It’s a reality I don’t like to think about. I love Caro and I love having her back in my life. It feels like we’ve just started something amazing and now it’s ending.
“She’ll be here in a minute,” Grayson says, surprising me.
“What? You invited her over too? What’s going on?”
He’s not looking at me, but down at Noah in his arms. “I need to talk to all of you. Together.”
“That sounds ominous,” I joke. “Kind of like Evelyn’s expression right now.”
Grayson’s daughter is scowling at him hard core.
That gets Grayson’s attention. He smiles at his daughter. “Hi, sweetie. What’s wrong?”
“I think she’s jealous that you’re holding Noah,” Cas says. Cas, who just got home from work, tugs at the knot of his tie to undo it.
“Maybe she’s picking up on the vibe,” I say. “Both you and Grayson look like you have a lot simmering under the surface.”
“Me?” Cas asks, sounding surprised. “I don’t have a vibe.”
Grayson sighs, swiping at his phone. “Caroline is downstairs at the front door. I just buzzed her in. Shit, this is so fucking hard.”
“What is hard? What is going on?” I ask, bewildered.
Cas levels me with a hard stare and stands up to go to the door. He opens it before Caroline can even knock and he freaks me out by giving her a hug. Cas isn’t a hugger. She doesn’t look startled, though. She hugs him back tightly, and when he releases her, she squeezes his forearm.
What the fuck happened at the bank in Charleston?
Also, why is Grayson clearing his throat repeatedly?
“What the hell is going on?” I ask.
“We all need to talk,” Grayson says.
He already said that and I’m starting to get concerned. “Is this like the kind of summons my mother gives where we all think it’s super important and then she just wants to tell us that she broke my grandmother’s big bowl? Or is this like of the “I’m getting investigated by the IRS?” variety?”
Or worse. Oh, my God. What if it’s about Evelyn’s custody?
Caroline drops her little body bag on the coffee table and sits down next to Grayson, her eyebrows raised.
“This isn’t about Evelyn’s mother, is it?” I ask, instinctively holding her tighter against my chest. I’ll be sick if someone tries to take this little girl away from her father.
“No, no, it’s not that.” Grayson shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be sitting here all fucking calm like this if that was the case. I’d be screaming at a lawyer on the phone. And it’s not the IRS. And I didn’t break an heirloom bowl, and no one has cancer. Just chill, James.”
I instantly felt relieved.
“This is about me and Caroline and the four of us having sex.”
Not relieved anymore.
“What about it?” Cas takes Noah from Grayson. Just swoops in and takes our son.
Without a baby to hold, Grayson looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He claps them on his knees.
There’s a pause, where it feels like we’re all holding a collective breath.
Then Grayson blurts out, “I need to remove myself from our arrangement.”
I hear the words, but I wasn’t expecting them at all. We all wait for him to expand on that bomb he just dropped, but he doesn’t say anything else. He just swallows hard.
