Gray’s low, hushed laugh crept up his throat and got lost in the kiss when we stumbled against his truck, and then his hands were moving. Racing down my sides and curling around the backs of my thighs to lift me. A move that felt as natural as it did familiar, even though we’d never done?—
I broke from the kiss on a gasp when a hazy memory pushed to the surface.
I lightheartedly shoved Gray as we hushed each other, which only sent us into another fit of laughter before he pulled me into his arms.
Back. Back into his arms. Because I’d been there.
Right there.
“We’re going to wake everyone,” I playfully admonished, my smile wide and unrestrained as I eagerly met his next kiss.
“Then they can celebrate with us,” he mumbled against my lips before slanting his mouth over mine again. Stealing the sweetest, most torturous kisses, that did the wildest things to me.
Each one made me feel like I was at once grounded and floating. Each one made my head spin with the giddy realization that I was finally kissing that man.
They were far more intoxicating than anything we drank. I didn’t want them to ever end, and I couldn’t figure out why we’d wasted so many years not doing that. Because I was sure kissing Hudson Gray was my new favorite thing. Unlike myshoes and the dress I’d been forced into for the wedding. The other wedding—not ours. Still hated those.
Laughter burst from us when we stumbled into the wall near my hotel room door—or, maybe it was just a door. They all looked the same.
“Shh,” I murmured as I leaned toward Gray’s mouth again, only for a shock of surprise to burst from me when he suddenly grasped the backs of my thighs and lifted me.
My legs curled around him instinctively, and a giggle that I wasn’t entirely sure had come from me—because I didn’t giggle—tumbled free. “You’re going to drop me,” I teased. “You’ve been drinking.”
His husky laugh filled the hall and my soul before he leaned in to nip my bottom lip. Placing a soft kiss there immediately after, he shifted us away from the wall, his pale green eyes filled with heat and challenge. “I’ll take that bet, Mrs. Gray.”
By the time I focused on Gray, his brow was furrowed as he stared at me without seeming to see me.
“We’ve done this before,” he mumbled. Blinking back to the present, his eyes searched mine, something indescribable filling them. “You’d always loved me.”
“What?” I asked, even though he wasn’t wrong—I had always loved him. But it was the way he’d said it, as if relaying something, that had forced the question from me.
His head subtly bobbed before he clarified, “That’s what you told me. When we got into the room.”
My brows lifted and my heart pounded furiously as I worried over what he might’ve remembered. “You know what happened in the room?”
“Just getting in there.” But even as Gray said the words, a new weight seemed to settle over him that had my stomachtwisting. And as he continued, he slowly set my feet back on the pavement. “I remember stumbling in and pressing you against the door. That’s when you said it.”
I studied the way his jaw flexed and his stare fell, my chest tightening as I braced myself for what came next.
Because something was clearly coming next, but I wasn’t ready forthis.
Just as I started straightening my spine in preparation to tell him to spit it out, he muttered, “There’s something I need to ask you.”
“Clearly.”
He gave me a pleading look and gently slid a hand around my waist. “Don’t step behind those walls again. I’m not—I just need to know something. Something onlyyouknow.”
One of my eyebrows ticked up in prompting, forcing a heaving breath from him.
Running his free hand through his wet hair, he muttered, “Could’ve started this better,” then roughed out another sigh before releasing me and taking a step back, already knowing I didn’t want to be touched when I went into self-preservation mode—something that was as instinctive as breathing.
“I don’t know what all was said between you and Chloe yesterday, but she said you got weird when she mentioned the possibility that Lainey was pregnant. Because of your reaction, she and Thatch both asked me if you were pregnant. Well”—his head slanted and a grimace of a smirk edged at his mouth—“it was more of an accusation.”
My expression had to have been comical.
Of everything I’d prepared myself for Gray to say, not one of those things had beenChloethinking I waspregnant.
“I told them you weren’t,” he hurried to clarify. “But...” Gray looked like he was drowning as he studied me, as if worriedabout what he would find out next. As if worried he’d find out wehad. “I don’t remember what happened?—”
