by Megyn Ward
When I get there, Delilah is standing in the middle of it, back turned toward the doorway, looking around like she’s trying to find an exit.
Aiming a quick look into the room behind me, I step across the threshold and shut the door. “What the hell are you doing here, Delilah?”
“What am I doing here?” She spins on me, cheeks flushed with anger, something sharp flashing in her eyes like shards of glass. “What am I… are you serious? That’s what you’re leading with?”
“What else am I supposed say?” The look on her face tells me she knows. That she’s pieced it together. That she’s not nearly as vapid and self-absorbed as she leads people to believe and she confirms it with her next question.
“What’s your last name, Gray?”
It’s something she’s asked me a million times. A game we play. A piece of myself that I was never willing to give up to her. I told myself it was because she didn’t need to know. That it was none of her business. This morning I realized I’d been lying to myself. That the real reason I didn’t want her to know who I really am is because I was afraid it would matter to her. That knowing I was a Bright would suddenly make me worthy and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be deemed worth more in her eyes, simply because of who my brothers are. I wanted her to look at me and see me. I wanted to be worthy—not my name. “You know what it is.”
“Yeah, I know what it is…” She nods her head and looks away, the glittering glass in her eyes suddenly dulled by tears. Reaching up, she brushes them away before she looks at me again. “But I want to hear you say it.”
“It’s complicated,” I hedge, shaking my head. “There’s more to it than—”
“Not really.” She shakes her head at me. “Jase and Tobias and that other guy in there are your brothers. Not your friends. Not just some guys you grew up with or your family fostered—they’re your brothers.” She stares at me like she has no idea who I am—probably because she doesn’t. Not really and I have to watch her expression soften with pity, catch the precise moment she realizes what being a Bright must mean. That the pretty little family she saw in the other picture, smiling on that beach, is gone. Must be gone because I’m here and they aren’t. Because all I have left of them is a worn-out photograph I carry in my cheap wallet.
And damn if that pity doesn’t piss me the fuck off.
“Look at me—” I hold my arms out, putting myself on display. My brown skin. My dark eyes. My obvious differences from the men I call my brothers. “If I’d told you my name was Grayson Bright—that Jase and Tob were my brothers you wouldn’t have believed me.” I drop my arms and laugh. “You would’ve—”
“That’s not why you didn’t tell me.”
She’s right.
It’s not.
Instead of admitting the truth, I ignore it completely. Go on the attack. “I told you to stay put,” I growl at her, taking a step in her direction. “I told you—”
“First of all, you don’t tell me shit—” She lifts her hand and jabs one of her haughty, rich-girl fingers at my face, making it clear who she thinks is in charge and who isn’t. “I made a promise to my sister and I—”
“You were almost fucking kidnapped last night—” I hiss it at her, careful to keep my voice down. “maybe I should tell her—I’m pretty sure she’d understand.”
“You can’t.” The color drains out of her face in an instant. “You can’t tell her.” She shakes her head. “She can’t know. I don’t want her worrying about me. She worries about me enough as it is and I…” She trails off and looks away, tears brimming over the edge of her lower lids again and this time she lets them fall. “She doesn’t trust me. No one trusts me.”
The way she says it makes it clear that we’re not talking about Silver anymore.
Not entirely.
“That’s not why I didn’t tell you.” I say it quietly, feeling like a complete piece of shit.
“Yes, it is.” She looks at me, a small, sad smile touching the corner of her mouth before she turns away from me completely.
I watch while she walks over to the sink and rips a paper towel from the dispenser before running it through cold water. “Liz showed up at the hotel today,” she tells me in the same quiet, detached tone she just used to completely gut me with the truth. “She has my clutch—the one I lost at the club last night—I don’t know how she got it.” She tells me before I can ask while she carefully folds the paper towel into a square and uses it to wipe the evidence of her tears away from her face. “But she wouldn’t leave it with Nat at the front desk, so I’m guessing she’s trying to use its return as a way to get face-to-face with me so she can try to wheedle herself back into my good graces.”
This isn’t done. None of this is done—I hurt her. As impossible as that seems, I hurt her more than once and I need to fix it. I need to make it right—but now is not the time and this sure as fuck isn’t the place. So, even though I don’t want to, I let her set our personal shit aside and focus on the more pressing problem at hand “Why would she need to do that?”
“Because if Nik was there last night like you said he was, it’s because she invited him.” She finishes with the paper towel and tosses it in the trash. “Even though I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want him there.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she’s sleeping with him.” She laughs and turns toward me, dry-eyed, all evidence of emotion erased from her face. “She thinks I’m too dumb to figure it out because like everyone else, she constantly underestimates me.”
Again, I get the feeling we’re not talking about Liz anymore.
Not entirely.
“Delilah.” I take a step toward her, arm outstretched. I don’t know what I’m going to say. What I’m going to do and even though this isn’t the time or place for any of it, I can’t stop myself. “Look—”
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Bright,” she says, wielding my last name at me the same way I wield hers at her. Like a weapon. Like an insult. “I’d like to go visit my sister and brand-new niece—that is why we’re here, isn’t it?”
