Eleanor & Grey(89)

“Yup.”

She lowered her brows. “After you two had …?”

“Yup.”

“Crap,” she breathed out, stunned. “I’m so sorry, Ellie. I can’t even imagine how hard that was for you.”

“Well, I just sobbed in the shower. No big deal,” I joked, but Shay didn’t laugh. She just kept frowning. “I’m okay. I mean, we’re okay, Greyson and I. I’m sure it’s just something we have to get over together. Just a speed bump.”

“Wait, what? Ellie, that’s not a speed bump. That’s a red light. That’s a stop sign. That’s a ‘Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred’ moment. You can’t seriously think that you and Greyson are still…something.”

“How could I not? It feels like we were brought together for this, for us to be an us.”

“But you aren’t an us,” she argued. “Eleanor…he called you by his dead wife’s name. That just has toxicity written all over it.”

I shifted around in my seat and shook my head. “You don’t understand, there’s something there with Greyson and me. There’s always been this thing between us.”

“Yeah, I know, and trust me, I was there for it through and through, but this changes everything.”

My stomach flipped as I listened to her words, and anger began building more and more. “You were the one who’d been pushing me toward this idea! You and your reality show talk.”

“Yeah, I know, but this…this is more than just a mishap in the beginning stages of a new relationship, Ellie. This is unhealthy. I know how you feel about Greyson. I’ve known ever since we were kids, I get it, but he’s not in a place where he can give you what you deserve.”

“I deserve him,” I told her. “He’s the right one for me.”

I knew it, too.

I knew it deep down in my soul.

“Yeah, you do. You deserve the completely healed Greyson, not who he is right now. Plus, he deserves to completely heal before he can learn to give himself away again. Don’t take his broken pieces and call them love.”

I stood up, irritated at her.

How could she say this?!

She was the one who’d pushed this. She was the one who’d been so loud about me allowing myself to fall for Greyson, and now she was backtracking. Now she was being realistic.

I didn’t need her to be realistic.

I just needed Greyson and me to be okay.

“I think it was a mistake with me telling you,” I told her, grabbing my purse and walking toward her door. “I think I need to get some air.”

“It’s never a mistake telling me anything, Ellie, and you know that. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I’d rather upset you out of love, then tell you what you want to hear. I love you, Ellie. You are the most important person in my life, and you are worthy of having more than someone’s mediocre love. The best kind of love is the kind that fills one up completely, leaving reassurance, not doubts. You deserve that. You deserve to be someone’s whole.”

“I really believe we’re meant to be, Shay.”

“I know, honey. I believe that, too, but just because two people are meant to be together, doesn’t mean it has to happen right this second. Sometimes the best love stories are about those who waited.”

She said the words, and they broke my heart, because I knew she was right.





50





Eleanor





“Are we just avoiding one another now?” Greyson asked as I walked past his bedroom door after putting Lorelai to bed for the night. He was unhooking the cuffs on his sleeves as he stared at me.

I took a few steps toward his room and stood in his doorway. “I’m sorry, I just…” I took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Make me uncomfortable? Ellie, I called you another woman’s name. If anyone should be uncomfortable, it should be you. I’m so sorry.” He rolled up his sleeves on his button-down, and sat on the edge of his bed. His hands gripped the edge of his bed and every muscle in his arm became visible.

I wished he’d stop looking so much like himself. I was still unable to get the taste of his lips off my mind, and the more I saw those gray eyes, the more I wanted them to stare into mine.

I shook my head, trying to keep myself together. “It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. We had so much wine that night, anyway. Things got carried away...”

He lowered his head. “I wasn’t that drunk,” he truthfully whispered.

Sigh.

Me either.

When those eyes looked back to me, every butterfly came rushing back. I slightly parted my lips and reminded myself to breath every now and then.

“I’m so sorry, Ellie,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m horrified and such an asshole, and I don’t know what is happening between us…”

I wanted to push him to give us a chance.

I wanted to tell him we could try again.

I wanted to hold him.

To kiss him.

To have him as mine.

But I also knew that those thoughts were selfish, and wrong. Also, I didn’t want to hurt him like that, because I knew he wasn’t fully healed from losing her. He wasn’t able to fully love, and I knew Shay was right, even though it made me sad. The best kind of love was the kind that filled one up completely, and Greyson couldn’t do that for me at this time.