“Yeah,” Maverick said, clearly trying like hell to keep his voice even.
“I’m not sure I know how to read those messages.” She finally met his gaze. “I’m not sure I trust my own judgment about them.”
Emotions rolled over Maverick’s expression, and she watched him rein them in. “Okay. What do you think they might mean? What are you hearing?”
She swallowed hard and ducked her chin. “Well. I think he wants me back. But he didn’t apologize or even say he loved me until the last message, so I think he’s trying to tell me what I want to hear rather than what he really means. I think he wants to control me.” She blinked up at him.
Mav tilted his head, and his hair fell across his eyes. “Sounds to me like you know more than you’re giving yourself credit for, Al.” He gave her a pointed stare, and she nodded. “Slater had two ways to play reaching out to you—attacking you and lashing out in anger, or appeasing you and luring you back in with what seems like worry and concern and remorse. What happened when you went back to him after the last fight?”
“He apologized. Said he hadn’t meant for things to get so out of control. Said it would never happen again.” She shook her head. “But it did.”
“Yeah, it fucking did,” he said, his voice like gravel. “Last night you said there are all kinds of things you’re not supposed to say or do or he’ll get mad. So, that means he likes to control you, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, looking away.
“Fuck,” he gritted out, huffing an angry breath. Mav grasped her chin and made her look at him again. “Well, he can’t control you as easily if you’re not living under his roof, so his first objective is to get you back home. No doubt he didn’t expect you to leave, so he has to be on his best behavior now. Don’t think for a second he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. Don’t believe for even an instant he isn’t calculating the best way to get what he wants. That’s what guys like Slater do, Alexa. That’s what he’s been doing to you.” He touched two fingers to her forehead. “Trust yourself in here.” To her heart. “And in here.” To her stomach. “And in here. You know.”
Just then, her cell phone rang. Alexa flinched, then scooped it up off the mattress. “It’s him.”
“Of course it is,” he bit out, anger giving his voice a harsh edge. “He won’t give up ’til you give him what he wants.”
She blew out a breath and her belly went on a loop-the-loop that left her a little queasy. “I guess I have to talk to him at some point, right?”
Maverick gave a tight nod, his face set in a scowl that was almost scary.
“Then here goes nothing,” she said, answering the phone.
CHAPTER 14
Grant,” Alexa said, hating the shakiness in her voice. Part of her wished she’d let the call go to voice mail so she had more time to gather her thoughts and come up with a game plan. Grant had always been an expert at litigating arguments and disagreements, managing to turn things around so that what had started out as a legitimate concern on her part ended up feeling silly and unreasonable and inconsiderate.
“Oh, thank God, Alexa. Where are you? Are you okay?” His voice, filled with a convincing concern, sounded out on speaker. Letting Maverick hear her life fall apart was about as comfortable as eating glass, but he’d already seen it fall apart. So what was the difference?
“No, I’m not okay,” she said, her stomach tossing. But what more did she have to lose? If she wasn’t going to speak the truth to him now, she never would. “You physically threw me outside in the middle of a storm late at night. I’m not okay.”
“I know. I know. Things just got out of hand.” In her mind’s eye, she could almost see him pacing.
“Things didn’t get out of hand, Grant. You got out of hand. With your suspiciousness, you mistrusting me, and you physically hurting me. Do you know how humiliating it was to be locked out of my own house? You were supposed to take care of me.” The anger she’d felt the night before, the anger that had given her the strength and determination to leave her ring and walk off that porch, pooled in her gut once again.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I? I didn’t mean it,” he said, an odd tone to his voice.
“I just said that you did, so yeah.” Her gaze cut to Maverick, who was studying her, that scowl getting deeper, the look in his eyes totally lethal. Not that she minded any of that. Because she meant what she’d admitted to him—she didn’t trust her own judgment where Grant was concerned. She needed him to be a sounding board right now. “My arm hurts from how you grabbed me and the back of my head hurts from you pushing me into the door. And this is just a few weeks after you promised that nothing like our last fight would ever happen again.” She blew out another shaky breath. Adrenaline coursed through her. She never talked to Grant like this and her body was clearly preparing for the need to flee from the consequences.
“Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay, Alexa. Can you please come home so I can make sure you’re okay with my own eyes? I’ve been up all night worrying and imagining every nightmarish scenario. I need you to come home.”
It didn’t escape her notice that he’d brushed off her pain to list all the things he needed and had suffered. Had he always been this big of an asshole? “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, her voice less certain. Had he not found her ring?
“What? Why not?” he asked. The surprise in his voice sounded so damn genuine that Alexa believed it. Which meant that he either didn’t expect her to draw a line in the sand where his behavior was concerned or that he really didn’t think he’d done anything so wrong as to warrant this reaction. Both possibilities left her feeling sad and defeated. How had she not seen this sooner? How had she let him get away with it for so long?
“Something clearly isn’t working between us, Grant. It’s getting worse and I can’t take it anymore,” she said. She felt the weight of Maverick’s gaze, but couldn’t let herself look at him. Not just then.
“Alexa, I can fix this,” Grant said. “It was just a fight.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “And it was more than that to me.”
“Damnit, Alexa—”
“You told me I was nothing, Grant,” she said, shame making her face hot for having to say that in front of Maverick. “Who says that?”
“I know, babe. Things just got out of control.”
Again with the things. He wasn’t taking responsibility here, was he? She sighed and didn’t answer. She’d already addressed this once.