Grey: The Reconnection (Spectrum Series Book 4)

by Allison White

  I finally arrive home about fifteen minutes later, giddy and practically bouncing to see my girl. My fucking princess. I get out of the car and lock it. I jog up the stairs and unlock and open the door. I kick off my shoes and set my duffel bag down, cracking my neck with a grin plastered onto my face.

  “Honey, I’m home!” I holler jokingly. After a few seconds of silence, I frown. “Liv?” I call her name a little louder and take a cautious step forward. Another beat of silence and I begin to worry.

  Normally, she runs up to me and quite literally jumps into my arms, showering me with kisses, which I happily reciprocate. She’d then drag me to the made bath and I’d have the best night of my life. But she isn’t doing anything right now, and I’m worried. And not because she isn’t peppering my face with kisses and showing me to a luxury bath. Okay, maybe a little bit because of that, but also because I fucking care if she’s hurt or worse.

  “Olivia?” I softly call her name as I push the bathroom door open. Nothing. I turn and walk down the hall to the bedroom. “Olivia, are you in here?” My voice becomes a little shaky as I open the door. I feel my heart stutter when I find nothing but a cleaner room than how I left it. It’s obvious she’s been in here. She’s always been such a clean freak.

  I pull out my phone and dial her number as my anxiety kicks into high gear. I get her voicemail as I open the glass doors that leads to the back porch. I step out and step down the wooden steps and walk on the sand, screaming her name and walking around. We don’t usually come out here, but maybe she wanted to come out and get her feet wet or walk around?

  I step on something and look down. One of her books and a mug of tea. She was out here. Maybe she still is…

  “Olivia? Are you out here?” I scream, getting looks from an older couple passing by. “Have you guys seen a girl out here? Short, about this tall? Dark brown hair, blue eyes?” I gesture just under my pecs, and they shake their heads. I become frantic as I gesture with my hands. “A-are you sure?”

  They shake their heads and move on.

  “Fuck!” I curse and press the balls of my hands against my eyes, rubbing hard. “Where the fuck are you?” I can’t breathe. Where the hell can she be? I remove my hands and storm back into the house. I have to look every-fucking-where. Maybe she went out with her friends? Calm down, Grey. Don’t lose your head.

  I call every single one of her friends, except for Mason—I don’t have that bitch’s number—nearly screaming my fucking head off when they say they don’t know where she is. They’re panicked, though, and promise to begin searching for her in town. I text her a dozen times as I fumble with my boots, shoving them back on. She doesn’t reply to a single one of them as I storm out of the house and get in my car, peeling off onto the road, not caring if I hit anyone. I can’t fucking focus on anything other than my girl.

  I try to track her, but I can’t even pinpoint her fucking phone!

  Seriously, where the fuck can she be? I call her about twenty more times as I visit all the places she could be, scouring the boardwalk, the ice cream parlor, even the fucking Nordstrom place with all the khakis and shit. She is nowhere, and I’m seriously having a fucking panic attack. My mind is going crazy and my hands are bruised and kind of bleeding from punching the wheel. I rub my face, and I taste the blood. I have been searching for almost a fucking hour. Where the hell is she?

  I know she wouldn’t just go anywhere without giving me a heads up. Not saying that I have a fucking leash on her or something, but we are together. And if I went fucking rogue and dropped off the planet, she would lose her shit too and go insane searching for me.

  “Fuck!” I hit the wheel again as I tug on my lip, trying to think. “Fucking think, Grey. Where could she be?”

  It takes a moment for it to slap me in the face: her parents’ house.

  I furrow my brows but make a U-turn, upsetting drivers; I ignore them and slam on the gas pedal. It doesn’t seem like the sanest idea of her to visit her raging bitch of a mother, but it’s the only other place I can think of. I just don’t understand why she’d ever go there willingly. But this is Liv I’m talking about, and she loves to test her safety. Like how much she loves going to parties even though they literally never end well. Like, at fucking all.

