Page 51 of You First
If he could forget the last five minutes, he’d have to count this one moment as the best he’d had in months. Because lying in her lap with her fingers tracing against his scalp felt all kinds of incredible.
She always made him feel better.
He pulled his mind from this truth and answered Oscar’s question. “Yeah, I guess I am their daddy,” he said, closing his eyes.
Gray needed to sleep. Seizures ruined him for hours, stealing all of his strength and leaving him almost drugged with fatigue. The last two times he’d seized when he was alone, he’d slept on the floor before he made himself move. The time before that, Bax had hoisted him up and into his bed. He couldn’t imagine Meredith doing that — and he didn’t want her to — but he couldn’t think of a solution just now. Sleep threatened to drag him under.
“Oscar, could you hand Mama her purse?” Meredith whispered above him.
“I want to pat him, too,” Oscar whispered back.
“Wait, Osca—” But then Gray felt a small hand thump twice against his forehead. “Oscar, stop. That’s too rough.”
Gray kept his eyes closed, but he couldn’t hide his smile.
“Sorry,” she murmured, smoothing over the spot with her own hand.
“S’okay.”
“Oscar, go get Mama’s purse.”
He heard the child scamper away and return a moment later. “I’m texting Oscar’s father to come get him,” she said. “And then I’m going to call your brother.”
Gray’s eyes shot open. “You will not.”
“Yes, I will.” She glared down at him with an authority and defiance that spoke volumes about her.
He’d knocked her to the ground with his full weight, but she could still stand up to him. Gray shut his eyes. This was a battle he couldn’t win, and he was too tired to fight anyway. The headache that always followed a seizure — the worst breed of those monsters — was emerging now, and resting was all he could handle.
“Asshole,” she hissed.
He opened one eye. “Me?” She was right, and he wasn’t about to argue.
Meredith’s focus ripped from her phone to him, a look of alarm claiming her face. “Oh! No. Not you. Jamie. My…” She paused, searching for the word she wanted and coming up empty.
“Boyfriend?” he asked, opening the other eye.
She hesitated. “No, but he was.”
They’d talked almost every day — about all kinds of things — but the subject of Oscar’s father had been one they’d both skirted. Gray should have let it go there, but now that he’d met her son, he wanted to know more. “So, he’s your ex-boyfriend?”
Meredith sighed. “Can I call him my ex-boyfriend if I live in his house and sleep in his bed?”
She slept in his bed.
Gray could not remember feeling jealousy — true jealousy — in his adult life, but lying on the kitchen floor with his head in her lap, Gray Blakewood had to admit jealousy was exactly the emotion at work in this moment. And as a wordsmith, someone who worshipped the subtleties of language, he appreciated the nuances between envy and jealousy.
He was not envious of this Jamie person. He did not wish to trade places with him. Meredith thought of her ex-boyfriend as an asshole. Gray did not want her to sleep in his bed and think him an asshole.
But he was jealous.
And he knew one could only feel jealousy when he had a claim on a person he feared losing. Gray had no such claim. He was no lover afraid to lose his beloved. He had no right to feel jealous.
And yet he did.
Meredith mistook his silence for judgment. “I know it’s terrible… to live with him when I can’t stand him,” she said, sounding disgusted with herself. “But I’m not playing him. He knows how I feel.”
“I don’t think it’s terrible,” he said with conviction. “You have a child together.”
