“What’s going on?” Crown asks, and I realize that this is a Sin/Grainger thing, and not an all-the-boys sort of deal.
“We’re sending Grey on his way,” Grainger announces, looking over at his vice president. “I have a bad feeling, Crown. If I were Cat, I would sweep this compound, and I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you, me, or anybody else. We need this kid gone—now.”
Crown contemplates that before looking down at me.
“What do you think?” he asks, which thrills me to no end. He said before that he believed in me. That’s a big thing, coming from a man like this who rarely gives praise of any kind. When he does, it’s as real as it gets.
“If Grainger thinks this is best, then I agree,” I say, even though I’m already missing Grey. I liked having him here. If I could keep him and Reba, I would. We could all live in this yellow farmhouse like one, big extended happy family. But that’s not how life works, and we don’t always get everything we want.
It’s time for Grey to go.
Soon enough, it’ll be time for Reba to go, too.
It’ll be, and these men, and … eventually, a baby? Oh my God. What have I committed myself to doing here? I must be crazy. It’s not too late to change your mind, I tell myself, but I know that I won’t. What did Beast say that Cat was referring to me as? New blood? Yeah, we need some of that around here. We need a celebration, a birth instead of yet another fucking funeral. Although Gaz won’t ever get a funeral, will he? I think, and somehow, that makes me sad as hell.
Grey steps out of the bathroom, dressed head to toe in a black sweater, cargo pants, and boots. They must be Sin’s. He’s the closest in size to Grey.
He’s got the bolt cutters hanging from his right hand, the flashlight tucked in his pocket.
“I suppose it’d be too much if I asked for a gun?”
“Not happening,” Crown agrees as Grey approaches me, and my throat gets tight, my heart beating wildly in fear. If he dies out there tonight … then I’ll have set this entire thing into motion for nothing.
That, and I’ll lose that part of myself that I gave to Grey the day that I chose his life over mine.
“Gidge,” he says, and I can feel all four of the men stiffen up at the sound of their enemy using my nickname. He steps close to me and sets the bolt cutters down on one of the bottom steps. When Grey reaches out to put his palms on either side of my face, I let him, lifting my own hands up to press them over his.
Grainger makes a sound that’s awfully close to a growl, and I can feel four sets of eyes locked onto this interaction. They hate this. They don’t understand it. But they don’t have to.
“Grey,” I repeat, remembering that last night we spent together in his bed, cuddled up for comfort in a world that offered none, that raised us both in the image of shadows, and then punished us for embracing them. We were all each other had for those few months, just me and the mafia brat.
“No matter what happens after I leave here, I want you to know this.” He’s breathing hard, and he closes those heather gray eyes of his, like this is almost too much, like it’d be so much easier to just walk out the front door without a goodbye. “You changed me.”
I exhale and press my fingers into his as our foreheads come together. I realize this is an incredibly intimate position to be in and, to be quite honest, I’m surprised none of the men are stepping in to interrupt it. I close my eyes, too, so that I don’t have to look at any of them.
“You changed me, too,” I tell him, because it’s the truth. Pretty sure the day I walked into that cabin transformed us both in unimaginable ways. I was willing to die to prove a point, to uphold my own version of right and wrong.
“You’ve also given me something that my father’s never had: a hard line.” I can somehow sense that he’s opened his eyes, so I open mine, too, and we stare at each other. “You are my hard line, something that can never be crossed. I have a benchmark for morality, Gidge. You are my benchmark, and I will never hurt you.”
I squeeze his hands with my own, and I believe every word that’s coming out of his mouth—whether I should or not.
Because if I’m Grey’s hard line, then he’s mine, too.
I have to have it, because if I don’t, I’ll end up just like my father. It isn’t just our hair color or our eyes that we share, it’s that ruthless need for power and control. “We’ve always been so alike, you know?” Those weren’t just empty words that Cat spoke to me; it was an admission.
