“Was!” I drunkenly correct. “Was your girl.”
He laughs more darkly. “You are so fucking mine you don’t even know how mine you are,” he says in a soft, threatening voice, and in my drunk brain, I suddenly register that he’s trembling with rage. He’s not worried about me having just caught him cheating. It seems all his thoughts are on his selfish jealousy. But I can’t even remember what happened in Riley’s room, all I keep remembering is Greyson and that bitch.
“You walked past me like you’d never seen me before!” I cry, hitting his chest.
He catches my wrist and squeezes. “Because I don’t want a woman like her to use you against me—anybody to use you against me. Do you understand me? Do you, baby?” he asks, lowering his voice, tender, almost pleading.
“I understand you are a liar and a cheater and you didn’t want HER to know you also had ME waiting on the side!”
“Fuck! Seriously? You were in another guy’s fucking room, stripping for him! Were you trying to drive me insane?” Suddenly the vivid pain in his eyes is real. The pain in his voice is real, so real my chest cracks open like glass. “Were you really intending to go through with it? Were you honestly going to let that motherfucker inside you?” he asks, every word like a shard inside me.
“YES!” I cry.
He shudders as if he’s breaking, and I start sobbing for real.
He releases me like he needs some distance, his voice trembling with more than anger. It’s pain, and it wrecks me. “Do you think you can fuck someone to replace me? Do you think he’ll make you feel the way I do? Was I nothing special to you, Melanie? Do you fall in love with every asshole you date?”
A tear runs down my cheek.
He slams a hand to the window and curses. “Fuck this.”
“It hurts,” I sniffle, talking to myself as I lower my hands. “You hurt me like nobody’s ever hurt me, Greyson! I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you call her princess? Do you spend your weekdays with her and your weekends with me?”
He stays silent, gazing out the window, his shoulders tight. “I don’t call anyone else princess. I don’t spend time with any woman but you. Hell, I work my days around just so I can come home to you.”
“Then why are you here with her? I’m not big on second chances, you know! But I’ve given you every fucking chance you’ve wanted!” I cry.
“She is nothing.” He grabs my face with his free hand, hissing through ground teeth, “She is nothing but a work contact. You are everything, you’ve been everything from the moment I saw you, screaming for Riptide. You didn’t see me, you didn’t see me, Melanie, but I’ve watched over you ever since—you are everything. Can you say the same about me? Can you say the same about him—that he’s nothing?”
I stare blankly at him for a moment. “He’s nothing, he’s a friend, I swear. He was a fuck buddy when I came over to see Brooke sometimes, it meant nothing!”
He stares at his hands. “But he’s touched you.”
I suddenly can’t stop myself from touching my boobs. So much smaller than the redhead’s. “Who was she? What’s her name? How do you know her?”
He rubs his face with both hands. “Just a business contact. She gets the dirty on men I need to negotiate with. I’ve never had a relationship with her. I’ve had a thousand fucks, but she hasn’t been one of them. My every single fuck for weeks has been you.” He looks out and curses, and I wipe my tears.
I see his face and remember the way he smiled at her and my stomach roils with fresh jealousy. “I wanted to pull her fucking hair out.”
“I want to pull his guts out!” He grabs me by the shoulders. “What part of you being my girl didn’t you understand?”
“I refuse to be yours if you’re not going to be mine. If you fuck around I’m going to fuck around—an eye for an eye!”
“Stop being a stubborn-fool drunk and listen to me. I am not cheating on you—but you were.”
I fall quiet.
“Were you?”
“You and I were over the moment you walked past me and I realized all this time you’ve been lying to me,” I cry, sniveling.
“Come here,” he rasps out.
“Why?”
When I edge a little close, he opens his arm, and my eyes blur more when I think about explaining to him what Riley knows about my secret. “I’m fucking sorry, Melanie,” he says.
He pulls me into his chest and the familiarity in his embrace and the comfort I feel in his arms unexpectedly opens my floodgates.
“I’m sorry too, Grey,” I cry.
I start sobbing harder as he presses a very firm, almost desperate kiss to the crown of my head and squeezes me with almost enough force to break me and says, “It’s going to be okay. You’ll never have to run to another man again because I’m going to be right here. Right here for you, if you still want me after I tell you what I have to tell you.”
I try to wipe my face and look into his eyes. “You made me feel unworthy, Grey. Like you’re hiding me. I don’t know who you are, your parents, your family, I don’t know anything about you. Please, I want to know you. Can’t you see I want to know you,” I sob.
His eyes look haunted as he looks at me. “I hide you to protect you, because you’re my princess.” He strokes my nose. “I’ll tell you about me. Just let me enjoy the way these eyes look at me a little longer.”
He kisses my wet eyelids almost desperately, like what he is telling me is going to be bad, real bad, and like he thinks I won’t be able to stay after I hear it.
I cry harder. I’m used to his touch. His touch is unique, delicious, and I’ve felt it for eight weeks, but I knew one day it was going to break me.
NINETEEN
* * *
LOST
Greyson
Melanie slides her hands around my waist and buries her face in my shirt, and I pull off my gloves and shove them in my pocket so I can run my thumbs down her cheeks to track her tears.
Peace.