by Evelyn Glass
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GRAYSON
Impulse, he had worked to stop being ruled by his impulses. West had taught him to fight strategically, not just with his heart, but with his head, too. All that training had gone out of the window with Adriana. He was about to do something impulsive.
“How would you two like to come to my fight? If you’ve never seen a MMA match, I think you might be surprised.” Grayson looks between Willow and Adriana, including them both in the invitation, but his eyes keep on darting back to Adriana’s again and again. It’s hard for him not to look at her. Once he’s captured by those green eyes with their flecks of gold, he’s in trouble.
Willow is looking at him with interest again, like she’s studying him, sizing him up; it’s unnerving. When it becomes clear that Adriana isn’t going to say anything, she pipes up. “Wow, a real cage fight. That sounds great, doesn’t it Adrie?” Willow has to physically reach out to prod her friend who seems to be frozen in position.
Adriana gives her a bemused look. “But, Will, you said yourself you hate blood. Ouch!” She rubs her forearm where Willow has pinched her. “What I mean to say is that’s really generous of you, Grayson, but I do shift work, so I don’t know if I’d be able to make it, and I’m sure you have other gir—I mean, people who you’d like to give the tickets to.”
She twists her hands, like she always used to when she was nervous. He thinks that it is incredible how many things about her are coming back to him now. She bites her bottom lip, like she’s trying to stop herself from talking. Goddamn, she’s beautiful, he thinks. But not only that, she seems to be completely oblivious to the effect that she has on men. Her short shorts make her caramel legs look like they go on for miles, and she can make a white tank top look like the sexiest thing anyone has ever worn.
He doesn’t bother to ask himself why he wants to persuade her to go to the fight, he knows that it’s because he doesn’t want this to be the last time they see each other. It can’t be. “Come on, Adrie. It’ll be fun. For old times sake?” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he regrets them as he sees the way she stands up straighter, bristling. For her, old times meant Grayson leaving her hanging without a word. He’d let her believe that he cared about her, and then he’d just disappeared.
He winces, ready to feel the barrage of abuse that she was more than entitled to lay down on him, but it doesn’t come. He sees Willow shaking her head in despair out of the corner of his eye, clearly thinking what an idiot he is. Join the club, he thinks. But his attention is focused on Adriana.
Instead of reminding him of the way he’d treated her, she lifts her chin up, looking determined, classy. “Sure, why not? Thanks Grayson.” Her words are clipped, short, nothing like the lilting way that she usually spoke, a hangover from speaking Spanish at home with her dad.
He’d upset her, and he hates himself for it. “Great, that’s really great, really great.” He clamps his mouth shut to stop himself from repeating the same word over and over again.
Willow sighs audibly, as if she can’t believe how excruciating this encounter is turning out. She grabs a pen from her bag and scribbles something down on a napkin, holding it out for Grayson to take. “That’s Adrie’s number. You can text her the details of the fight.”
Adriana gives her friend a look that would have done a pretty good job of melting polar ice caps, and Willow studiously ignores her. It’s clear that Adriana isn’t happy that he now has a way of contacting her, but it doesn’t matter, he still gets a little thrill from knowing that he’s going to see her again.
“Sure, well, I’ll be in touch.” He waves at them both and then instantly regrets it, wondering if he looks as pathetic as he feels. “Enjoy your breakfast, bon appetit.” He turns on his heels and walks as quickly as he can away from the restaurant, motioning for West to follow him. Bon appetit? What the hell was that? He doesn’t think he’s ever used that phrase before, and now that he’d said it he feels like the biggest douchebag imaginable.
He growls, as he sees West’s shoulders shaking. “What the fuck was that?” The man can barely get the words out he’s laughing so much. “You looked like you were going to pull my arm off and beat me to death with it if I didn’t let go of Adriana’s hand! Real slick, kid, real slick.”
“Not now, West.” Grayson feels his face heat, wondering absently if it’s the first time he’s blushed in years. The Adriana Effect, he thinks. But West wasn’t wrong. Grayson had been jealous of his coach touching her, complimenting her, and making her smile with her whole body. It should have been him, not West. You had your chance, Gray, he reminds himself, and you blew it.
“Don’t worry about it, kid. We’re all fools when it comes to beautiful women, even you.” West gives him a look out of the corner of his eye and wraps his arm around Grayson’s shoulder. “At least now I understand where your head was this morning. A girl like that is enough to throw any man off his game.” West sounds thoughtful, but Grayson isn’t in the mood to find out what’s going on in his coach’s head; there’s too much going on in his own.
He remains silent as he picks up the pace, breaking into a run, like he’s just re-energized, powered up. The Adriana Effect, he smiles to himself. He holds tight to the napkin with Adriana’s number on it, feeling more hopeful than he has in years.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ADRIANA
“You mind telling me what that was all about?” Adriana flops down into the seat opposite Willow, succumbing to that weak-kneed feeling that she has come to associate with being around Grayson.