  When I finally pull up at the ridiculous mansion, I nearly bust my ass as I stumble out of the car. I don’t even bother locking it. As if anyone in this neighborhood would steal my hunk of junk compared to their shiny Porsches and Lambos.

  “Open the fuck up!” I bang on the door and ring the doorbell repeatedly, not giving a damn if I’m disrupting anyone’s beauty sleep. Everybody better get the fuck up. “Olivia, are you in there? Liv—?”

  My screams are shut off abruptly when the door swings open, revealing Liv’s caregiver’s groggy face. She rubs her eyes, and I push past her, screaming Liv’s name, jogging up to her room. I burst inside, faintly hearing her call after me and her feet slapping against the marble spiral staircase. She isn’t here. I exit the room after quickly checking the ensuite. I check the guest room even though she’d never come here to stay. We’ve been nothing but great and in-sync the entire week, no fights or anything. She has no reason to come here to escape anything.

  “Excuse me. It’s too late for all this hollering. Why are you screaming Liv’s name?” Lana, or whatever her name is, asks me at the stairs when I walk over to her.

  “Because she’s fucking missing!” I snap from the building anxiety and anger filling my senses. I feel like I’m drowning from all of the emotions covering me from head to toe.

  Her face drops, and she stammers, “What? W-what do you mean, she’s missing?”

  “Are you fucking deaf?” I grip my hair before rubbing my face, hard. “I got home and she wasn’t there. I searched everywhere she could have possibly gone, but I’ve come up empty.” I take a lethal step forward. “If you have any idea where she is, I suggest you tell me right now,” I warn her through gritted teeth. Liv is the one thing in this world I would fucking kill for.

  She shakes her head with wide eyes. “I swear, I don’t know either.” When I don’t let up on her after a beat of silence, she looks offended and pushes me. “I raised her, you know. Don’t look at me as if I don’t care she’s missing. I care about her.”

  “Sure, you do.” I roll my eyes and look away. I catch sight of blue eyes and a trailing white robe before it disappears into one of their immaculate living rooms. “Hold on…” I narrow my eyes skeptically and fly down the stairs.

  I stand at the mouth of the living room. Her mother is standing at the lit marble fireplace. The pale orange flicker against her strong jaw and ridiculous bun while she holds a glass of red wine. She looks like that top monster you have to fight to beat some stupid fancy game.

  “Where is she?” I growl, balling up my fists.

  “You don’t deserve her,” she says calmly, raising the tall glass to her red lips.

  What the fuck?

  “I didn’t fucking ask you that, now did I?” I stride over to her and glare down at her. “Where the hell is my girlfriend?”

  She finally looks up from the raging flames and at me. Her blue eyes gleam with malicious intent as her full red lips curl into a cat-like smile, fucking evil as shit.

  “Like hell I’d tell you.” She laughs like the insane woman she is.

  Okay, I’ve had it.

  “Listen, lady, I am not messing around. Tell me where she is…now!”

  “I’m working on getting rid of you, and with her treatment, you will be a blip in her memory just like that,” she slithers out, snapping her fingers.

  “Treatment, huh?” I smirk just to fuck with her, and it works because her face twitches like she’s been caught. “Brainwash, really? Do you really have to stoop that low to be the worst fucking mother ever?” Her hand comes to my face, but I grab her wrist before it can touch me. “Where is she?”

  I hold her intense gaze. Her lips twisted up ruefully.

  “I wi
ll never—” she begins.

  I squeeze her wrist, and she gasps. “Where…is she?” I’m getting my answer now with her wrist intact or in halves.

  She groans with her mouth closed before huffing out, “Memorial Hospital…”

  “Thank you for that.” I push her hand away easily and whisper, “Your daughter loves me and nothing you do will be enough to deter her away from me. Get that through your fucking skull and leave us alone.”

  I glare at her for a few moments, the only sound in the house her heavy breathing and the crackling fire. I want my calm tone and words to seep into her brain until they are all she sees and hears. She needs to understand that her daughter can very well do whatever she wants and be with me.

  I walk away but stop at the mouth of the living room.

