Page 113 of Broken & Bossy
Grayson
I don’t remember leavingthe reception.
One second I’m in that hallway with Carly’s voice chasing after me, raw and cracking around my name, and the next I’m behind the wheel with both hands locked so tight around it my knuckles ache.
I drive like a man with nowhere to be except away.
Away from the hotel. Away from Aaron’s wedding. Away from the look on Carly’s face when I said I was done and walked off before she could finish whatever excuse she was about to feed me.
My chest feels like it’s been split open with a tire iron.
By the time I pull into Pearson Beers, the wedding suit feels like a fucking costume. The tie is too tight. The collar is choking me. The whole polished, smiling, happy-boyfriend act is still clinging to my skin and I want it off. I ditch the tie and the jacket in the car and loosen a few buttons, just trying to fucking breathe.
I shove through the brewery doors and head straight for the bar.
Cole looks up from where he’s leaning against it, talking to Maddox. Both of them go quiet when they see me.
I drop onto a stool beside them. “Whiskey.”
Cole doesn’t move. “Weren’t you at a wedding?”
“Not anymore.”
His brows pull together. “Gray?—”
“Whiskey,” I repeat, sharper this time. “Fuck beer. I want something that burns.”
Maddox straightens where he’s been posted up with a bottle of water, his eyes narrowing. “What happened?”
I laugh once. It sounds ugly, even to me. “What happened is I’m a fucking idiot.”
Cole still doesn’t reach for the bottle. “Talk first.”
I turn and glare at him. “I’m not you. Pour the damn drink.”
He holds my stare for a beat, then reaches under the bar, grabs the whiskey, and sets a glass down in front of me a little too hard. He only pours two fingers.
I snatch it and toss it back like it’s water.
It hits my stomach hot and vicious. Not enough.
“Again.”
Cole hesitates but pours another two fingers’ worth. Maddox stays quiet, which somehow pisses me off more than if he’d started running his mouth.
I grip the next glass and stare at the amber in it. “She signed a lease. She was planning to leave.”
Neither of them says anything.
I laugh again, meaner now. “Yeah. Funny, right?”
Cole folds his arms over his chest. “Start at the beginning.”
So I do.
I tell them about the last five weeks. I tell them about last night, about Carly being drunk off her ass at the bachelorette party, about the girl calling me from Carly’s phone, about carrying her out to the car. I tell them about seeing the text come through, about the landlord saying her apartment was ready early and that since she’d already signed the lease, she could move in whenever.
Then I tell them about today. About the church. About the way she sat next to me, asking what was wrong like she didn’t already know she was halfway out the door, about the reception, about the way she tried to talk around it instead of just saying it plain.
