“I’m not with anyone, so you can look all you like.”
Now she’s eager to leave. She beats me to the door before her inability to let a liar off scot-free sees her blurting out, “I saw you kissing her, so her confusion on where you stand is understandable.”
“You saw me removing a lash from her eye. That’s all you saw.”
We undertake an intense stare-down like smashing glass isn’t booming down the hallway. Macy’s expression is apprehensive, revealing that she’s unsure whether she can trust me.
I hate that more than anything thus far.
“I have no reason to lie to you, freckles. But I understand your hesitation. I haven’t exactly been honest with you.” I stroke my fingers across her cheek before cradling her jaw. “But I need to fix this first before I can fix us.”
“Us.” She’s not asking a question. She’s testing out how it feels.
Her assessment is fast and accurate.
My body responds to her smile more positively than it did when Cameron’s lips were a hair’s breadth away from mine. She likes the sound of us, and she approves of it.
Doesn’t mean she’ll let me off the hook, though.
“I’ll wait for you in the car.”
“Mac—”
It’s a fight not to kiss her sass off her face when she interrupts. “I wait in either the car or here.” She dumps the shoes I handed her, their clatter and bong routine scarcely heard over my furious pulse. “Pick your poison, Malfoy.”
It takes a minute for me to reply, and it isn’t the response my head and heart deliberated on. “Are you carrying?”
“Is it really a party if you turn up without party favors?”
I laugh, the huskiness odd in the setting.
Against the better judgment of my head, I press my lips to the edge of her mouth before I gently push her into the corridor. “I’ll be down in ten.”
Cameron is on me not even a nanosecond later.
35
MACY
My feet ache with every step I take as I limp back to the sedan. The pain has nothing on my frantic pulse. What the hell just happened? I looked at Grayson more than I should have, but not enough to warrant Cameron’s rampage.
Thank God I trusted my intuition. While Grayson showered, I got a ton of micro cameras ready for imminent deployment. Cameron’s house is wired to the hilt with surveillance, and I have a laptop in the back seat of the sedan.
I hiss as I slip into the passenger seat. The cuts on my feet are my fault. I was trained to view every situation through the eyes of an agent, to keep my emotions in check and only display them when aiming to fool a target.
But watching Grayson kiss Cameron contradicted all the teachings I received.
The glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the tiled floor as brutally as my heart cracked into a million pieces. I couldn’t feel the shards digging into my feet. The pain in my chest was too high for a little cut to discount.
The way Grayson took care of me and protected me has me desperate for him to know the truth about Cameron. He needsall the facts laid out in front of him before he slips back into a version of his past I’m not sure ever truly existed.
Your memory plays tricks on you when you’ve suffered a loss. You remember the good and hide the bad because you don’t want anything to hinder the investigation into your loved one.
I’m not lying because I want Grayson for myself. If you can tell me the name of one agent who has admitted to searching the ends of the earth for the vigilante who took down a mass murderer instead of waiting for the authorities to do their job, I will forfeit my bid for his heart immediately.
That’s how confident I am that you won’t find one.
We only pursue those cases because we have to, not because we want to.
