“Some man?” he asks, and even I wince. I didn’t mean it like that at all. Or, hell, maybe I did. I need him to give up on me because I’m not sure I’m strong enough to give up on my own.
“You know what I mean,” I try to defend.
“No, Cooper. I don’t know what you mean. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“I don’t want to do this,” I mutter, unable to look at him. I move to go around him and put my coffee mug in the sink. It’s early, but I’ll just head out and get to work. And pretend my world doesn’t feel like it’s crashing around me.
“Do what, exactly? Fight? Meet my family? Be with me?”
“I think it’s pretty clear, Gray, that we just don’t mesh.”
“The fuck we don’t. I think if anything, we have proven over and over that we mesh fucking phenomenally.”
“Everything doesn’t boil down to sex!” I growl at him as I try to leave, but he grabs a hold of my arm and pulls me back around to him.
“What is this about? Is it about the dance? Because you never said anything and I thought we had a pretty good bout of make-up sex afterwards.”
“Make-up? That wasn’t make-up sex, you moron.”
“What the hell was it then?”
“Lust! That’s all we have. We scratch each other’s itches, but we’re toxic to each other.”
“Whoa! Hold the hell up here. I thought what we’ve been sharing has been pretty damn good. How in the hell did we go from having fun and enjoying each other to being toxic?”
“We run in different circles!”
“Whatever, Cooper. You’re going to have to come up with one better than that.”
“How about the fact that you keep dragging me around people who hate me? People I hate? People who did their best to destroy me years ago? I don’t want to be in that circle again for any reason, Gray!” I yell, close to breaking down and telling him exactly what he’s asking of me. “Not even for you.” I whisper that last part, the part that hurts the most. I’m weak and I know it, but I can’t handle being around the Rivertons or anyone in their circle. My sense of self-preservation tells me I can’t… even for Gray.
“I see.”
“I like you, Gray, I really do. But…”
“But?”
“We’re just too different.”
“I don’t think we are at all. I think if you took the time to go meet my family, you’d see that, CC. I think that if you cared even a little bit about me, you’d at least fucking try,” he growls, and this time it’s he who turns away. Funny how that seems to be the last thing I want after this conversation.
“I do care about you,” I argue and mean it. I think part of me is already in love with him. Or at least I think that’s what it is. I’ve never really seen or had that in my life enough to recognize it.
“Then prove it.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he challenges.
That’s when I see it: the hurt in his eyes, the hurt I put there. The weight of that crushes down on me and I almost feel like I’m suffocating.
“It’s the same thing!” I lash out in regret, needing to get away because suddenly I can’t breathe.
“I never figured you for a woman without a backbone, Claudia Cooper. It’s good I found it out now, I guess. Maybe I’ll see you around,” Gray says, and those words combined with the tone of his voice make me jerk my head up to look at him.
“Gray, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can keep having fun. We can—”
“What? Keep fucking? Oddly enough, Cooper, I don’t want that from you. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say that’s not even close to what I want,” he says disgustedly.
He looks like a stranger. He barely spares me a glance before he turns around and walks out the door. I’m left standing there wondering how we got here. In the last two days, he’s joked about me meeting his family, and yeah he told me that he had made all the reservations to leave today, but I never realized he was completely serious about taking me with him. Other than mentioning it to Cammie and her father, he’s never once asked me. And now… we’ve gone from laughing and playing, making love every night to… this.
I head out the door and go to my car. I start it up and, on autopilot, I head to the garage. I don’t want to think about it anymore because this feels like I just broke up with Gray Lucas. I’m not ready to face that just yet. I may never be.
Three Days Later
“Grayson Lucas, you’ve been moping around here since you got back. What the hell is going on with you?”
My mother’s tone is one I’ve learned I shouldn’t ignore. It means she’s getting desperate, and when Ida Sue “Love” Lucas gets desperate, chaos ensues. Still, I can’t seem to drum up enough energy to care. Everything just seems… flat, lifeless, and colorless since I left CC’s home three days ago. God, I miss her. Me, missing a woman? It would be the world’s biggest joke except there’s nothing funny about how I’m feeling. There’s nothing to find humor in when I picture the rest of my life without CC in it. The woman has ruined me.
“Answer your mother when she speaks to you,” Cyan says, slapping me up the side of my head.