Page 35 of You First
“And you’re supposed to try to help me feel better, right?” he continued.
She narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion. “Yeah?”
Her face was so open. Her eyes so dark they were magnetic. If he wasn’t careful, he’d fall right into them. “This will make me feel better,” he said with certainty. “Knowing that you have protection will make me feel better when your sister can’t walk with y—”
Meredith’s open face slammed shut, and she jerked her eyes away. Gray saw a flash of pain cross her features before he found himself staring at the back of her head.
“We’re next,” she muttered, stepping forward in the checkout line.
Gray followed but said nothing. Clearly, mentioning her sister had been a mistake. While the cashier rang up their purchases, he managed to steal a few glances at her. The look of pain had faded, but she still frowned and breathed deeply as though to calm herself.
Meredith walked ahead of him again as they left the store. He pulled on his sunglasses, wondering if he should apologize. Gray didn’t know exactly what he’d done wrong, but he was sorry to have offended her.
She didn’t give him the chance. As soon as they were shut inside his Acura, Meredith sighed.
“Look, I haven’t been entirely honest with you.” She stared at the steering wheel as she spoke, but then she chanced a glimpse at him.
Gray could only stare back, speechless. She wasn’t going to pretend that everything was fine. She wasn’t going to act as if nothing had happened. That’s what he would do — even if he thought she knew the truth of what he tried to hide. He was already aware she had hardships he could only guess at, but that didn’t entitle him to an explanation.
“It’s none of my bus—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I need to say this… I just don’t like talking about my family. It’s embarrassing.”
But she didn’t look embarrassed. Not like she had when he’d showed her how to start the car or when he’d complimented her. She looked hurt. If it hurt to tell him, he didn’t want her to.
“Then you don’t—”
“I don’t live with my family.” She raised her gaze to his, and instead of sadness or shame, a look of resilience overtook her features. “My parents kicked me out two years ago when they found out I was pregnant.”
Once, when Gray was nine years old, he’d stepped into a live cattle fence. He and Bax had been exploring a great uncle’s farm, and they’d gone where they shouldn’t have. The voltage of her words reminded him of that fence.
“Two years ago? How old were you?” Other questions crowded his mouth, but these won out.
She pulled her head back in surprise as though she expected something else entirely. “I was almost eighteen.”
“You were seventeen?” The words on his tongue tasted bitter. How could her parents throw her out of their home at seventeen?
“Almost eighteen,” she said again. As if a few weeks made any difference. How had she survived?
“You were seventeen.” This time his tone left no room for her to qualify. She blushed, and Gray had an almost overpowering urge to touch her cheek. “So you are nineteen now?”
“I’ll be twenty next month,” she said before she smiled through her blush. “And my son will be two in May.”
“Your son…” Again, a jolt ran through him. The girl beside him wasn’t a girl at all. She was a mother. He’d thought of her as someone just out of high school, almost virginal, but she’d already born a child. The knowledge made his pulse race. A strange paradox of reverence and desire stirred him. It was irrational, but he suddenly found the car far too small a space to be enclosed with the beautiful, mysterious woman beside him.
Unless he were allowed to touch her.
“His name is Oscar,” she said, her smile growing, and Gray breathed a small sigh of relief. Picturing her son was the remedy he needed in that moment, making the car seem a little less crowded. And thinking about Oscar led him to new questions.
“Where is he right now?”
“He’s at home with his grandparents.”
“At home? With his grandparents?” Gray heard himself ask.
Meredith nodded, but her look hardened. “We live with Oscar’s father and his parents.”
Oscar’s father. Of course. There had to be a father. But wasn’t he also a husband? A boyfriend? Meredith spoke as though she could read Gray’s mind.
