Page 24 of Royal
“Why did you come here, Gray?”
He didn’t answer at first. He drank more of his beer and stared at the floor. Then, his stare lifted to mine.
“I guess to tell you we aren’t looking at you for this,” he answered. “You can relax. For now.”
“Is that all?” I asked, agitated for some reason. Maybe the past was finally catching up to me. The stress over the murder investigation had pushed away my anger for what he’d done to me all those years ago. Now it was returning, bit by bit. “You could’ve called to tell me that.”
“I wanted to see you,” he snapped before tightening his jaw and averting his gaze.
My chest warmed. I went to say something but found it hard to talk around the lump in my throat. Found it hard to breathe a little, too.
“Why?” I managed to ask. “We went eight years without speaking to each other. Why start now?” Instead of letting myself be overcome with sadness about what we’d lost, I turned to anger. It was easier. “You dragged me to a party the night before a big exam, got drunk, dumped me, and hooked up with some twink not even five minutes later. And to top it all off, as if that wasn’t shitty enough, you didn’t even try to justify yourself. You let me go without a fight.”
Grayson refused to meet my gaze.
And boy, it pissed me off even more.
“Fucking look at me, Gray!” I balled my hands into fists. When he finally did, I saw the pain in his eyes. That was something, at least. He’d causedmeenough pain to last a damn lifetime.
“I didn’t come here to do this, Royal.”
“Yeah, but you’re here now, aren’t you? Might as well get things off our chests.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
Nothing to say? When faced with a tough situation, Grayson had always walled himself off from it. He hadn’t changed at all.
“How about you’re sorry?” My voice cracked. “When Jonathon died, you didn’t even reach out to me. He was my baby brother, but he loved you, too. How could you be that cold, Gray? Not to even go to his funeral.”
“I did go,” he whispered, his watery gaze burning into mine. “I stood at the back of the church, but I was there. I saw you sitting with your parents and almost went up to you a million times. I…I just couldn’t. I’d already hurt you so much, and I didn’t want to add to your grief. So, I left right after the service. I never reached out to you because you said you never wanted to talk to me again.”
Tears sprang to my eyes.
I walked to the sliding glass door that gave a view of the back yard and stared at the starry sky. It was clear that night, no haze and no clouds. Only the full moon and a blanket of stars. I found the Little Dipper constellation, fighting back a wave of grief.
Grayson and I used to go out to the country—away from the city lights—and put the tailgate down on his truck, lying on a blanket and staring up at the stars. He’d gotten frustrated so many times because he’d never been able to find Orion’s Belt, even when I’d pointed it out to him.
“I can’t see it, goddammit,” Grayson mumbled. “All I see are dots.”
Laughing, I snuggled against his chest, finding his earthy scent comforting.
His aunt Abby burned incense, and Grayson tended to smell like them. She’d started burning the ones that were said to help with tension and calming one’s mind, in an effort to help his impulses to lash out at people. She hadn’t needed to, though.
He wasn’t the same angry guy he used to be.
“What about that one?” I asked, pointing above us and a bit to the right. “That’s the Little Dipper.”
“Looks like a square spoon?”
I snorted. “Yep.”
Grayson grinned, proud of himself, and hugged me closer. He then turned toward me, nearly covering my body with his, and kissed me.
I never wanted him to stop kissing me.
The memory faded, but the emotion it stirred did not. My heart ached and my eyes stung.
The first time we’d ever had sex had been out there, in the back of his truck and under the stars. After he’d confessed his feelings for me at that high school party, we’d left the house and taken a drive. When we found that spot in the country, we’d come together, teeth clashing as we yanked at each other’s clothes. It was the one place we had complete privacy, away from parents, anyway. The place we could get lost in each other.
