Crap, I really liked Grace.
“No. You’re barely standing. I’ll take the couch, you and Parker take my room.”
Crap, I hated my boyfriend.
After the most awkward dinner ever, I helped Grayson change the sheets on his bed. “I’m so sorry about this,” he said after we fluffed the comforter.
“Don’t be.”
“I’ll tell her tonight,” he said, taking both my hands in his.
“Well, that might ruin your chances of keeping her.” The joke fell flat.
“I want you,” he promised.
I didn’t doubt that, but it wasn’t just about wanting me.
“There’s no part of you that wants her? Because watching you two, I can’t believe that’s true. And I’m not mad. Jealous, maybe…okay, definitely, but I get it.” Please tell me now before I fall any harder. He’d loved her all his life, he said so, but never once had he uttered those words in regards to me.
“There’s no part of me that doesn’t want you,” he answered, tipping my chin toward his to kiss me gently. “Have a little faith, remember?”
“Seriously?” Parker hissed from the door and brought in two small suitcases. “What if I’d been Grace? Can’t you two just not…ugh.”
Grayson turned to face her. “First, this is my house, and we’re not in North Carolina. You want to invade my life, fine, but you’re not going to tell me how to live it. Second, Grace can’t walk up the stairs. Third, so what? She deserves to know that I’m with Sam. I’m not lying to her, not so you can live out this insane fantasy.”
Parker blanched. “You can’t tell her. We don’t know what her health will do. She’s so fragile, Gray, and you’re what she’s holding on to. You can’t abandon her.”
“She’s smart enough to know that things change in five years, and she’s strong enough to adapt.”
“And what if she’s not? You haven’t been around, as usual. You haven’t seen how hard this is on her, knowing everyone kept living while she…didn’t. If you tell her that you moved on, that there’s no chance for the two of you to be together, you will be the tipping point for her.”
“Parker, that’s not fair,” I said, “and you don’t get to come in here and lay blame on Grayson for something that was never his fault. This is our home.”
She side-eyed me, and got up in Grayson’s face. “You owe her this much. You knew how drunk Owen was. You knew the minute he threw that punch when you asked for his keys. What did you do? Told him to ‘fuck off’ and walked away. You owe Grace at least enough time to get on her feet before you shred her.”
I placed my hand between his shoulder blades, wishing I could take the sting out of her words, or just plain shut her up. It took everything in my willpower to bite my tongue and remember that this was Grayson’s sister. “She’s wrong, Grayson. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” he answered, not even turning around. “If I’d stood my ground, none of this would have happened.”
“Exactly,” Parker agreed. “If it had never happened, you’d be happy. Both of you.”
“That’s crossing the line.” Grayson’s voice dropped.
“Maybe. But I’m right. You know I’m right, too, don’t you, Sam?”
My stomach dropped like I’d gone off the rails on a high-speed roller coaster.
If none of it had happened, he would have gone to UNC with Grace. They’d have gotten married after graduation and made perfect, G-named babies and raised them on the beaches of the Outer Banks. But his perfect life had come unraveled.
Grayson would never absolve himself of the guilt, and Grace would always hold that string.
He would never be entirely mine.
“Don’t tell her.” My voice sounded flat, like it belonged to someone else.
Grayson spun around and took me by the shoulders. “What?”
“Parker’s right.” The words tasted like acid, but I had to lessen some of the guilt that was suffocating him. “You don’t know what it will do to her. Her doctors aren’t here. She’s eight hundred miles away from home, and you might very well break her heart. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“Neither do you.”
He put me on equal footing with Grace, and even though I didn’t deserve it, I loved him all the more for it. “I’m strong enough to handle a few days of ambiguity. Just…keep your hands…you know.”
His face was stoic but his eyes, they spoke volumes. “My hands only want to be on you.”
I forced a smile. “See, nothing to worry about.” Parker’s smug face was a blur as I passed her, damn-near tripping over my feet to get out of that room. His room. Our room. Where she would sleep. In his bed. Our bed.
While he set everyone up, I studied in my room.
“Sam?” Parker knocked and entered in the same motion.
“What can I do for you, Parker?” I asked, putting my book down.
She looked at the general chaos of my room and forced a smile as she sat on my bed. “I know we don’t really get along.”
“That’s a gross understatement.” I tiptoed the line between handing Parker her ass and remembering that she was important to Grayson.
“It’s not that I don’t like you—”
“Oh, you don’t like me, but there’s no legitimate reason. You see, I don’t like you because you treat Grayson like crap. You won’t forgive him for something that happened five years ago, when he was basically a kid. Something that wasn’t ever his fault, though you won’t let it go because you love Grace so much that you needed someone to blame.”
She picked up the pencil off my notebook and twirled it. “Yes.”
“So you take it out on Grayson, which is why I don’t like you. Valid. But you don’t like me because I have the audacity to love your brother.”
“I watched him pray for a miracle. For years, at her bedside, he begged. Now he has his miracle. She’s here, and he’s throwing it away…for you. You’re the instrument of his ruin, and if you really loved him, you’d be unselfish and let him go. But you won’t, will you? You’ll make him suffer, torn between the two of you so that you can hold onto him a little longer.”
