My heart was beginning to race and something was crawling in my belly, tearing at the lining, trying to get out.

“That isn’t true,” I said quietly. “I packed in a hurry. I left clothes behind. Books. Shoes. I told you I’d be back.”

“There was no note, Ivey. There was nothing left of you at all.”

It was my turn not to hear him.

“I told you I’d be back,” I whispered as that thing tore through the lining of my stomach, infiltrated my system, rushed to my brain.

“Baby, there was no note.”

“I told you I’d be back,” I repeated in a voice so soft there was nearly no sound because in that instant it hit my brain, all of it.

It never made sense.

Until right then.

Casey.

And all that acid leaking out of my shredded stomach drenched my system, I couldn’t hold it back anymore so I turned and dashed straight to the bathroom. I hit the tiles painfully as I fell to my knees, sliding. I tagged the toilet and barely got the lid up before I let fly.

Breakfast. Gone.

My back arched and bowed with the strength of sick pouring out of me but I could vomit forever and never get it all out.

It ran in my veins.

It was me.

Vomit. Sick. Filth.

Fucking Casey.

My stupid, fucking, loser, dickhead, user, asshole brother.

“Ivey, baby, Jesus, you’re scarin’ me,” Gray’s voice whispered from close, his hands shifting my hair away from my neck. I couldn’t endure his touch so I lurched away.

Throwing myself on my ass in the corner, pressed between the wall and tub, I saw Gray crouched by the toilet start moving to me.

My arm flew out straight, palm up toward him and I cried, “Don’t!”

He stilled.

“Don’t,” I whimpered, dropping my arm.

Then I looked at the wall, reached out, grabbed a towel from the rail, pulled it down and gathered it close like a security blanket, holding it to my body, the edge of it to my mouth.

Gray closed the toilet lid, flushed it, sat on it and leaned his elbows into his knees before he begged, “Dollface, talk to me.”

“He had money,” I told my bent knees, curling them closer, wrapping one arm around.

“Get outta that corner, honey, come with me. We’ll talk in the other room.”

I didn’t move.

“He had money. A lot of money,” I semi-repeated.

“Ivey –”

My eyes stayed glued to my knees. “I thought he’d stolen it. Now I don’t know. I don’t know where he got it.”

Gray was silent.

I kept talking.

“He said they were after him, us. They’d beaten him badly. I saw that. But months we were on the run. He never pushed the hustle. Never asked for money. Never dropped a con. I looked through his stuff and found the money. I just thought he stole it.”

“Please, baby, let me come to you, get you off this floor.”

I ignored him.

“I never saw them. He told me they were following us but I could spot a tail. I was better at it than him. He was acting weird. All over me. Never left me alone. Never. Never let me get near a phone. Twitchy. God, so damned twitchy. It freaked me out.”

“Right, Ivey, I’m comin’ to you.”

I kept ignoring him even as my ass was suddenly off the bathroom floor, Gray’s was on it and mine was in his lap.

I held my towel to my mouth, looked into his eyes and kept talking.

“Something was up with him,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Gray whispered back, holding me close, holding my eyes, his holding clear concern as he kept his gaze locked to mine.

“I never got it. Never. In the end, I thought he’d made his play just to get me back so we could go on the hustle again because he couldn’t make it without me. But I don’t think it was that. I don’t know what it was but all that money, Gray. I don’t think it was that.”

“So you got shot of him and came back to me,” Gray said quietly.

I nodded vaguely. “I promised you in the note that when the danger was gone, I would. But I can sense danger, Gray, and as we ate up the miles, town to town, state to state, days into weeks, I never felt it. We weren’t being followed. Casey lied to me. The way he was acting, all over me, all sweet to me, but watchful, jittery, it wasn’t right. I couldn’t get a lock on it then I thought I figured it out. I stole his car, left him behind and I went back to you.”

Gray closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tile.

Then he opened them and looked at me. “And you saw me with Chandler.”

Tears filled my eyes and I nodded.

“Fuck, baby,” he whispered, staring at me.

“I thought you saw my note and didn’t care. I thought you moved on. I thought you didn’t want my hassle. I thought you didn’t care I had bad men after me. I thought,” a tear slid out of my eye, “I thought you didn’t care.”

“I loved you, Ivey, and I thought you cleared out on me.”

“I wrote you a note.” My voice broke on those words.

He pulled in breath then sighed.

Then he asked, “That fuckin’ brother of yours, he have the opportunity to grab that note?”

I thought about it and nodded but added, “He couldn’t grab my stuff, though, Gray. And I left stuff. Not a lot of it but it meant something to me. I worked for it, earned it. My skirt, my dress, my heels. I wouldn’t leave that behind. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

“Fuck, I wish you’d have fuckin’ come to me,” he growled.

“Casey said they had guns. Said they’d shoot you. I couldn’t go to you.”

“Okay, then, I wish you’d have fuckin’ come to me when you got back.”

“You were with another woman,” I reminded him.

“She was my cousin, Ivey, and you knew me better than that.”

“You were my first kiss,” I blurted, he blinked and his arms spasmed around me.

Then he whispered, “What?”

“You weren’t just my first lover, Gray, you were my first everything.”

That pain I saw earlier slashed through his features and his arms again spasmed but stayed tight around me.

I kept talking.

“I wasn’t experienced enough. I thought I wasn’t…” I shook my head. “I was a pool hustler virgin who you’d given her first kiss at age twenty-two. You were too good for me, I knew it and I figured you figured it out too so you moved onto better.”

