by Nicky James
Ignoring Gray, Officer Steroids turned to me, using his broad back to wall Gray off from our conversation. Considering Gray was an adult, it seemed rude and uncalled for, but I also wanted to hear what he had to say and figured I’d be more likely to get the story from him than Gray.
“Does your friend here suffer from anything that could cause instability in his mental health? Something he might not be sharing with medical personnel? The thing is, what Eric Davidson describes concerns me. Your friend will be lucky if Mr. Davidson doesn’t press charges. We’ve got evidence of destruction of property, and the verbal threats against the owner are pretty harsh.”
“Verbal threats? Really? That’s not like Gray.”
“I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been here with him for the past hour, and based on what I’ve seen, he’s twitchy, irritable, talking to himself, and displaying all the signs of substance abuse. I’ve had the hospital run tests, but—”
“He doesn’t take drugs. He… Look, Gray lost his leg in an accident only a few months ago. It was pretty brutal, and I think it’s impacted his mental health. He’s been living with me, and I see shit every day that’s starting to be worrisome. I just haven’t been able to convince him to talk about it. I know there is some element of PTSD going on, but I think there is more, too.”
The officer rolled that around his head for a minute before asking, “Is he seeing a doctor?”
“Many. He’s still doing post-op visits with his surgeon, and he’s got an OT and a PT outside his regular doctor.”
“Psychiatrist?”
“He saw someone right after his amputation. Once or twice, I think. Only in the hospital. He hasn’t been back.”
“I think it’d be wise if he made an appointment.”
“Yeah, believe me, I agree. I’m not blind.” I hadn’t meant it to sound so sarcastic, but the bite in my tone slipped out.
“I asked Grayson to call you here since he claimed you were a close friend. He said he didn’t have family in town. My concern is that he might fly back out that door and cause more problems. He’s pretty worked up right now. You say you’re living together?”
A hot rush flooded my veins, and I nodded. I knew he didn’t mean it that way, but that was immediately how I read the question. It was funny how that statement would have washed right over me a week ago without giving me pause. Knowing what Gray and I had shared made it into something else. I wasn’t ashamed… just not used to flat out admitting I was anything more than a friend to Gray.
And we’d barely had time enough to properly discuss it.
“Yeah. He’s staying with me while he recovers.”
Officer What’s His Name didn’t flinch. Apparently only I was bothered by that information.
“You all right with me releasing him into your care this evening?”
“Ah, yeah, that’s fine. I’ll take him right home.”
“I’ve taken his statement and gathered his information. I’ll be in touch. I can’t say what Mr. Davidson is going to do, but he has every right to press charges.”
“I understand.”
“Get him help. Sounds like he needs it.”
Easier said than done.
The officer turned and had a quiet word with Gray who wouldn’t meet his eyes. At least he’d curbed his indignation and nodded at whatever the police officer said. Then, the big guy nodded at me and disappeared down the hall, his heavy boots clipping the tiled floor as he went.
The nurse was gone, so I approached the bed and sat beside him. His hand looked a mess. Three spots across his knuckles were being held together with stitches, and the number of lesser abrasions were countless.
“Are you good to go?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He didn’t move. He didn’t look at me, just stared into empty space in the direction of the floor.
I rested a hand on his thigh and squeezed. “Come on.”
“I have to come back in seven days to get the stitches out. They’re not dissolving ones.” The statement was almost robotic.
“Okay. We’ll sort that out.”
Again, Gray didn’t move or react. I stood, moved to the edge of the curtain and waited to see if he’d follow. There was a long moment of nothing before he slammed a hand against the rolling table, shoving it away hard enough it clattered into a blood pressure machine and nearly toppled.
His face contorted in anger as he stood and pushed past me, shouldering me out of the way before heading down the hall to the exit.
“God, give me strength,” I muttered under my breath before following after him.
Watching him flee for the car only proved how stable and comfortable he was using his prosthetic leg. There was no evidence of him being off balance. He raced across the street as well as any man with two functioning legs—if not faster. His anger carried him the whole way.
The drive was silent. Gray stared out the window, jaw ticking, fists clenched, eyes narrowed. When we got back to my place, I turned to say something, but he was out of the car and bolting to the door before I could speak.
I followed on his ass.
The minute the door to my apartment slammed closed, my anger boiled just as hot.
“What the fuck?” I barked.
Gray ignored me and headed down the hall, but that wasn’t gonna fly. No fucking way.
In the bedroom, I slammed that door as well and crossed my arms, squaring up with him and blocking his only escape.
“Destruction of property? Verbal assault? Who the fuck are you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He rooted through a dresser drawer with one hand while cradling the wounded one against his chest.
“Too bad. We’re talking, like it or not. What the hell is going on with you?”
He slammed the drawer and opened the one below it, digging through and unearthing a pair of joggers which he flung onto the bed. They landed beside the underwear he’d tossed a second ago. Next went a T-shirt.
“Gray, I’m really worried about you. Something is happening, and you’re not telling me. I’ve never known you to be destructive or violent. I’m the one who got in fist fights at school, not you. I’m the one who lipped off to teachers, not you.”
