My brow furrowed at this new information, but I didn’t have to ask for the details before Gray launched into his entire encounter with Tessa for me.
“I was too distracted,” he admitted once he was done. “I was so set on getting to you, that I didn’t notice her appearance or that panic as she looked around, like she was worried someone wasthere. And she said, ‘there’s something I’ before I cut her off.” His hand lifted before falling back to his stomach.
“You think she was going to tell you about the guy who lived near her.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled regretfully.
Understanding wove through my words when I assured him, “Gray, what happened to her isn’t on you.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked with a self-deprecating laugh. “All the signs were right in front of me, and I pushed her away. I walked away. And she was taken.”
“She also jumped into your arms and flirted obnoxiously with you,” I reminded him, and silently berated myself for thewhisper of irritation that automatically leaked into the words. I was sure it wasn’t fair to still hate a woman who’d been abducted. Controlling my tone, I added, “Why would you have thought to look for any other signs?”
The corner of Gray’s mouth ticked up in the dark. “Obnoxious, huh?”
My eyes rolled, but I didn’t bother with a verbal response.
“Really, if I’d known about this jealous side...”
I pushed my fist into his side at the gentle teasing, but still found myself asking, “What would it have changed?”
“Everything,” he said without hesitation. “Mallory, I’ve thought you wanted nothing to do with me. If I would’ve had the slightest idea that wasn’t true?”
He let the rest of his unspoken words linger between us. But I felt every one of them.
We wouldn’t have wasted eleven years. I wouldn’t have had my heart repeatedly broken by him.
“Ditto,” I whispered into the dark and felt his hand tighten against me.
“Anyway, whatever reaction you saw tonight wasn’t because I’d lost someone significant,” he said after long moments in weighted silence, shifting the conversation back to Tessa. “It was because I’d been right there and refused to see what was so plainly in front of me. It was because I could’ve prevented this, and didn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was a total stranger, it was that I’d failed her.” When I drew in a breath to argue, Gray added, “You can’t convince me otherwise.”
I nodded subtly before saying, “You’re still wrong.”
A disagreeing hum left him. “And what do you think about the rest of the team knowing about us?”
“You changing the conversation doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong.”
His bright, yet gentle smile flashed in the darkness.Mysmile. “I just don’t wanna argue with you.”
“You love arguing,” I countered dryly.
“With you,” he agreed. “But not right now. So, what do you think?”
I studied his earnest expression as I considered the question. “It makes it easier, especially if...” Doubt swirled through me, choking back the wordswe last, as I thought over Briggs’ humiliating speech when we’d first gotten to the office.
Gray gave a gentle squeeze on my back, silently prompting me to continue.
“Briggs doesn’t think we’ll last.”
“He didn’t say that,” Gray countered, voice hard and cold. “I also don’t care what he thinks when it comes to us.”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” Gray said, the word full of confidence. “He doesn’t have all the information we do. He hasn’t been there, on either side, for the past eleven years. He wasn’t there for all our days and nights together. He wasn’t there for every destructive or enlightening conversation.” Tipping his head closer so his forehead was nearly pressed to mine, his voice softened when he added, “When it comes to us? I care about you. So, again, what do you think?”
Iwatched him watch me as I let the dizzying day and months barrel through my mind. And Gray was content to lie there, waiting for me to sort through my thoughts.
“I think this doesn’t feel real,” I finally admitted, my voice so much softer than I intended it to be. I could’ve blamed it on my exhaustion. I could’ve blamed it on the effect Gray’s soft, rumbling voice had on me in the dark. I could’ve blamed it on the comfort and safety I felt in that moment, in his arms, when I hadn’t known I’d been searching for either of those feelings. But I knew it was those vulnerabilities sneaking back in. “Any of it—from that morning we woke up, to this entire weekend, tonow.”