Selfish. She hit the nail on the head with an accuracy that exposed every one of my nerves. “He wants to be with me.”
My soul ached, all my deepest insecurities laid bare in front of the last person I would ever want to display them for.
She looked at me, all traces of menace and snark gone. “Just do me a favor. While she’s here, watch them. See how they fit together, complement each other. Really pay attention to them, and when you do, you’ll see it.”
“What?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“His future. Their future. He wants to be with you, yes. But he loves her. It’s his happiness in your hands, Sam. Let him go.” She patted my knee like I was a dog, and left me alone with a heart that was slowly ripping itself in two.
In the middle of the night, Grayson came into my bed, sneaking like we were teenagers. My laughter didn’t last past the first kiss. He made love to me like we had forever, lingering, savoring, promising me things with his body that I wasn’t sure his heart was capable of.
God, I wanted so badly to believe it.
We fell asleep in a tangle of limbs, and when the sun rose, he kissed me gently and snuck back downstairs to the couch as quietly as possible.
Like we’d done something wrong. Dirty.
I scrubbed myself clean in the shower, and as I came out into the hallway in my bathrobe, I startled and stepped back so Grayson could pass with Grace in his arms.
He shot me a longing look, but that was it.
“Good morning, Sam!” Grace called back over his shoulder as they headed toward the stairs. Her hair was perfectly mussed, and her eyes joyful as Grayson jumped the last two steps to the landing. They both laughed.
She makes him laugh.
Dazed, I walked back into my bedroom and stared at my bed. The extra pillow still smelled like him, and I held it
to me for a few moments. Then I ripped every piece of linen off the bed and threw it in a pile by the door for the laundry.
What had I done? I’d moved to Alabama. Gotten a job. Gotten into a college, even as small as it was. I thought I’d grown, changed, evolved, but I hadn’t. I’d made over everything about my life except the most important part: me.
It had almost been a year, and I was still in the same place I’d been in Colorado, in a sideline relationship with another woman’s man.
And for the first time, I felt every bit the whore those emails called me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Grayson
A pencil smacked me on the back of the head. “Pay attention,” Jagger hissed.
Holy shit, I’d been lost in my own thoughts for the better part of ten minutes. I scrolled furiously through the notes, trying to catch up to where the instructor was now. How the hell had I let myself get so distracted? Oh, yeah, because I had three women at my house right now. One who thought I was still dating her, one who was pretending I wasn’t, and one I generally wanted to stick on the fastest plane out of here.
And I loved them all.
We were starting night training on Monday, it wasn’t like I could slack off now. I blocked out every thought except the academics in front of me and paid attention. Helicopters, I understood. They were machines that did what you told them to, excluding external variables.
It was the external variables that fucked you up.
I somehow made it through class without dazing off again. “Earth to Grayson, you with me?” Jagger asked as we headed to the parking lot.
“I’m here.”
“Good, because I need your help,” he said as he climbed into the passenger side of my truck. Why didn’t we drive separately? I could have stopped into the gym and seen Sam. Grace left tonight, and I was so fucking sick of sneaking around. I loved Sam, and I shouldn’t have to hide it.
But she’d told me to. What a fucked-up situation.
I went to text her and swore when I saw my phone was dead.
“Masters!” Jagger waved his hand.
“Sorry¸ I’m a little distracted.”
“You think? Do you want me to drive?” he asked as I pulled onto the road.
“No.”
“Okay, because I’d really hate to die before I got the chance to ask Paisley to move in.”
“That’s right,” I said, driving home carefully as Jagger went into extreme details on proposal planning. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was carrying around the latest issue of Alabama Bride in his pubs bag.
“So do you think you can help?” he asked as I pulled into the driveway.
“Absolutely.” He was the closest thing I had to a brother, of course I was going to help.
“Sweet,” he said, swinging to the ground and shutting the door. “I’m off to her house, so wish me luck!”
“Good luck!” I saluted, and headed inside.
“Hi, Port,” Grace called from the couch. Her eyes were half open.
“Hey, Starboard. Were you napping?” I shut the door softly behind me.
“Kind of. Parker went out somewhere after she packed us to leave. Feel like reading to me?” She looked so damn hopeful.
“Sure, just give me a second.” I went upstairs and changed into cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie, then came back down, my copy of The Odyssey in hand.
When I took a seat on the couch, she wiggled over, lying across my lap like we hadn’t skipped over the last five years, and assumed the Grayson’s-reading-to-me position we’d used since we were seven.
“Does it still help you to read?” she asked.
“Yeah. As long as I’m reading every day it seems to be easier.”
I started reading at the beginning. Tripping over the first passages as usual. Her forehead puckered. “Skip to the part you haven’t read yet.”
What? “Okay.” I skipped to book nine and began to read. When Grace shivered, I unzipped my hoodie and helped her into it. “Better?” I asked as I zipped it up.
“Much, thank you,” she replied. “I missed this, listening to you read to me.”