“I didn’t verbally assault anyone,” he spat. “I didn’t hurt anyone except my fucking hand and that goddamned clock. Just let it go, Beck. I’m too pissed off to talk about it.”
But I couldn’t let it go. For months, I’d been watching this downward spiral, and I’d done nothing. Too consumed with other things, I’d already ignored it too long, and look what had happened.
“Why did you… assault a clock?”
He dropped onto the bed, his back turned before pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it aside.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he mumbled.
“Try me.”
He picked up his clean shirt but didn’t put it on. Bowing his head, he turned it over in his fists, twisting it and turning it. Seething under the surface. After a time, he shook his head.
“I can’t explain it.”
I stared at the long, muscular line of his back. Examined the art decorating its smooth surface and pondered what to do. Gray was locking me out. I could either push him hard or walk away and let him drown in whatever this was.
I knew if I pushed, the results could be vicious. Gray may not be violent, but he knew how to get under my skin. He knew just the right things to say that would tip me over the edge and piss me off. And sadly, I did have a tendency to snap when provoked.
When we were fifteen, I gave Gray a black eye and stitches across his cheek. Over a girl, if I remembered correctly. Of all fucking things.
I made a decision.
“Well, let me tell you what I see, then maybe you’ll figure out how to express yourself.”
“Beck,” he warned through gritted teeth.
“You nearly destroyed my antique clock not that long ago. If I hadn’t walked in, it would have probably shared the same fate as that one a
t the dealership. What did the cop say? Pulverized? That’s kinda fucked up, Gray. It’s a clock. What did it do to you?”
Nothing. No response. I kept pushing.
“And then, there’s that little gem that turned up in my room.”
I stared at the digital green readout of the clock on my bedside table. Even though Gray’s back was turned, he knew exactly what I was talking about. He stiffened and sat very still.
“But that’s nothing compared to that new watch you’re carrying around in your pocket, is it? You know the one. You sleep with it in your hand at night. You checked it a minimum thirty or forty times while we watched a movie yesterday. Can I see it?”
Gray’s hand clutched his outer pocket, and I knew he was holding that damn watch through the fabric of his shorts. Why?
He didn’t respond. I didn’t expect him to. I still held the trump card, but if I was going to reveal it, we needed to be face to face so I could gauge his reaction.
I rounded the bed and stood in front of him. He refused to meet my gaze. From my pocket, I withdrew the stack of papers I’d saved from the garbage. Unfolding them, I stared at the chaotic display of numbers again before tossing them onto his lap.
“Look at this and tell me you don’t have a problem.”
A long, eerie silence filled the air. Gray vibrated, his hand twitched over his pocket as he stared at the papers. Some of the cuts on his hand bled again with the motion, and passively, I wondered why they hadn’t wrapped it.
“You dug these out of the garbage.”
“I did. What are they?”
With a vicious growl I wasn’t expecting, he whipped the papers across the room. They fluttered and scattered with the same sort of disarray as the coding printed on their surfaces.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” Gray roared, pushing up from the bed with a burst of rage.
But I wasn’t fucking having it. I shoved him in the chest, unbalancing him and sending him falling right back where he’d been sitting. That was me. Reactive in the face of aggression.
“We aren’t fucking finished,” I yelled.
Then he met my eyes for the first time since we’d come in the room, and the burning fury behind them was scorching. I’d never seen Gray like this.
Before he could come at me, I got right in his face. A bold move for a guy with half his muscle mass.
“It’s timestamps. That’s what you were writing. Four hours worth. You recorded every goddamn minute that passed for four fucking hours! The cop said you looked like you were on drugs. I can see why he’d think that. You’re twitchy. You’re nervous. You mutter to yourself, and you stare at the time like it’s fucking haunting you. Like you’re fucking terrified, Gray. So, I’ll ask you again. What. The. Fuck?”
Painful looking veins covered the sclera of both his eyes, but the fiery pits of hell that I’d seen looking back at me a moment ago were now diluted with something resembling fear. He looked so wrecked. I felt his pain like it was my own, and it stabbed right into my heart.
I expected to be attacked or at least for us to fly into a full-on yelling match, but what happened was something I could honestly say I’d never witnessed before in my life. Gray broke down.
His already trembling body started convulsing. His shoulders bounced, his chin warbled, then tears flooded his eyes.
For a shocked moment, I stood there and watched him, paralyzed and unsure how to react to a shattered Gray. Then, as he bent forward, caving in on himself in despair, I found my feet and hauled him into my arms.
We wound up in a heap, sitting on the floor, Gray clinging to me for dear life and sobbing onto my shoulder. It was a little surreal, and I didn’t know exactly how to handle it. Gray never showed emotions like this. In thirty years, I didn’t think I’d ever seen him cry. Not when he broke his arm at ten. Not when his dog died at sixteen. Not when our mutual friend, Darren, took his life the same night as high school prom.
Anger and aggression were easy to handle. I could go to blows with Gray, fight it out, and know we’d recover just fine in the end. But emotional breakdowns…
I didn’t know what to do.