“What was what about?” Willow looks at her all wide-eyed and innocence.
“You hate blood. What are you going to do at the fight, wear a blindfold?” Adriana levels the approaching waiter with a glare that tells him she’s so not ready to order.
“I’ll figure something out.” Willow shrugs nonchalantly, before she buckles under the intensity of Adriana’s gaze. “Alright, alright, it’s like you’ve got little laser beams hiding in those peepers of yours.” She finally puts the menu down. “I was only trying to help. He likes you, you know?”
Adriana looks at Willow with her mouth open. “Who?”
“Who? The homeless dude over there carrying the sign, ‘Will drop pants for money’! Grayson! Who the hell did you think I was talking about?” Willow throws her hands up in despair.
“Sorry, were we at different conversations? Because from where I was standing, he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. He was uncomfortable and fidgety, and he wouldn’t even look at me half the time.” Adriana gnaws on her bottom lip, hating that she’d managed to catalogue a list of reasons that Grayson clearly didn’t want anything to do with her.
“Oh honey,”—Willow lays a hand over Adriana’s—“that man likes you, is it really so hard to believe?”
“He didn’t even remember me last night, Will. I had to remind him who I was. Do you have any idea how crushing that was for me?” Adriana puts her head down and repeatedly bangs it on the table, making their cutlery bounce and clatter.
“Adrie! Adrie, stop before you hurt yourself.” Willow waits until Adriana’s head is up and at a safe distance from the table before continuing. “Whatever happened, whatever the reason is that he disappeared without a word, that man has some unresolved issues with you. Haven’t you noticed the way he looks at you?”
Adriana shakes her head, miserably, all she had seen was how he tried so hard not to look at her, like it hurt him to see her. “I can’t see him again, Will.” This is what she’d come to tell her friend that morning, the decision that she’d made overnight. “When Grayson disappeared, it left me in pieces. I can’t go back there, not again.”
Willow looks at her with her no bullshit stare. “You can’t go around avoiding things in case they don’t end well, Adrie. This is your life, and you only get one. It’s not a rehearsal. Don’t shut yourself off from everything. Live a little.”
Adriana absorbs the words of advice, know
ing that Willow’s right, that she can’t keep pushing people and opportunities away because she’s frightened of losing them. But it is hard to change a habit that she’d honed so studiously over the past ten years. The rule seems to be that she got left—first her mother, then Grayson, finally her father who had been her rock. But Grayson had come back, did that make him the exception to the rule?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GRAYSON
Once Grayson has showered and eaten enough to feed a small country, he blends up a high protein smoothie to recover from the tough session that morning. A lot of people think that being a top fighter is just about learning the moves and pumping iron. There were way too many fighters he’d seen who had succumbed to drugs to gain that all-important muscle mass. West had taught him that good nutrition was the way to go. So, Grayson is almost religious about making sure that his body gets what it needs.
Sunday afternoons were always downtime for him. There were no training sessions, and he liked to keep the time for himself. He would usually call his mom, see how she was doing but she was on vacation with her new man. Grayson had only met the guy, Brad, a couple of times and besides from having a douchey name, he seemed to be a stand-up guy. He was crazy about his mom and that’s all that Grayson really needed to know. After everything that she had been through, she deserved to be with someone who treated her right, and Grayson had made it clear to Brad that if he didn’t treat his mother with respect then bad things would happen.
What’s shaking dickwad? His cell phone lights up with a message from his sister, Kay.
She was eight years his junior and had been too little to remember what went on in their house when they were growing up. As a result, she was a better adjusted person than he would ever be. She was always cracking jokes, the life and soul of the party. Whenever she came down from NYU to visit him, his friends had thought she was hilarious. He smiles just thinking about her.
Is that the mouth you kiss your mother with? He fires off a response.
Maxed out on my phone bill. Call me. Grayson sighs heavily, as he reads the message. That was the other difference between him and Kay, she went through money as if it were water. As he hits speed-dial, he makes a mental note to send her some more cash.
“It’s only midday, you’re a college kid, aren’t you supposed to be lying in a pool of your own puke somewhere?” Gray grabs his smoothie and ambles over to the garage. It’s not exactly something out of Pimp My Ride, but it does what he needs, for now. Aside from a personal chef, a new all-singing, all-dancing garage was on his wish list for after he wins the fight.
“Ha, ha, very funny Gayson.” She snickers at the name she’d given him when she was an annoying adolescent.
“Real mature, Kay.” He shakes his head, as if she can see him through the phone.
“Ready for the fight? You gonna kick some King Kong butt, or what?” She sounds excited as she asks the question. Kay was one of his biggest supporters.
“Training hard, you know how it is. Shame you can’t make it.” He switches the phone to speaker so that he can work on the Harley that he’s restoring.
“I know, damn summer classes,” she grumbles loudly. “If I was smarter, I’d be able to come see you destroy that motherfucker!”
