Chapter Sixteen
Alicia
Ava’s friends proved to be just as lovely as her playing, the girl coming fully equipped with her guitar to the lake. Had I known her skills we could have definitely gotten together with some sort of jam session, but I supposed that was for another day.
She had an ethereal sound about her tunes that paired well with the tone of the day, the world a dream for me since shortly after I woke up this morning.
It’d started with my view outside and into the wonderful land that I had somehow come to own. Standing out on the veranda, I simply watched the earth move until Gray had arrived, our journey to take Laura to school shortly after that. I felt I was living in a place of borrowed time and in a place that may have belonged to me on paper, but ultimately was on loan to me. Josephine Bradley’s life was on loan to me and I was currently reaping the benefits of it from this lake with people enjoying it around Ava to the man that stood at the shore by himself, Gray a true wanderer.
He stood by the edge of the lake, the sun high and wide and cascading on his brawny frame. His stance tall in his t-shirt and jeans, he resembled a man who ruled the world, but I’d known different. He showed me just that day, a vulnerability he allowed me to see. I believed I was always fortunate because his daughter let me play for her, but a true gift came in the form of this man and his trust. He trusted me.
He showed me that today.
I saw that trust in his eyes when I came over, his hand dropping from his bicep and coming around me. The gesture felt natural and I caught an eye from behind him when he did it, Ava’s over the strums of her guitar and I merely shook my head at her before finding the sun like Gray had. I used to have a boyfriend. I used to have a lot of things.
I used to have my heart in something only to leave it and used to wear an armor I quickly shed upon experiencing Mayfield, a town and a people that came to find me. I thought I was helping them but proved to be the one who needed the help. I felt that in Gray’s embrace.
I felt that in his love.
Neither one of us had said it of course, but maybe like his arm around me we just did.
“Your friend plays so nice,” he said almost absentmindedly. His fingers played with the plaid shirt I currently wore—his shirt. It’d been breezy today.
It smelled of him and I lost myself in it, only a soft sound escaping from my lips as I lay my head against his chest.
He allowed me to do so, cradling me more but something raised his heartbeat, his chest rising with more and more breaths.
I looked at him. “Everything okay?”
He said nothing, merely looking at me when he took a strand of my hair and tucked it behind my ear. Behind those light-colored eyes he seemed to be at war with something, a small storm creating behind his eyes before he spoke.
“What you did for me,” he started, his expression fallen. “What you did today with Laura—”
“What I did, you did for me,” I said reassuring him, as he seemed to be struggling with something. “You took me to see my aunt today. You’ve slaved over her house—”
“It’s not the same,” he continued, his hand dropping from my shoulder and I missed it immediately. He cradled himself, standing back to look up at me.
His expression stiffened. “You don’t ask for anything, Alicia. You don’t ask for money or even to be acknowledged. You just do. You played. You’ve played your goddamn heart out for Laura every day like Jo and—”
I followed him when he took a step back, not understanding. The group was still listening to Ava, something I confirmed visually before getting closer. He shook his head the moment I was in his personal space.
“I gave you nothing,” he emphasized. “I gave her… Jo, nothing.”
“You gave yourself,” I said, not getting why he wasn’t seeing that. “Now, I can’t speak for her but I can speak for me. You let me in, be a part of your life, Laura’s life? Gray, you—”
“But have I?” he challenged. “Have I really? I never told her much and I know I’ve never told you much.”
I believed he referred to the conversation about Laura’s mom again, the one personal thing he did tell me about the pair. I had been given enough information that day to stop my questioning, my inquiry invasive anyway.
I touched his arm, so warm and probably not from the sun.
“You never have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me,” I explained then pushed my hands to his face, finding his eyes. “And again I don’t speak for her.”
But I was sure it was the same for my aunt. She found something in him, the both of them and cared about them enough to respect their space as I have.
Gray couldn’t keep my gaze, his eyes falling when he dropped his head.
“You deserve to know the whole story,” he said. “My place in it. I made it sound like her mom is the only reason she is the way she is.”
Is the way she is definitely stood out to me as that could mean so much. He addressed a clear problem here and one I didn’t feel was my place to question.
He left my hands again in a breath, facing the sun and never letting him go I returned to his side.
His eyes narrowed.
“She wasn’t a great woman, Laura’s mom,” he started. “But I wasn’t a great man either. I met her at a party, fucked her at a party.”
His crude language took me aback a bit but not because I was sensitive to such things.
It seemed to hurt him when I touched him this time, squeezing his arm.
His expression pained when he looked at me. “Alicia, we were strangers when Laura was conceived.”
Not unlike Bastian and I had met, two strangers at a work event. It turned into something more after that first lay at his place that night and probably shouldn’t have.
I rubbed Gray’s shoulders, the guilt coming off him. “Gray, that happens sometimes. That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
His laugh was cynical and something I didn’t like.