When she tries to step around me, I shift myself in front of her. “We’ll stay for an hour and then we’re going back to the hotel—where you’re going to stay until this shit is over with.”
“We?” She arches a slim brow at me, temper darkening her sky-blue eyes. “There’s no we here, Mr. Bright. There never was.”
“Is that right?” I cock my head at a dangerous angle, a nasty smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth as I angle myself out of her path and let her breeze past me on her way out the door. “Who’s the liar now?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Delilah
FOR ALL MY BLUSTER AND SPOILED BRAT BULLSHIT, when Silver finally drifted off to sleep, after eating three of the Strawberry Poptarts Tobias brought her, Gray made our excuses to his brothers before whisking me into the hallway and I let him.
Because I’m more afraid than I want to admit, and I don’t want to face this alone.
We’re about halfway down the hall when Tobias comes after us, calling out to Gray and stopping him in his tracks. Giving me a quick don’t you move look he retraces his steps to where his brother is waiting for him outside Silver’s closed hospital room door.
His brother.
Despite what I’m sure Gray sees as some pretty glaring dissimilarities, I can see it in the way they put their heads together when they talk. The familiar way they orbit each other.
No matter what it might look like to someone on the outside looking in, they are brothers.
When they’re finished talking, Tobias hands him something before clapping Gray on the shoulder and disappearing behind the door again.
As soon as we’re safely on the elevator, I drop my cartoon crab tote off my shoulder and shove it at him. “Hold this,” I tell him, not waiting for an answer before I start pulling my lost and found disguise from its belly.
“What are you doing?” he asks, obviousl
y confused while I stick one leg and then the other into a pair of mom jeans and yank them up over my own designer pair.
“What’s it look like?” Jeans on, I fish out my camp shirt and bucket hat. “I’m getting dressed.”
“As what exactly?” He laughs, watching while I adjust my shirt before gathering my hair and shoving it into my hat.
“As not Delilah Fiorella,” I tell him, dropping my borrowed sneakers on the floor. Reaching up, I brace my hand against his shoulder for balance so I can shove my feet into them. “Like I said—everyone I know constantly underestimates me.”
Dressed, I take the tote from him and shove my ugly sunglasses onto my face, seconds before the elevator hits the lobby.
“There’s no way this works,” Gray says, give me a skeptical head shake.
“Why not?” I ask as the doors slide open.
“Because you still look like you,” he tells me, trailing after me as I stroll casually through the hospital lobby. “Just… frumpier.”
No one gives me a second look.
Instead of arguing with him that it obviously is working, I just give him a shrug. “We’ll have Enrique take us—”
“There’s no Enrique,” he informs me as we head for the parking lot. “I sent him back to the hotel.”
Right.
Because he wasn’t going to come back.
Instead of getting mad, I surprise us both. “Okay.” I stop on the sidewalk. “I guess we can all an Uber or something, but I don’t have my—”
Gray produces a set of keys and dangles them in my face. “From Tobias—” He twirls the keyring around his finger before catching them in his fist. “With instructions that I am to stay with you until this mess is over.”
“He knows?” I feel the bottom drop out of my stomach. “Who—”
“Jase.” He gives me a shrug. “I knew he would—You’re Silver’s sister—that makes you family.”
This is the second time in as many days that Gray has been ordered to take care of me—first by Jase and now by Tobias. Yesterday I was relieved. Today I’m slightly mortified. I don’t want him to stay with me because he keeps pulling the short end of the stick. I want him to stay because he wants to.
So, I make up my mind.
“You can drive me to Went’s tattoo shop in Fenway—it’s Saturday. I’m sure he’s there,” I tell him, even though the thought of facing my brother and telling him what’s going on is enough to make me a little sick to my stomach. “I’ll tell him what’s going on and you can get rid of me.”
“Get rid of you?”
When he says it, my chest gets tight, and my eyes start to feel like they’re cooking in their sockets.
“Yeah.” I nod, glad I’m wearing these hideous sunglasses because they hide the fact that I’m on the verge of losing it again. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I think maybe we should just cut our losses here and let Went and that Conner guy take over from—”
“Shut up, Delilah.”
When he says it, I blink up at him from behind my stupid sunglasses for a second like he smacked me in the face. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Gray says to me, taking a step in my direction. “I said shut up. I’m not taking you to Went’s shop. I’m not handing you off. I’m not doing any of it because I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m not your responsibility, Gray.” I shake my head. “I can—”
“If you say take care of myself, I swear to god—” He takes a rough swipe at his face and sighs. “You are my responsibility.”
“Because your brother told you I was?” I try not to put extra weight behind the word brother, I really do but when I say it, Gray narrows his dark gaze on my face in an expression I know well—it’s his I’m getting tired of your shit, Ms. Fiorella look.
“No, not because he told me—” He shakes his head at me. “Because I told me.”
“What if I don’t want you to stay? What if I want you to leave?” I stack my hands on my hips and click my nails at him, which considering my current get-up, probably looked twice a crazy as it actually felt. To his credit, Gray doesn’t laugh his ass off, right in my face.
