“You should stay the night. Have breakfast with me and Olliebefore I take him to school. I’m not due at Silver Linings until after that.”
“You sure? I would love to, but it seems like a big step.”
My logical side wanted to deny it, but the flutters inside my body agreed. It was a big step. I still wanted it. “You should sleep on the couch. Ollie knows you’ve done that before, so it won’t be such a shock. But I want him to get to know you better.”
Grayden brought his hand to my cheek. I leaned into the touch. “I want this so fucking badly, Piper. I have to be honest.”
“You’re always honest with me.” Even with the fear still waging a war inside me, I knew that about Grayden with zero doubt.
“Am I, though? I haven’t lied to you about anything, but I still haven’t told you everything you need to know about me.”
“Grayden—”
He brushed his thumb over my lips. “No, don’t make excuses for me. I should’ve told you all of it already. You said weeks ago that you don’t know who I am. And really, you still don’t.”
“I don’t believe that. The past isn’t everything.”
He pulled me closer and kissed my forehead. “That’s the irony, though. You can’t say the past doesn’t matter if you don’t know what it is. You studied literature. You know all about irony.”
I laughed even though I felt like I might cry. Something amazing was happening between us, something I’d believed was impossible for me. I just wanted to savor that. Why was Grayden trying to mess it up?
“All you have to do is listen,” he said. “Please?”
“Okay. I will.”
I tucked my head beneath his chin. He put his arm around me.
And then, after a few loaded moments of silence, he started talking.
FORTY-ONE
Grayden
“First few yearsin the Army, my anger fueled me. I told you that. I was kind of an asshole. Didn’t make many friends. Joining the military seemed like the best option for me, for a whole host of reasons, but I missed everyone here too. It was like I hated Silver Ridge, and I also felt like huge parts of me were missing, not being here. Does that make any sense?”
“I think so.”
“Teller and I hadn’t enlisted together, but we were stationed the same place at first. Then his career took off pretty fast while I was barely skating by. We started to grow apart. He tried to be a friend and understand what was going on with me, but I didn’t let him in.”
Piper traced a finger over my thigh, drawing a pattern on the denim. “Teller never told me that. He’s always been pretty quiet about his years of service.”
“Well, most of this he didn’t know. I met this skinny kid named Aaron Drummond. He reminded me of Callum and Ashford, but he had anger like mine boiling inside him. Aaron despised his father, like I did. I befriended the kid. Tried to keep him out of trouble. And we just clicked. I started to feel moresettled, like I’d needed a younger brother around to set a better example for.”
She smiled against my chest.
“Aaron’s background wasn’t like mine, though. Like yoursand mine. He came from money. At that point, I didn’t know exactly who his father was or what he did for a living, but Aaron told me he’d grown up privileged. I thought that difference between us didn’t matter. In fact, it bonded us even more. Having a similar experience with uncaring fathers even if we’d grown up in the opposite circumstances.”
I huffed a soft laugh.
“Also, Aaron let me borrow his Yamaha Supersport. That elevated his status in my head too.”
“I bet,” Piper said.
“Things were actually looking up for a while. I wasn’t getting chewed out by my superior officers as much, and Aaron met a girl he really liked. Got engaged when they found out she was pregnant. But he still had a chip on his shoulder. When Aaron drank, his anger came to the surface, and I was usually the guy trying to pull him back.”
She stroked my hand, threading our fingers together and apart. So sweet and soft, and yet she gave me the strength to keep talking.
“One night, though, I was the one getting drunk and belligerent. It was the anniversary of my mom dying. We went to a bar on base. I proceeded to get shit-faced. Some other soldiers were in the mood to get rowdy, I guess, so I decided to oblige. There was a certain guy who was especially awful. Private Ricker. His favorite hobby was saying shit to rile Aaron up. But that night, everything the man said was rilingme.”
