Page 74 of Mystique of the Fallen
Roman waved at the other fallen knights as he cruised through the main lobby of the fallen knights’ headquarters and walked at a brisk pace to the Dérive station. From there, he teleported to the bedroom he shared with Grant.
“Hey,” Roman called out after using his senses to determine Grant was home. Instead of rushing immediately out to find him, Roman slid his bag off his shoulder and quickly changed out of his uniform into a faded T-shirt and jeans.
Weaving a hand through his hair to fix any strands sticking off his head, Roman left the bedroom and headed for the main living area.
“Hey,” Roman said again as he finally laid eyes on the brunet who filled his heart. Like Roman, Grant wore jeans, and he was standing in the kitchen. Roman crossed the distance between them and was ready to drag him close for a kiss when their eyes met. Instead of happiness dancing in his lime-green gaze, Grant’s emotions were shrouded.
“Hey,” Grant replied with a smile that barely lifted the corners of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Roman asked, resting his hands on Grant’s hips.
“Weird fucking day,” Grant responded, his voice cracking on the words.
Startled at the tears welling in his eyes, Roman tenderly pulled him into his arms. “Want to talk about it?”
Grant nodded, but he remained mute as he fisted Roman’s shirt. Roman wanted to soothe him, so he caressed his back and cupped his head.
“It’s okay if you aren’t ready to talk. Want me to hug you for a while?”
“Is forever good for you?”
“Yep. We’re immortal, baby. I’m here as long as you need me.”
Swallowing audibly, Grant put just enough distance between them so they could see each other. “I was called out to DC this morning. It should have been this pretty straightforward thing to handle. Or so I thought. All I had to do was get rid of a human harassing a vampire and his mate.”
Roman’s heart thundered in his chest, and a sense of dread crept through him. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Except I went out to talk to the human, and he called me Grant. He recognized me. Blew my mind. It didn’t hit me until later that he called me fucking Grant. I don’t remember my past life, so how did Chander know to give me the same name I had when I was alive?”
Deciding they could both use a moment, Roman pulled away and grabbed two beers from their fridge. “Come sit down and we can talk.”
His tears already dry, Grant studied Roman with a steady stare that unnerved him. “You know why Chander named me Grant, don’t you?”
Roman dropped onto a sofa cushion and patted a spot next to him. “Come here. I’ll explain.”
Grant’s mouth tightened as he quietly strode into the living room. Foolishly, Roman had avoided this conversation for far too long, and he hated that Grant had spent the entire day dealing with the situation on his own.
“I’m sorry,” Roman said. “I could make a thousand excuses for why I didn’t tell you about the past from the beginning, but it turns out that I’m a coward. Our relationship…well, I thought it would move much slower. Let’s start out with what happened this morning. Is that okay? Who did you talk to, and what did they say?”
“Trying to plan on how much you want to reveal?” Grant asked, betrayal lurking in his eyes.
“Absolutely not. I’ll tell you everything I can and answer every one of your questions. I’m looking for a starting point. The easiest way to make sure you get all the facts is to approach this like a case, okay?”
Grant’s expression didn’t change, and Roman felt like scum. This was the man he loved, and he’d kept a secret from him. Grant deserved better. Roman planned to explain that too, but first it had to be about what Grant wanted.
“I went outside to ask a lawyer who called himself Reginald Bradley to leave a vampire and his mate alone. Reginald recognized me immediately. He called me Grant. Told me we loved each other. That we’d been together since I was thirteen. According to him, I never looked at another man. But I’m a fallen knight, and my instincts were shouting at me that it was a truth he believed, not necessarily the entire story. Did you know him? Reginald Bradley?” Grant teared up again. “You know what? I don’t even care if he was lying. Tell me about us. You knew me, didn’t you? I need to know what our relationship was in the past.”
Although Roman dearly wanted to comfort Grant, he knew it would be unwelcome until he confessed everything. “In one of those weird parallels life gives us, you and I met outside that same townhouse. You were a private investigator, and you were trying to get a photo so the case against that human who nearly murdered his now-ex-spouse would get thrown out.”
Grant’s lip curled in disgust. “Okay, I hate that about myself. Mikhail and Raney mentioned a private investigator this morning. They told me he was there for a while, then disappeared. That was me?”
“The former you, yes. But that man is dead. We met one day, and, well, it didn’t go well. You didn’t believe in mates. I had to practically bully you into taking my number, and you kept calling me a zombie.”
“Bradley called me that this morning. A zombie. It made me furious.”
“Because that’s not what we are. You told me you wouldn’t call me. But you did. In the middle of the night, you called me pissed off because you kept puking onReg, as you called him. What I remember most was that you told me you’d loved him once and that maybe you still did.”
“Not exactly the tale Bradley was trying to feed me this morning,” Grant muttered. “Did our relationship grow from there?”