  “She doesn’t love you. You are only a plaything—a phase!” she screams, desperate to hurt me. But nothing this witch can say will hurt me.

  “Funny, doesn’t seem like it when I fuck her, and she tells me I am everything to her,” I say without looking back, smirking as she gasps and throws her glass of wine at the wall beside me. “Don’t fuck with my girl ever again, got it?” I say as I walk to the door. I listen to her faint screams of losing as I slam the heavy door behind me.

  Chapter Forty

  Liv

  I was taken to a hospital. I didn’t know this since I’d been forcibly given a sedative back at the house. I had dreamed of Grey over and over, picturing him chasing the ambulance and tearing off the back door and flying away with me in his arms like he’s Superman. My Superman. Only he wouldn’t be dressed in diapers and leggings. He’s wearing all black and covers my body with his cape like it was a blanket as we bounced from cloud to cloud. I felt like I had been living that dream my entire life but found it to be a cruel, cruel lie when I finally woke up.

  I awoke in a hospital room, sedatives dripping from an IV that was attached to one of my arms. I was groggy and could barely open my mouth to lick my chapped lips. I was dazed and confused as to how I ended up in the hospital. My mind went wild as I tried to come up with a solid, reasonable explanation why I would be in the hospital.

  I hadn’t broken any bones or anything, had I? I tried to move my arms to check for any bruises or a cast, and that’s when I noticed it. My freaking arms were strapped down to the bed. I panicked and felt my head burst from the inside out as I thrashed all around. The sharp leather holding me down cut into my skin, and I began screaming my lungs out. Screaming for help and demanding answers. I freaked out and exerted myself until I fell back asleep.

  When I finally came to consciousness again, a young female doctor with big green eyes and soft-looking skin was waiting for me. I felt my heart hammer when my muddled brain reminded me that I was tied down and had no idea how I ended up in the hospital.

  “Why am I here?” I asked her.

  She smiled at me and told me, “You’re here for your treatment.”

  “For what?” I questioned her when two nurses came in, headed toward me. I tried to scoot back, but they grabbed my wrists and pinned me down. “How—why am I here? Please, please—tell me!” I pleaded with wide eyes as she peered over me, clutching a clipboard to her chest.

  “You’re here to forget Grey, sweetie…” she said, then broke out into a grin.

  Oh God, I thought. She sounds like my mother, which means…oh God.

  The sedatives came in waves, knocking me out and pulling me under, pushing me up, and then dragging me back under. I tried to hold my breath and fight against the rough waters, but her soothing words of forgetting the big bad man that has a hold on me kept challenging me. I almost let her overtake me, but the thought of Grey and his soft smile as he watched me run up to him after he’d come home, tired and needy for me, kept me sane. Well, enough for her to stop her “therapist” ways.

  After this, I’m not so sure I want to be a psychologist anymore…not if this, trying to convince your patients they should not be with who they love, is what the job entails. And it hurts me deeply to think this way, because I have dreamed of helping others who need it since I was eight years old, since I lost my little brother in a tragic accident that should have never happened. I don’t want her or any other cruel people to deter me from my dream, but it’s incredibly hard when they continuously tell me my thoughts and beliefs are wrong and should be altered.

  Hours later and I am huddled in one of the corners of the hospital room. I am tired beyond comprehension and have a hole inside my heart. I want Grey so badly; my heart is literally yearning for him. I have cold sweats and shaking hands. I want to get up and walk out of this dreadful place, but they probably have it surrounded with armed guards, per my mother’s request.

  My mother.

  I want to say that I can’t believe what she has done, but it would be a total lie. This, what she is doing, is sickening and has put the last straw on the camel’s back, my freaking back. I thought after the slapping incident maybe, maybe we could work out our relationship. I thought maybe she would see me as her daughter and not some clay thing she could mold into the perfect girl with the perfect husband and their perfect kids. I am not, nor will I ever be, that girl! I will be with Grey. We may not have kids or get married, but I will always, and I mean always, love him.