“Hey, watch your language!” He’s well-aware that sometimes he sounds like Kay’s dad rather than her big brother. “And you’re plenty smart, you just don’t do the work.”
“Yeah, well you know I don’t believe in an education system based on stupid test scores.” He can almost hear her pacing up and down as she talks.
“Those stupid test scores are going to get you into law school so just can the shit.” Grayson shakes his head. He would kill to be even a tenth as smart as his little sister, and she looked at it like it was nothing.
“Someone’s especially grouchy today. What happened? You didn’t get laid last night?” She waits for him to tell her that his sex life is none of her business but no response is forthcoming. “Gray, you alright? You sound…weird.” She sounds genuinely concerned.
Great, he thinks, even my sister over in another state knows that something’s up. “It’s nothing, Kay. I just ran into someone I used to know, that’s all. An old friend.” He turns the wrench hard, snapping off a rusty screw when he should have finessed it out. “Goddammit.”
“Friend…right.” His sister doesn’t even try to pretend that she’s going to just let that go. He takes a sip of his smoothie. “Would this friend have a vagina?” And then, he spews it out. “Woah, you totally like her! Have you boned her yet?”
When Grayson has recovered the power of speech he manages to croak a few words out. “It’s not like that, Kay.” Oh God, he thinks, you sound like a chick.
“Dude, you’ve got it bad! Take some advice—remember as well as being your sister I’m also a girl, incredible I know—call her! If you like her, which you clearly do, then call her. None of this wait three days bullshit. Call her.” Kay is getting worked up as she dispenses the advice.
“Are we still talking about me here?” Grayson frowns, as he wonders if he’s going to have to fly up to New York to kick some guy’s butt for not calling his sister.
“Grayson Christopher Fletcher! Call her. I’m hanging up now. Love ya, bye!” The dial tone chimes signaling that Kay has done exactly as she has threatened. He shakes his head, wondering how he landed such a bossy little sister.
He turns his attention back to the bike. Working on the old rust-pot usually calms him, but today he can’t concentrate, his mind is going in about a million different directions or, more accurately, just one particularly distracting one. He digs into the pocket of his ripped jeans, pulling the napkin out carefully as if it might break apart. He feels like a kid, wanting to text her but not daring to, wondering what she’s going to think about him if he does, wondering if she’ll even reply.
The look on her face when he had mentioned ‘old times’ was enough to make him beat himself up over how he treated her for the rest of his natural life. He can’t let her believe that he hurt her on purpose all those years ago. The very thought of it is like a knife twisting in his gut. She deserves more than him, she always had. He had only left her because he thought it was the right thing to do, because he thought it would be safer. He has to have the chance to explain that to her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ADRIANA
She couldn’t have looked at her cell with more shock if it had grown legs and scuttled around the coffee table like a tarantula.
Are you free tonight? Would be great to catch up. Grayson
She would be lying if she said that hearing from him hadn’t sent a little thrill through her. He had a unique ability to make her feel alert and completely present, in the moment. She thinks back to the conversation she’d had with Willow that morning. She’d told her friend that she couldn’t see Grayson anymore, that she couldn’t do that to herself. She picks up her cell with the intention of telling him exactly that, but her fingers seem to have a mind of their own.
That would be great, but my car’s in the shop, so rain check?
She winces at her desperation and pushes the cell away. She knows that she wants to see him; there’s no point in lying to herself. But, in a way, she’s grateful to the idiot that rear-ended her the other day and to the body shop that told her it would only take a day to fix her broken taillight when, in fact, it was taking a week. It meant that she didn’t have to lie about not being able to see Grayson. It meant that she couldn’t see him. It made everything cleaner, more straightforward.
No problem. I’ll pick you up. Where are you?
Adriana stares at the phone, wondering absently why he would go out of his way just to see her. Willow’s words come back to her…unfinished business…that’s what she’d said. Perhaps that is all this is, Grayson needing to get something off of his chest. She believes in closure; it was something she hadn’t had with her mother before she left or when her father died. She is determined t
o have it with Grayson.
Before she can change her mind, she picks up the cell, typing in her address faster than she knew she could. His response comes up almost immediately, as if he were waiting by his phone. Thirty minutes, she had thirty minutes to get herself ready to meet Grayson Fletcher.
She flies to her bedroom and starts raiding her wardrobe, pulling virtually all her clothes out. But nothing seems quite right. She tries on what must be a hundred outfits, but they all look like she’s trying too hard. That’s because you are, the voice in her head tells her.
You don’t have anything to prove to this man, she tells herself before putting on the shorts and tank top she’d been wearing before her sartorial frenzy. She looks at herself in the dressing table mirror. What she sees isn’t overly inspiring. Her hair is a complete mess; she pulls it up into a high ponytail and pinches her cheeks to get some color back. She swipes the mascara brush over her eyelashes and examines herself again. Before she can come to any kind of a conclusion, the doorbell rings.