In the end, I realized, I didn’t have to do anything. When someone hurts that deeply, sometimes, just being there is enough. You don’t need to possess the magical cure, you just need to cushion their fall.
When he calmed, when the tears ceased, his grip on my shirt changed. It was less of an urgent need to be kept afloat and more of a desperate drive to be closer. He buried his face in my neck and threaded fingers through my curls as we hugged. I stroked his back and fumbled through a hopeless string of thoughts, looking for something to say that would make him feel better.
Maybe I’d said enough. Too much. Had I known he was this fragile, I probably wouldn’t have pushed so hard.
“I swear to fucking God,” he croaked, his voice a broken, wet whisper on my shoulder. “If you breathe a word of this to my mother, I will put you in the ground.”
I chuckled and pulled him in tighter. “Are you kidding? She’d somehow make this my fault. I should be taking care of her baby not kicking him when he’s down.”
He laughed against my neck, but it was sorrowful and weak. “Something is wrong with me,” he said on a breath. “I can’t make it stop. It won’t go away.”
“Then quit hiding and talk. You leave me on the outside, and I can’t help you.”
“I know.”
When he didn’t offer any more explanation, I sighed.
“Gray—”
“Not tonight. Please. It’s been a shitty day, and I just want to try and forget it.”
Except, I couldn’t let him shove this under the rug anymore. Not when the police were involved and Gray’s mental health was dissolving into something I feared wouldn’t end well.
I lifted his face from my shoulder and peered deep into the trouble pools of his red-rimmed eyes. Seeing his wariness so close sent a chill down my spine. His face hung, and his eyes were haunted.
“You can’t keep avoiding it.”
Ignoring my statement, he surprised me when he slammed his mouth against mine. It was desperate. Urgent. Critical in its own way. Tasting the salt from his tears, I didn’t know how to deny him. He tugged me closer, ate at my mouth like it was the oxygen he thirsted for to fill his depleted lungs.
Barely able to break us apart, I spoke into the kiss. “Gray…” But he silenced me before I could manage more.
“Please,” he begged, biting hard into my lip before soothing the sting with his tongue. “Don’t take this from me. Not now. I need you.”
He was brutal in his advances. All his emotions hovered on the surface and exploded in the intensity of the moment. He pushed me down onto the floor and crawled over top of me, not breaking our connection but driving me hard against the ground as he crushed our mouths together.
We breathed the same air. Fought the same battle with a shared tactic of aggression and defense. I knew I should insist we talk. I knew this was bound to be forgotten or buried come morning, but I couldn’t deny him. I didn’t think there would ever be a day that I could tell Gray no. Even if it was in his best interest.
How had I never seen this before? He was always the most important person in my life. He came first over everything. Always.
“Beckett?”
Twice he’d used my full name while we were being intimate, and I loved how it rang in the air and seeped into my skin. It bubbled my blood to life.
“Anything.” And I meant it. “Whatever you need.”
“I want you to fuck me. Please. I need something good. I need to forget my problems for a while and just be. Be with me. Beckett. Please.”
A tear trickled down his cheek as he hovered, staring down with his heart split open and raw.
It was a terrifying and thrilling request. If I’d thought I couldn’t take that step with a guy, seeing the pain radiating from Gray’s eyes erased any doubt.
I wanted it. We could put life on hold for anoth
er night. He needed me.
I nodded, and the faintest crease appeared in the corner of his mouth. The tiniest shimmer gleamed in his eyes. It was only the barest impression of a smile, but it was everything.
Chapter Nineteen
Grayson
I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. If I didn’t calm down, I’d frighten him off. My blood boiled with so much hot anger and pent up anxiety, it poured off me in waves. Beck saw the voracious animal crawling under my skin and probably thought I would change my mind, flip him over, and destroy his virgin ass.
I wouldn’t.
As much as I longed to take him like that, I was far too worked up and knew I’d hurt him. I knew I couldn’t go easy. Not today.
Before things got too wild, I removed his glasses and set them safely aside. Then we tore at each other’s clothes, and I cursed when my shorts got caught on my prosthesis. I wanted him naked. I didn’t care that we were on the floor with a bed less than two feet away. My patience didn’t extend to offering comforts. I needed to be fucked and fucked hard so I could forget the toxins infecting my brain and stealing my reasoning.
Desperation took over, and I kissed him with such fierce brutality I knew one of us—or both—were going to be bruised by morning. Disregarding my injured hand, I dug fingers into his soft flesh, grinding against his equally hard erection. The slippery precum and long strings of moans spilling from him only encouraged me.
He was bolder than I expected, grabbing my ass and encouraging our bodies to move together. He bit into my lip until I tasted blood and then chuckled when I gasped and drew back. He licked my collarbone and throat, sucked the throbbing pulse of the artery in my neck, and grazed his teeth along the stubble of my jaw.
As much as I wanted to take time to learn him and what he enjoyed, tonight wasn’t the night for that. My mind was too fucked up, and I needed something more savage and brutal than soft, gentle loving.
I stared down into his blown pupils, shifting off him enough so he wasn’t trapped.
“Find a condom and lube. I know you have them.”