  But her sending me to the hospital to be brainwashed and treated like I’m not a human being has broken me as a person, as a daughter. She is unbelievable and underhanded. I don’t think I can ever recover from this treason. Ever.

  A tear falls down my cheek, and I rub my lower lip. I press my face into my drawn-up knees and let it all out, sobbing and shaking until I am dried out as a well. At this point, I just want to go home. I want Grey to come rescue me like the knight in shining coal he is. And I want him to shower me with kisses and tell me it’s okay. I need him to come right now, but I can’t—I don’t even know where my phone is. They must have taken it when they changed me into this hospital gown.

  I am praying when there is a loud slam. Thinking it’s the nurses to bring me to that room where the doctor tried to scramble my brain, I scream and try to scramble back, only to come up empty, since I’m in the corner, my hands drawn up in fear.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Liv!” a voice shouts and, by the way my body and heart responds, I instantly know who it is.

  “G-Grey?” I slowly lift my head as if this is another one of the doctor’s tests. But it isn’t. It’s true. Grey is standing at the door, frozen in what I think is shock or anger, maybe a mixture. But I am frozen in pure relief and happiness. “Grey!”

  I jump to my feet and run over to him. I almost slip and slide because of how heavy my limbs feel. But seeing his outstretched arms and that wide, relieved smile of his pushes me to suck it up and run harder. I finally collide against his hard chest and jump up, latching my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. He holds me and nearly chokes me in a tight hug while breathing heavily in one whoosh. Like he hasn’t been breathing until this very moment.

  My heart sags.

  It just hit me how he must have felt so wracked with a lot of emotions upon my disappearance. He can be very dependent when he wants as a result of his abandonment issues, first with his mother, then David. He feels as if everyone is leaving him, and I know he’s scared of being alone. And to find me gone, he must have lost it. I never want him to feel alone or hopeless. I want him to know that I will never leave him. I will never hurt him, and I will never stop loving him.

  “Oh my God, I was losing my fucking mind, princesa,” he admits in a groggy, tight voice, like he’s been crying.

  I hug him harder and kiss his neck; he shudders in response. “Me too,” I admit in a sigh, closing my eyes tightly and breathing in his scent—my home.

  “I am going to fucking murder your mother,” he growls, his hands tightening around me.

  “No, just—please, take me home?” I pull my head back and cup the side of his face, rounding my finger in his dimple, closing my
eyes as I let my body re-connect with his, like I’d been detached from my oxygen tank. “Take me home, Grey.”

  ***

  Grey

  I am fucking livid. What kind of fucking mother does this to their daughter, their child? The minute I had my girl back in my arms, all my dread and worry over her safety had flushed away. But anger flared up when she dropped her hands like I was going to hurt her and revealed her paling face and heavy blue eyes that were kind of dull, lifeless. I had never wanted to twist someone’s fucking neck so badly in my entire life. But I just held onto my princess and thanked whatever mysterious force that she was breathing and still able to smile, even if it looked as broken as her voice sounded.

  I put her in the bath tonight. I whispered sweet nothings and commanded her to not speak and rest her hoarse, practically destroyed voice. I gently washed her body and hair. She looked like a beautiful angel as I touched her soft as silk skin and listened to her soft humming. My body yearned to be close to her, but not through sex. Just to be wrapped around her, protecting her from any threat. And that was what I did.

  I was wrapped around her, her little body dressed in my black shirt. I had brushed her hair and fell asleep with her plump lips against my bare chest, hair smelling like strawberries and vanilla. I never wanted to let go.

  But, of fucking course, my phone rang like the little bitch it is.

  “Fuck me,” I groan, craning my neck to look at the buzzing thing on the table beside me. I peer down at my girl, knocked out and content, arms wrapped around me, tongue pressed against me. She looks like a fucking kitten. I smirk, but then the annoying buzzing ruins the fucking moment.

  I grab it and lowly bark into the phone. “What the fuck do you want?” I hadn’t looked at the caller ID; I just want to tell this fucking person off and get back to dreamland.