“A pain,” Gray corrected. “Always have been.” He blew out a harsh breath and raked one of his hands through his light brownhair. Just as he started turning toward me, he seemed to catch himself and forced his attention back on his family instead.
“Well, if you couldn’t tell, that isn’t why I’m here,” he continued. “Text me everything you know, and I’ll see what I can do once I get back to Dallas.”
“What?” Emberly said on a defeated breath.
“Yeah,what?” her sister picked up for her. “That can’t be how it works. How are you supposed to do anything if you aren’t here?”
A hesitant laugh crept from Gray, showing just how irritated he still was by the entire thing. “Research and looking into people are half of it. So, yeah, actually.”
“Half,” Emberly’s sister echoed triumphantly. I was fairly certain her name was Rae...
I should’ve been sure about her name. Iwouldhave known everything about everyone in that house within the first thirty minutes of being here if I hadn’t been so consumed with my frustration, devastation, and confusion over a certain green-eyed man while simultaneously trying to figure out how to escape my personal version of hell—a house filled with screaming children.
It also hadn’t helped that, when I’d thought I’d heard the nameRae, my mind had immediately drifted to how Lainey’s family called herLainey Ray, and then the next thing I’d known, I’d been on a Gray-plus-Wren spiral.
Emotions were seriously stupid and completely unhelpful.
Something I’d been reminded of all too often throughout my life.
“You’re acting on your feminine emotions again,” my oldest brother mocked after slamming me to the mat and nearly knocking the oxygen from my lungs, his blood-stained smileferal as he bent over me. “That’s why you’ll never make it. Women don’t belong in battle.”
“Made you bleed,” I wheezed as I fought to calm all thosefeminine emotions.
He nodded while shifting his jaw and testing out the inside of his cheek. “Finally,” he said, as if disappointed it’d taken me so long. Never mind that he was seven years older than my fifteen years, twice my size, and pure muscle. “Doesn’t mean you belong anywhere other than behind the safety of four walls, popping out kids, and keeping your hus?—”
I swiped his legs out from under him before he could finish the sentence and rolled onto my knees to deliver a straight shot to his nose.
But just as soon as blood started pouring out of his maybe-broken nose, I went still when our dad’s booming voice echoed throughout our training space, “Mallory! Fight like a man or get out.”
I ground my jaw as my oldest brother smiled viciously, blood-covered face and all. “Feminine emotions,” he mouthed.
“Mallory,” Dad snapped expectantly.
“Yes, sir,” I shouted back and started pushing away from my brother just as he taunted, “Go be a good little princess, and hide in your castle.”
I punched him again . . .
Dad kicked me out until I could get control of my emotions...
It wasn’t the first time I’d been kicked out of our training space, and it wouldn’t be the last.
I swallowed thickly and pushed the memory from my mind, but it didn’t erase the shame that remained. Shame that came fromyears of disappointed lectures in the form of my dad trying to yell my emotions out of me.
Not that it had worked. Clearly. They still got the better of me far too frequently.
And for a moment, I wondered what I would’ve been like if I hadn’t had four brothers and a father who constantly mocked and demanded I suppress my emotions.
Instead of bottling everything up and hiding away from the people closest to me—instead of lashing out at the man I loved—maybe I would’ve been more like Lainey and Chloe. Maybe I would’ve been more like the women in this house. Lighter. Happier. Effortlessly offering my thoughts and feelings to my friends and family...to Hudson Gray.
Just as the thought crossed my mind, I dismissed it. Because, again, without my family’s constant training and belittling, I never would’ve met Gray or the rest of my crew.
My heart stalled when my attention drifted back to Gray as if drawn, only to find him closer than before, intently studying me, brow furrowed and eyes searching like he could see every one of my thoughts. One of his hands was slightly raised, like he’d started reaching for me before stopping.
And then my betraying heart gave a painful thump before taking off in a rapid, unforgiving pace as I stood still as stone, body buzzing with energy I desperately tried to ignore as I waited forsomething. The tension to break. Him to speak. Another brush of his fingers against mine. The strength to look away.
Anything.
Isubconsciously held my breath and somehow managed to keep my hands at my sides instead of shoving them into Gray’s chest when he leaned closer to murmur, “As always, Peach, I’m happy to tell you, your dad’s the worst.”