“Baby, fuck,” he hissed on a near snarl, his eyes narrowing and his arms going super tight. “there was nothin’ better than you.”

And right then, yes again, I lost it.

Six words that held the impact of a nuclear bomb disintegrating years of work building a wall to protect my heart. All of that gone, demolished, rubble at… six… words.

There was nothin’ better than you.

But I didn’t lose my temper or lose my mind or blurt my beloved friend’s secrets.

I lost hold on my emotions. Tears sliding from my eyes, body wracked with sobs, I fell face first into his shoulder and just cried.

Gray gently pulled the towel from my grasp, got up from the bathroom floor and took me with him. Then he moved us out of the bathroom as a whole. Then we were down on the bed, Gray’s back to the headboard, me held close, his arms tight, his knees cocked, cocooning me in all things Gray.

All things Gray.

I wanted to glory in this. I wanted to burn it in my brain so I’d have it forever. But I didn’t have it in me. All I did for a long time was just cry.

Shit. Just like always.

All these years, years of tears and Grayson Cody never leaked out of me.

Still crying, suddenly I felt his body tense then we were up. He held me close with one arm around my back but carefully dropped the arm behind my knees. My sandals hit floor but he held me tight to him, his body still tense and I would know why when I heard, “What the fuck?”

Lash.

My face, still stuffed in Gray’s chest, turned and I saw Lash.

The problem with that was Lash saw me.

And he lost his mind.

Quickly advancing, he whispered menacingly, “What the fuck?”

“Calm, man,” Gray warned, his arm coming up, held straight, palm down, a caution at the same time a placating gesture.

“You did it to her again. She used up every fuckin’ penny in her savings account to cover your ass and here you are and here she is, a fuckin’ mess again because of you,” Lash shot back and as he spoke, Gray’s body got tighter and tighter.

“Lash –” I whispered, shifting to go to him but Gray’s arm locked tight.

“Calm down and I’ll explain,” Gray ordered.

“Fuck that, let her go and get the fuck outta here and for fuck’s sake, if you ever gave even one, little, microscopic shit about her, stay out of her life,” Lash returned.

“It is not what you think,” Gray told him.

“It’s exactly what I think, asshole. You did not pick up the pieces. You probably enjoy your birthday when every year that fucker comes around, she locks her shit down so tight so it doesn’t come flyin’ apart it’s a wonder she can move. You do not take her back day and night, keepin’ the wolves at bay so she won’t get a wild hair up her ass, let one of ‘em in, give so much of her heart there’s nothin’ left so they can destroy her again. Do not fuckin’ stand there with her in your arms, her face red and wet and tell me I don’t know what this is. I know what this is, motherfucker, and I know you need to get out.”

“I thought she was yours,” Gray lied quietly, for Lash, for me and I felt something warm glide through me, shocking my system as it drifted through a cold I thought would never go away.

But Lash’s head jerked, realizing what he gave away before he covered.

“Rue’s not anyone’s. She’s Rue’s.”

Gray let it slide and told him, “Somehow, we got played.”

“What?” Lash clipped.

“Somehow… we got played,” Gray repeated with an added hesitation and some emphasis.

Lash crossed his arms on his wide chest. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I see, she’s with you, that what’s gonna go down next is not gonna go down well with you but before she took off, Ivey left a note I did not get explainin’ what went down with her. I thought she bailed on me. She did not. So someone played us. We don’t know who but Ivey just figured out her brother was more than likely involved. Knowin’ her brother, and I don’t know you, man, but I hope you’ve been saved meetin’ that piece of shit, this is undoubtedly true. This rocked her and it’s rocked me. Worse, Ivey came back and saw me with my cousin. She didn’t know it was my cousin but it was. Chandler’s livin’ in Denver now but I show Ivey a picture, it’ll prove what I say is true. We got played then there was a misunderstanding and we lost seven years to that shit. So what’s gonna happen next, you love her like you obviously do, you’re gonna have to give her and at the same time you’re gonna give it to me.”

Lash was staring at him clearly as stunned and thrown as I was, pain also in his face, understanding, heartbreak, all of this for me but Gray didn’t give him any more time.

His arm that was still held out toward Lash, a gesture of holding him off as well as pacifying him came to me, his hand cupping my jaw, tipping my head back until he caught my eyes.

Then the pads of his fingers dug in and the look in his eyes, the burn there, burned through my insides.

“We cannot take this further with him here. But we gotta talk about this, Ivey. We were played. I don’t know who or why or how but I got some good fuckin’ guesses. Someone took you away from me and used Casey to do it.” His faced dipped close and that burn in his eyes grew hotter corresponding to the heat in me. “Never before, never since have I felt for any woman, fuck, anyone the way I felt about you. I want that back. I want my girl back. She’s in there, Ivey, I saw her and you got it in you to give her to me. But you gotta make that decision, dollface. You gotta think about it, make your decision and I hope when it’s made, you’ll come to me. You know where I live. I’ll be waiting.”

Then I lost sight of his deep blue eyes with their beautiful russet tipped lashes when his face moved in close. He touched his mouth to mine then he let me go, strode by Lash, through the room and disappeared out the door.

My eyes moved to Lash who was twisted and looking at the door.

Then he twisted back and his eyes came to me.

Mine again filled with tears.

“Fuck,” I hissed, lifting my hands to cover my face.