Page 2 of (Un)Rivaled

I raced into the bathroom, purging everything I’d eaten last night. By the time I finished, Gray sat at my side, handing me a damp washcloth. Scooting back until I hit the wall, I covered my face with my hands. “Gray, please tell me nothing happened between us. I couldn’t live with myself if you cheated on your wife?—”

“I’m not married,” he huffed from my side. His face fell as he looked down at the ring. “Don’t think I am, at least. Woke up with this on my finger.”

I pulled up slightly, resting my head on the toilet seat. Disgusting, maybe, but in this moment, nothing could have gotten me to lift it any further. “You don’t remember putting it on?”

“No. Memory’s pretty fucked,” he grumbled as he lifted up my left hand. A spark ignited where we touched, and it took everything in me to keep my body calm. It had been so long since I’d been this close to Gray, unable to stay in his orbit and risk my heart breaking again. But even though we were practically strangers now, the same sensation rocked through me: longing, lust, and complete comfort, wrapping around me whenever he was near.

But all of that faded away when he reached for my ring finger, and I felt something there, something I hadn’t noticed in my haste to get out of the room. I glanced down at the delicate, braided silver band on my finger. Gray followed my line of sight and twisted the ring with his thumb. Then, he held up his ringed hand, putting it next to mine. The two bands were polar opposites, much like we’d always been, and yet…they worked together.

Another round of nausea pulled the thought from myhead, and Gray backed away to give me some space. He returned a couple minutes later with cans of ginger ale, some saltine crackers, and his phone.

“C’mon. You should eat something,” he said, helping me to sit against the wall. I pushed away the crackers, unwilling to even think about putting anything in my stomach, but when he held out the ginger ale, I snatched it greedily. “Slow sips,” he warned. As I did as I was told, Gray leaned back, running his hand over his gruff beard. “What do you remember about last night?”

“Not much,” I answered, dropping my head down to my knees. “The last thing was leaving the bar and going somewhere with your teammates. They were cheering about something?”

“They were cheering about us,” Gray said, his tone low. He pulled out his phone, showing me a video playing on the screen. It looked a lot like the two of us standing on an altar, exchanging promises to each other. Gray watched my face the entire time, waiting for me to process what I’d seen.

I shoved the phone back to him. “I don’t understand.”

“Ace…” Gray’s voice was soft, softer than I’d ever heard it. That should have been my first sign of trouble. He ran his hand over his face and sighed. “I think we got married last night.”

ONE

FIVE YEARS LATER

You know when people talk about those out-of-body experiences? The moments they can feel their hearts beating in their chests—knowing air is coming in and out of their lungs, but they can’t feel any of it?

I always thought that was a gross exaggeration, little more than a feeling people made up to cover their panic, needing something to blame when all their senses failed to save them. No, I was too strong for that, too hard-headed to ever let something like emotions derail me so spectacularly.

All it took were two words for my entire view to change.

Two little words from Grayson Anders, and my entire body wentnumb.

For most of my life, people had referred to me as cold. Because I didn’t wear my emotions on my sleeve, many assumed I didn’t have any, but it wasn’t true. I felt a lot below the surface, but I was never very good at letting people know.

This was the first time I felt like all my emotions had been switched off, leaving me little more than a shell with a pulse. Feelings, sensations, and even sounds were powerlessagainst the weight of his words, knocking my world off its axis for the first time.

My wife.

That bastard.

All at once, as my ex-fling Jack’s Mercedes rushed down the street away from us, everything came flooding back to me. The lights of Grayson’s bar were too bright, and the quiet, sleepy town was now nothing more than a dissonance of melodramatic noises. Even my heartbeat, which should have been the most soothing sound in the world, was too much.

Especially when Gray turned to face me, his sparkling steel eyes soft as he met my shocked expression. “You okay, Ace?”

Okay?Not even a little. I might be having a stroke, a heart attack, or everything in between. He’d outed our secret without so much as a second thought, and now, I was left wondering how in the hell we’d ever put back those pieces. Because a secret like this—one with the power to detonate everything around you? There was no way to put that back into the bottle.

All I could do was nod, not trusting my voice to carry what I needed to say when he was looking at me like that.

Grayson Anders.

My husband.

My voice tried to come up with an answer for how I was feeling, but it all came to a screeching halt when my sister, Calla, stepped between us. Her hand clamped down on her hips, steam practically boiling out of her ears as she stared at us. She pointed her finger at Gray, but her eyes never left mine. “I’m sorry, but did he just call you hiswife?”

My eyes widened as they met Gray’s, and I could see the moment he realized his mistake. It deflated alittle bit of my rage, knowing he never meant to betray me, but then again, Calla wasn’t staring at him, demanding answers with her scowl.

Seeing such hurt in her expression almost killed me. I hated being the cause of her pain. My little sister was my whole heart, and typically, I would do anything for her.

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