Letting Go (Thatch #1)(44)

“You have no imagination.”

Leaning over her body, I brushed my lips just below her breasts and spoke against her skin. “I beg to differ.”

Grey’s hands went up to play in my hair as I placed soft kisses all over her stomach. “I see a T. rex, a bunny, a mug, and a heart. You think they all look like cotton candy or trees.”

“That just means I’m the sober one here.”

She tugged gently on my hair, but only sighed as she relaxed her head against the handles of the Jet Ski.

We’d gone out on a boat with a few friends from high school this morning to wakeboard, and I’d been prepared for it to be a disaster. In spite of her uncaring reaction when she saw Grey and me together, it didn’t stop me from waiting for LeAnn to say some bullshit to Grey. Even when LeAnn’s guy—a different one from the restaurant—went out on the water, LeAnn was talking with all the girls like they were just catching up.

After wakeboarding for a few hours, Grey and I had left them and rented a Jet Ski to spend some time alone before Grey had to get to work. We hadn’t even been on the water for thirty minutes when I’d had to cut off the engine because the way Grey’s hands were curling against my stomach had made it too hard to concentrate on anything else. She’d wiggled her way around me until she was sitting on my lap so she could lie back against the Jet Ski, and I’d been struggling to keep my hands and mouth only on places they’d already been. Her being in a bikini wasn’t helping my self-control . . . or lack thereof.

Given the way Grey had reacted a week and a half ago when Charlie showed up at my place, I’d been afraid she would regret what we’d been doing. But by the next day, she was back to normal. Staying pressed up against my side, giving me teasing kisses that would quickly build . . . it was how it had been, and I was glad we hadn’t gone back a few steps. But since the day she’d received the copy of Ben’s vows and the message from his Facebook account, I’d slowly watched her drift back into being the Grey I’d come to know so well over the last two years.

There were moments, like right then on the lake, but the rest of the time I’d find her staring off at nothing or she’d just slowly shut down and curl into a ball while gripping the ring around her neck. It was almost as if she’d remember the present and what I meant to her now, but then go back to cling to the past. Never moving on from the point we’d been at a week and a half ago, and going back a few steps for the majority of our days.

I didn’t need more from her physically. If she needed to go back and slowly build up to where we’d been, I would do that for her in a heartbeat. But with the amount of time each day she spent in the past, I knew we wouldn’t be starting over . . . I knew I was slowly losing the girl I’d had for what felt like only a few seconds.

I was slowly losing Grey completely.

She didn’t want to talk about Ben, she didn’t want to talk about what had happened . . . she just didn’t want to talk. She was the Grey she had been after Ben died, but this time she was shutting me out too. So for the few moments I still had her, I wasn’t wasting a single second. I wanted to have memories of the girl I’d waited for once that girl was completely gone.

“I have to go back soon,” she mumbled.

I sat up and looked over at the shore. “What time do you have to work today?”

“Four. So, probably an hour or so.”

“All right.” I grabbed her upper arms and pulled her toward me. “Get behind me and we’ll head in.”

“I said soon,” she said softly when she was sitting again, and I looked up at her heated stare as she gripped my waist and adjusted herself on my lap.

Releasing one of her arms, I slowly traced the line of her bikini top down to the swell of her breast, and raised one eyebrow when she sucked in a sharp breath. “And what do you want to do until soon is here?”

Before she could respond, the roar of an engine and the sounds of yelling filled the otherwise quiet spot on the lake, and I dropped my hand to look at the quickly approaching boat.

“Yeah! Get some!” one of the guys yelled as they passed us, and I kept my stare on them until they were too far away to see clearly, because I knew exactly what I would find in front of me. Anytime we were physically close and something interrupted us, she would look at the position we were in in a whole new light, and go back to being the Grey who was stuck in the past.

Finally, looking back at Grey, I gave her a tight-lipped smile and reached behind me for her life jacket as she sat there staring at my chest and gripping her necklace.

“Put this on, sweetheart, I’ll take you in.”

Grey barely said anything more than a mumble as we went in and I returned the Jet Ski, and I don’t think she even realized I wasn’t walking with her toward her car until she started to get in. She looked back to where we’d been, then looked over to where I was standing next to my car.

“I’ll see you later.” She said the words almost like a question, and I just nodded. Without another word, she got into her car and drove away.

I got into my car and dropped my head back against the headrest as I replayed the good parts of the day. But it was hard to remember anything when three words kept going through my mind like a broken record.

I’m losing her.

Grey

August 10, 2014