Emotions had never had a place in my family. They complicated situations and got in the way of what needed to be done. However, being the only daughter, my mom had helped me carve out small moments to release those complicated emotions whenever they became overwhelming.
Small moments I’d been grateful for, but had always viewed as a weakness.
And then I’d woken up married to Hudson Gray...
I hadn’t been able to grasp the meaning ofsmallmoments since.
What was worse? I’d still needed Gray in those not-so-small moments. I’d needed his comforting presence and understanding. I’d needed his patience and ridiculous ability to make me laugh. I’d even needed the infuriating way he pushed my buttons until I snapped.
More than a decade of managing to keep my emotions—myweaknesses—from him, yet I was sure I would’ve laid those hidden parts of myself at his feet if I would’ve given in and seen him the way he’d begged me to.
The reminder that he’d been the source of my humiliation and grief had always stopped me, like tonight.
Lifting my paintbrush to the wall again, I released a pent-up sigh when my phone chimed. But despite my best efforts to ignore the pull, I glanced at the screen just before the push notification disappeared, then scrambled to grab it when I saw who the message was from. Swiping out of the picture I had pulled up, because I was apparently a masochist, I went over to the messages to confirm what I’d seen.
Grumpy Asher Briggs
Open the door.
Confusion pulsed through me and mixed with a whisper of disappointment when I realized it wasn’t Hudson Gray standing outside my condo after all. But this was much more worrisome.
Briggs had never once attempted to visit my condo before. Considering the time of night and the way I’d lost control at the job earlier, I had a sinking feeling I knew why he finally had.
I knew I hadn’t been giving my all these past months. I knew I’d messed up tonight. But, even though I didn’t know how to be around Gray anymore, I was terrified Briggs was about to rip this part of my life from me.
I loved my job. I loved these men—one considerably more than the others, as my destroyed heart refused to let me forget. I loved Shadow.
Swallowing the knot in my throat, I dropped my phone, hurriedly cleaned the brush, then set it down before rushing through the condo and to the door. Glancing at myself to make sure there wasn’t any incriminating evidence of what I’d been doing, I unlocked the deadbolt and handle, preparing to slip outside before Briggs could get a peek inside, and was shoved back as the door was flung open.
“Knew that’d get you,” a distinctlynotBriggs voice said.
“Get out,” I snapped as Gray charged in.
But then he was standing in my open entryway, hands lifted like he’d already been preparing for me to demand he leave, eyes wide as he stared straight ahead, and an unfamiliar feeling stole into my chest and gripped at my heart, urging it faster and faster.
Gray might’ve been the comfort I’d always craved and clung to, butthishad been my safe space. Once I’d moved in, no one else had ever set foot inside my condo.
Until now.
Before tonight, if Gray had wanted to talk to mehere, he’d always knocked before waiting for me on the tailgate of his truck. He’d never asked for an explanation, he’d simply understood that I hadn’t wanted anyone past that threshold.
And he’d just bulldozed past it.
“What...” he began, the word soft as it dragged from him. Slowly blinking, he shook his head before refocusing on the wall across from him. “I’m sorry,what?”
“Get out,” I repeated through clenched teeth.
He lifted one of his hands higher, his voice a numb sort of confusion as he continued toward my kitchen. “I brought tacos.”
“I don’t care. I said?—”
“Did you do this?” he asked, finally looking at me for a split second before his attention drifted back to the wall.
My stomach twisted and humiliation burned through me as I watched him close in on the wall to more easily inspect it.
The first wall I’d painted after moving in.
It was what I did when I was stressed, which was all the time—painted designs and stories onto the surfaces of my home.