Instead he just crosses his massive arms over the thick wall of his chest and gives me another smirk. “Then I’d ask you what’s it like to want something you’re not gonna get?”
I know what I’m supposed to say. What I’m supposed to do—I’m supposed to flip my hair or click my nails again and say, I don’t know Gray because it’s never happened before but I can’t flip my hair because it’s up in this stupid bucket hat and I don’t want to click my nail again because once in this get-up was bad enough so I don’t do or say any of it. Instead, I say something that completely mortifies me because it happens to be the absolute truth.
“You shouldn’t.” I shake my head, trying to work up the courage to say the rest of it because even though in the middle of a hospital parking lot is the absolute wrong place and in the middle of what is pretty much a waking nightmare is the absolute wrong time, I have to say it now—right now—because I’ll never get the nerve to say it again. “You shouldn’t want to help me because I’ve been horrible to you since the very first night we met and I don’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve it—any of it. I just—” I think about the mountains of grief I’ve shoveled at him over the years. How much he must hate me because of it. “I just wanted you to notice me and I know how that sounds—god, I know how that sounds.” It sounds like me. Spoiled and overindulged. Privileged and entitled. “I just wanted—”
You.
I almost say it but by some miracle I manage to swallow the one word that might change everything with a jerky head nod. “to say I’m sorry—really sorry—and that you were right not to trust me with the truth about who you are because I’m a pretty horrible person and I probably would’ve done something pretty horrible with that information if you had.” The last part is a lie. If Gray had trusted me enough tell me the truth about who he is, I would have protected it with my life because I might be a self-absorbed asshole but I’m also loyal to the people that I love.
And I love Gray.
I’m in love with him.
I’ve loved him all along
Through all my rambling, Gray just stares at me like he has no idea who I am. Like he’s standing on the sidewalk with a complete stranger but when he finally starts to open his mouth to form a response, my nerve finally runs out.
“Can we go grocery shopping?” I start to walk along the sidewalk again, toward the parking lot, even though I have no idea where I’m going. All l know is that I need to move. That I’m tired of standing in one spot. Tired of where I am. Who I am. “I don’t have any money but there’s no food in my suite and you said no room service but I’m absolutely starving because all I’ve had to eat today is a mocha frap and the Poptart I stole from—”
Gray snags my hand and stops me mid-stride. Turning me, he pulls me against him, slipping his wide, rough palm across the nape of my neck to cradle it while he slips the pad of his thumb under my chin to tilt my mouth upward so he can catch it gently with his in a soft, lingering kiss that leaves me breathless. Makes me think that maybe Gray feels the same way about me as I do for him. That he could look at me and see something more than just a bored, rich princess with too much time and money and a broken moral compass.
“I’m sorry.” He whispers it, the thumb under my chin slipping free to stroke to curve of my jaw. “About what happened earlier. After we—” His brow crumples into a frown. “You surprised me and I just…”
Don’t trust me.
“It’s okay,” I say instead because I don’t want to ruin it. Whatever this is, I don’t want to spoil it so instead of saying the truth out loud, I let it go so I can keep on pretending, for just a little while longer.
TWENTY-NINE
Grayson
TOB’S EXACTY DIRECTIONS WERE, I DON’T CARE
what you have to do but I want this shit under con
trol—sooner rather than later.
I know that it’s not just Delilah he’s worried about. He’s worried about Silver and Noah. The fact that they’re getting ready to bring a new baby home and he knows how fast these kinds of things can spin out of control.
I don’t tell him that I’d already made up my mind. That it didn’t matter to me if I had his blessing to keep protecting Delilah or not because either way, I’m not going anywhere. Not until this thing is finished and we figure out who tried to kidnap her.
Jase has people in New York, trying to track Mike down. He all but disappeared after the fire but I’m confident that whoever Jase has working the problem will find him. From there, it’s a simple question of who he sold Ketamine to that night.
My money’s on Vanderdouche.
After I get that confirmed, I have every intention of killing him.
We stop at some fancy organic market that Delilah claims is her favorite and we spend an hour walking the aisles while she carefully selects her groceries—mostly fresh fruit and yogurt. Some chicken breasts and salad stuff. Gourmet cheeses and a bottle of wine that, when I saw the price tag, made me a little dizzy. She takes her time, selecting each item. Lifts the peaches up to her nose to smell them, making sure they’re ripe. Gives the tomatoes a gentle squeeze to see if they’re firm enough to spring back. Carefully selects the cheese with the thinnest rind. The thing I’ve watched most people treat like a mindless chore, she does differently. Not like it’s a chore at all. Like shopping for herself is a privilege. One she appreciates.
While she shops, I keep her close, grabbing what most people would consider staples—eggs and bread. Milk and butter. A package of ribeyes. Some coffee and half and half—when I can.
She’s right.
No one gives her a second look.
It’s like she’s invisible, people milling around her like she’s not even there.
Which is completely insane to me because I’d recognize her for who she is, even if I were blind.
When we get to the check-out she stops dead in her tracks, gaze—shielded by her ridiculous sunglasses—glued to the rack of magazines next to the conveyor belt.