“No, what makes me a bad person comes later,” he said, and though he didn’t physically pull away this time he didn’t have to, his emotions doing it for him. He panned to me. “You want to know what I did when she finally managed to find me and tell me she was pregnant? I didn’t remember by the way. I fucked a couple of girls that night.”
I cringed though I hadn’t wanted to, so unlike him. But then again…
I guess I didn’t really know him.
His jaw moved. “I told her two words: prove it. I said ‘prove it’ and even after she did, I didn’t accept it. Not really. I gave her basic child support but that was it.”
Even in all this, as graphic and hard to hear as it was, it was something that clearly changed him. Somewhere along the way Laura went from the result of a choice at a party to his daughter and I saw that. I saw it every day.
“Gray?”
He found me when I touched him, my hands moving up over his whiskers and up into the thickness of his hair.
“That still doesn’t excuse what she did,” I said, shaking my head. “Leaving Laura—”
“She left her because of me,” he came back with, surprising me. His voice retched. “She left because she didn’t have me, support from me…”
He stopped like there was something else, shaking his head.
“I cut her off from even the financial support eventually. I cut her off after finding out she had a drug habit, not another thought about it.” His expression stiffened, visual tears glassing his eyes. “Who cared what she was using the money for? It didn’t matter. It was support for our daughter. In the end, it was support for her.”
“Gray—?”
“That was the last time I heard her voice, you know?” he said and I didn’t take a step back at the sudden statement, though I wanted to. I was surprised, confused.
Somewhere in there, he found me in all that, after all that and in my shock. His hands came to my hips, his head bowed in a clear shame.
“The day I cut Laura’s mom off she’d been laughing in the background,” he said, his throat jumping. “That was the last time I heard it, my little girl’s voice.”
My own tears stung my eyes and throat. Laura, she wasn’t mute.
She’d spoken.
And he heard it, well, at least her laughter. Was it the same?
He didn’t let on, his hand coming up to mine and squeezing. He pushed his mouth into my hand, his breath still labored.
“She left her shortly after that, Alicia,” he said, his voice strained. He dampened his lips. “And by the time I’d gotten to Laura, literally found her, I was too late. I was too late for her.” He cringed. “She was scared. She was alone… left alone completely.”
And mute though he didn’t say. He didn’t need to. I got it.
I finally got it.
The details in which Laura’s mom left her stirred a taste in my mouth that I truly had to fight down to keep from doing something else. Gray had said her mom abandoned her but never in my life did I believe in the literal sense. How long was she alone?
How long had she been by herself?
Clearly, long enough to scar, and my pain for her, for this family fell upon me in waves, for this man and his guilt he felt so deeply.
After squeezing his eyes, he revealed them to be red, tears he was clearly holding back but doing a bad job to manage.
“Who does something like that,” barely managed to be discerned from his lips, his deep voice thick. “Who—”
“Takes care of his daughter,” I corrected, having a feeling he needed to be corrected. From the start of this conversation, the direction of it needed to be changed, a conclusion he came up with and managed to believe so hard in had a need to be dissolved with the truth. He may have had a hand in what happened to Laura, but something he hadn’t done was what her mom did. He didn’t abandon her and showed her a love and care I personally had the honor of seeing every day. I cherished it.
Cradling his head, I brought him down to me, made him travel down to where I was and see the truth.
Our brows touched.
“You love that child… You care and protect that little girl in ways I have never seen, Gray. Never seen and don’t you ever devalue that for mistakes you made in the past. It’s not your present and what you’re doing moving forward means everything, everything now.”
He looked up at me, his eyes rimmed in red. All that disappeared from my vision when I kissed him this time, the hum off his body I felt throughout mine. The buzz warmed of a release, something he’d needed to let go of for a while and I guess finally found the strength to.
He kissed me back, heaven in the way his warm lips opened and closed over mine. Cradling the back of my neck, he tilted my head, taking over when he brought his other arm around me. Ava’s music continued to play in the background, but even if it wasn’t I didn’t think we would have stopped. Like I said, we just did.
Eventually, we came away with no breaths and I lost myself in his lovely blue eyes.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” I admitted to him, but I lied. I lied so hard. I was already very much in love and had been probably since the moment he pissed me off in my aunt’s bathroom. He challenged me and I’d always been a girl to love one of those.
My eyes closed when his thumb massaged my cheek, opening them to see his smile. He leaned in pressing his lips to mine again.
“I know I am with you,” he said against my mouth, braver than I was. His arms going around me, he brought me in close, expressing that love with every kiss and every touch he so passionately gave me. It’d been a ring, which rang into the air that ultimately stopped him and a fear I think we both experienced. I didn’t even need to confirm that by looking into his eyes. Gray’s phone virtually never rang.
Least of all on the very day Laura started school.