Worth the Risk(92)

“It’s true isn’t it?”

Grayson stands in my doorway. I haven’t even opened the screen door, but his words are out and now there is a whole hell of a lot more between us than the piece of wood-framed mesh.

“Is what true?” I push open the door, but he just holds it still, almost as if it’s a barrier protecting him from the truth.

But I know he knows. It’s in his posture. In the tension of his body. It’s in the hurt in his eyes.

“You’re leaving.”

I stare down at my fingers twisting before looking back to meet his eyes. “I’ve tried telling you.”

“Not hard enough.” It’s the first trace of anger.

I wish there was more. This would be easier if there was a ton more. Rage, I can deal with. Defeat is a whole different emotion.

“Gray . . . we were casual. We were enjoying the secret-lovers thing. You made it clear that there would be nothing more between us, so I figured that by the time I had to leave, you’d be done with me.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth to make this easier on you, Sidney. Don’t turn this on me. I made a lot of fucking mistakes—things I did and the things I said to you . . . but when it came to how I felt—to how I feel about you, I never lied.”

I shift my feet. I go to push open the door again, needing to connect with him, but his hand holds it firmly shut. Shit. Tears well, and I blink them away.

“You’re right. I . . . I don’t have an excuse. We were fun and flirty one minute, and then the next you said you wanted to try to figure this out. You wanted to try to make this work. I should have told you then. I should have—”

“You should have let me have a choice in the matter whether or not I fell in love with you. But you didn’t. And now it’s for nothing.”

“Grayson.” His name is a broken plea as every part of me absorbs the words I didn’t expect but now know I don’t deserve.

“I thought you were staying. I took a chance on this—on us—because I thought . . . Christ, I don’t know what I thought.” He runs a hand through his hair and lifts his head to the night sky above. The tendons in his neck are taut and his hands fist and unclench as he processes everything.

“I’m so sorry.”

“No. You’re not.” He shakes his head as he lowers it back down and the gravity in his eyes tells me all I need to know. I’ve already lost him. “You let me fall in love with you when you knew there wasn’t a future here.”

“Please.”

“Save it, Sid. You knew what you were doing all along.”

“No. I didn’t. I mean . . . I knew the project was going to end, but you, I never expected you.” My voice breaks right alongside my heart. “Believe me when I tell you I know I messed up. I should have told you.” The first tear slips down my cheek as that all-consuming panic takes hold. “I should have, and then we kept getting deeper into this thing, and there was no perfect time to tell you, so—”

“So you let my son tell me.”

Those seven words have every thought in my head die a quick death . . . because he’s right. I knew Luke would tell Grayson about our conversation. I knew he would connect the dots I didn’t connect for Luke.

Is it possible to hate myself any more than I already do?

I hiccup a sob and push against the door. This time he lets it go. This time I reach forward and touch his face. The rough of his stubble scrapes against my hand. The hitch of his breath fills my ears.

This time, I use his words back on him. “I’m not very good with apologies, Grayson. I seem to keep screwing them up when it comes to you, so I’ll show you in the only way I know how.”

When I press a kiss to his lips, there’s hesitancy there. And then there isn’t. I taste anger on his tongue. I can sense the violence beneath the edge of it. I can feel it in his touch, the desperation for him to be wrong about my intentions. But there is nothing satisfying about the kiss because I know I’m trying to use it to save myself.

I love you.

And I know when I step back and look into his eyes, that it didn’t do a single thing to fix this.

“I believed you were different. I thought you’d changed. I should have known better.”

And with those words, Grayson turns on his heel and leaves.

I scream in my head for him not to go. Silently, I shout I love you.

But there is nothing I can say that will fix this. There is nothing I can say other than I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do that will take the look he just gave me out of my mind.

All I can focus on is that he didn’t say he hated me.

He didn’t ask me to stay.

He said he loved me.

What am I going to do now?





I turn the paper over in my hands. The one that was sitting on my desk when I got in this morning.



Meet me at Miner’s Airfield at five p.m. Wings Out Hangar.

—Gray.



I think back to how well I held it together when I saw the note on my desk. The sob I held back. The tears I blinked away because God knows I’d shed way too many in the past few days.

I’ve sent what feels like a hundred texts to apologize. Left a dozen voicemails.