“But then Wren texted that she was surprised youwere at their farmwithout me. Next thing I knew, I was headed toyou instead—not her. And then you passed me on the road.” I grabbed her hand and shoved her keys into them, my voice lowering to a near growl. “For the record, Peach—not that you bothered to askthis—I’ve never touched Wren Pearson.”
“For the record,” she began, twisting my words back around on me, a shield of ice and venom coating every word as she spoke, “this is the one subject I stopped believing you on long ago.”
Pain speared my chest, causing my hand to flex around hers as I searched her guarded stare.
And even though anger was building up right alongside my pain, my words came out soft and defeated when I asked, “What did I do?”
Dropping her hand, I stepped back and ran my fingers through my hair, gripping tightly at the strands as I tried wrapping my head around all these new developments.
“I can’t figure it out—I can’t figureyouout,” I went on. “We both signed that paper. We both had an equal part in what happened that night. But you’ve been punishing me like it was my fault, and mine alone. You’ve been acting like I hurt you—like Iruined your life—by marrying you.”
“You did,” she cried out like it should’ve been obvious.
And, man, if that confirmation didn’t hurt worse than anything else had these past months.
But just as I took a staggering step back and reached for that ache in my chest, she added, “You couldn’t even last twenty-four hours after marrying me before sleeping with someone else,” stalling my step. Stalling my heart.
And then it took off.
Because that waspainin her voice. That wassorrow.
And even though my anger was quick to flare at her assuredness, I leaned close and kept my voice low and even when I reminded her, “I haven’t slept with anyone.”
Her face pinched with dejection and embarrassment before she quickly shook her head as if trying to rid every emotion that had sprung up. By the time the words, “Stop lying to me,” left her, that impenetrable defense was firmly in place as she glared at me.
“I’m not?—”
“You’ve never cared about the obscene body count you carry around,” she said over me, making my mouth snap shut and my jaw tick from the sudden pressure I put on it. “You’ve never had any respect for how a woman feels—especiallyme.”
They were obvious shields she was throwing at me—lies she was grasping at. And yet, they had my chest pitching faster because I could tell from the way she was struggling to keep her chin up that there was real hurt there. Which meant, there wassometruth to what she was saying.
Or, at least, they stemmed from a truthshebelieved.
“I’ve watched you for over a decade, Gray,” she continued. “You can’t convince me now that you’ve suddenly changed.”
My next breath fled from my lungs.
I’d been right . . . and so wrong.
Mallory’s barbed wordshadstemmed from a truth. One she only believed because I’d caused her to with every intentional and unintentional interaction I’d had in front of her over the years. Interactions that swarmed my mind and weighed me down with a regret that seemed endless.
Shields or not, partial truths or not, I didn’t know how to fix this.
I’d spent so long trying to erase the pain of knowing Mallory Monroe would never be mine, and in the end, I’d hurt her.
And now? I’d somehow destroyed whatever there had been of us.
My head bobbed absentmindedly as I mumbled, “Right,” the word thick and sounding like glass over gravel.
Clearing my throat, I took a step away, only to rock back and search her face—her fracturing shield that she was trying so desperately to keep in place. “I don’t know what you actually believe,” I began, letting her know I knew exactly what all those veiled grenades she’d lobbed my way had been, “but theminimalbody count has always felt like chains weighing me down. There’s nothingsuddenabout my changes. I was raised to respect all women, butyou?”
A strained breath wheezed from me. “If I didn’t respect you, I wouldn’t have fought beside you for years. I wouldn’t have tried tocontinuefighting beside you when my contract was up. I wouldn’t have stopped trying to lose myself in random womenyears agobecause, even though you’d made your thoughts on me clear, they weren’t you.”
The tension between us pulsed, and her blue eyes flared, betraying that fortress she hid behind.
But as soon as those eyes narrowed on me, I firmly added, “And I’ve never lied to you.”
I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I just left the pieces of my soul I’d bared with her and headed to my truck.
