Our gazes locked, and I clamped down on the frantic feeling of abandonment that threatened to explode my chest. The loneliness that had a chokehold on my throat. I pulled in a deep breath and nodded. “Good for you, Ash. Good for you. Jon’s a lucky man.”
“Gray—” Ash’s eyes burned fierce.
“Not me, Ash.”
Ash’s gaze dropped down to his boots, then he turned to the building and took two steps before turning back around. He slid a hand in his pocket, pulled it back out, and tossed something at me. Catching it a foot before it hit my face, I opened my hand and stared at the button in my palm. Ryker’s button.
“You’re going to have to let go, Gray. I am.”
But it was easier for him. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t have the guilt of having let Ryker down. Of being the reason Ryker had been missing from our lives for ten years. That guilt was mine, and mine alone. The thought of letting go felt like letting Ryker down. Not doing it again.
I clenched the button tight in my fist.
“Gray?” Ash crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin at me.
“Yeah?”
“I know you don’t think you deserve to be happy. Or loved. I’ve had the same fucking bear clawing at my back. But you do. We all do. In fact…I’ve got a bet for you…”
“Don’t want to hear it.”
“This time I’m betting on us, Gray. I’m betting we can reach for the life we want. Are you going to be the first Thorne brother to ever refuse a bet?” He arched an eyebrow at me and waited a beat of time. “I don’t fucking think so.”
“Why’d you fucking do that?”
“Because I love you, idiot.”
Fuck.