I brushed her hair back with my empty hand. “What do you remember?”
“While I was…out?”
“No, from before the accident.” She bit her lip. “No pressure. I’m just trying to figure out where your memory leaves off. Where your gaps are.” I ran my fingers across her forehead, and she relaxed. Some things never changed.
“I…I remember sailing. You, me, and Owen.”
“That was the day before. Is that where it cuts off for you?” I asked. She didn’t remember the fight…or what followed. God, I was going to have to experience it all over again, because she had to know.
She shook her head. “No, I remember being mad at you because you wanted to turn down the Citadel. You thought it was your responsibility to be with me at UNC.”
“Yes. You told me that if we loved each other, four years wouldn’t matter.”
“Did five years matter?” She leaned against my chest.
“Grace, these last five years weren’t normal years. They changed me in ways you wouldn’t have liked. In ways I still don’t like.”
“Don’t say things like that. I like you just fine.” Her eyes were level with mine as she sat up in my lap. “I’m so sorry for what happened. For what you’ve been through, but from what I’ve seen, you’ve come out on the other side stronger, more focused. Maybe a little less goofy, and you don’t laugh as much, but you’re still my Gray, my Port. And I’m still your Starboard.”
“It’s not that easy.”
She wound her hands through my hair. “It can be if we let it.”
I knew where this was leading and couldn’t stomach it going any further. She was much too close, and not in a good way. In a way that sent me back five, hell, six years, to when I loved her without concept of what that really meant. Where I’d dated my best friend because it seemed the most logical step. With one touch, she took me back to a time where I’d confused infatuation and love with being in love.
And now, I knew better. Now I had Sam.
Grace was an anachronism in my life, and as much as I’d missed her, as easy as it was to remember how I felt, she wasn’t what I needed, because I wasn’t the same guy who’d loved her in high school.
I cupped her cheek in my hand and prepared to shatter her. Again.
“It’s been five years, and I know this is hard to explain, but my feelings for you…” I took a breath and prepared for the worst. “Grace, I’m in love—” With Sam.
“I knew it.” She kissed me before I could get it out. A faint clicking sound resonated in my brain.
I froze. Her lips on mine were familiar and foreign at the same time, the wrong texture, the wrong pressure, the wrong taste. Because she was the wrong woman.
I jerked back to break the kiss.
“Grace, we can’t.”
“Oh, please, don’t stop on our account,” Josh said from behind me, his voice dead and even. That clicking had been the door opening.
I turned slowly, my hand falling away from Grace’s cheek.
Sam stood next to Josh, her eyes wide, her lower lip trembling. He stepped in front of her and used his arm to guide her around his back as he murdered me with his eyes. He was protecting her? From me. Because Grace was in my lap, with her hands in my hair, wearing my sweatshirt, and Sam had walked in to see my hand holding Grace’s face as she kissed me.
Fuck. My. Life.
This was the shit that happened in movies, not real life.
“Sam, this isn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up. Now.” Josh enunciated each word more than clearly. Then he turned so I couldn’t see Sam, and took her upstairs, guiding her under his arm.
I all but dumped Grace onto the couch and ran. “Sam!”
Josh stood in her doorway. “No. Turn your ass around and go back downstairs.”
He may have had a couple i
nches on me, but I had at least thirty pounds of muscle on him. “Move. I need to talk to her.”
“I love you like a brother, but I’m two seconds away from beating the shit out of you,” Josh fired back.
I stepped toward him. “No offense, but we both know how that fight would end, and I’ll finish you if it means I get to Sam. Grace kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back. You walked in at pretty much the worst possible second.”
“I don’t give a fuck if she tripped into your clothes and landed on your mouth, Masters. Sam was my friend long before you were.” He crossed his arms.
“Let him in, Josh,” Sam said quietly from inside her room.
“Can I hit him first?”
My eyes narrowed, but he looked unapologetic.
“No,” she responded. “Just let him in. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be downstairs,” he said to her, looking straight at me.
“I’m the guy who turned himself in with you for that fucking polar bear, Walker. You really think I’d hurt her like this on purpose?”
“I don’t care about the why, only that you did.” He stepped to the side, and I headed into her room.
She’d pulled down a suitcase and two large duffels onto the bed and was stuffing them with her clothes.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you,” she answered, pulling another stack of clothes from the closet and shoving them into the suitcase, hangers and all.
“That was not what it looked like, and yes, I know how cliché that sounds.”
“You’re right, it is cliché. Then again so was walking in on you and your girlfriend. God, I’m so fucking stupid. I knew. I knew! And I still let it happen.”
“Stop, Samantha. Talk to me.”
She spun, the streaming tears only making the green of her eyes brighter. Misery was etched on every line of her face. “What is the point?”
“You can’t leave. Not like this.”
“Then how? Maybe the next time when I walk in to see your girlfriend wearing your sweater? Then your boxers? Your mouth?”
“She kissed me. I stopped it!”
She clapped. “Bravo. Extra points for stopping it after you obviously let her onto your lap and into your arms.”
Beyond What is Given Page 26
