“You don’t tempt fate, 3G.” It sounded ridiculous with André’s favorite nickname, but Gray knew he was completely serious.
“All right. Whatever. Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m telling you now,” he said it, and he meant it. “You going to help me out?”
“Yes, today. Yes, tomorrow.”
“Good, because I met a girl.”
“What, now?”
Gray told him about Bax’s insistence on hiring help. And he told him about finding Meredith. But he stumbled over how to explain what she meant to him.
“She…she won’t leave me alone.”
“What? I thought you liked this girl?” Dré asked in confusion.
“I do. I’m crazy about her,” he said, pushing up from his desk and pacing the study. “I don’t mean she won’t get out of my business. I mean she stays in my head… in my blood. When she’s with me, I’m laughing, I’m teasing, and there’s nothing dark. And when she’s not with me, even the dark loses some of its darkness.”
Gray closed his mouth, stunned at his own words.
“Gray-Gray-Gray, I never thought I’d see the day,” his friend riffed.
He could hear Dré’s smile over the phone. He was never living this down.
“So y’all been together, what, a couple months?”
Gray blinked.Together?He turned over the word in his mind. As far as he was concerned, they were absolutely together. He felt when she entered the room. He relaxed when she touched him. He went wild at the thought of someone hurting her.
“You could totally kick his ass. And if he knew how I felt about you, he might actually make you.”
Hearing her touch on how she felt about him made him weightless.
He didn’t doubt it. It was new and it was incredible and it was the last thing he expected, but Gray believed in it. They were together.
But they weren’ttogether.Not in the sense André meant. They weren’tdating.In all honesty, they hadn’t even gone on a date. Not a real one. They had not spoken of commitment. Hell, she was living with another man.
“It… uh… it hasn’t been quite that long,” he hedged.
Like Gray, Dré didn’t miss much. It was why Gray had picked him to be his attorney and not just his friend. “Well, how long have you known her?”
Gray laid it out. “Almost a month.”
André gave a low whistle like he did when something didn’t sound right. “Mr. Ain’t-Got-Time-For-Nobody? Caught in a snare? You sure that thing in your skull isn’t making you think some crazy thoughts?” He spoke carefully, but Gray still didn’t like what he heard.
“Hey, Dré… look, I can’t deny that being sick is the only reason I met Meredith, but it’s not the reason I can’t stop thinking about her.” It didn’t matter whether André heard the conviction in his voice or not. He didn’t need to justify his feelings for Meredith. All he needed to do was live up to them. “But if I would’ve met her under different circumstances, I’d been interested from the start. I would’ve pursued her, and, sooner or later, what I felt would’ve led me here. If anything happens to me, I want her to be okay.”
He waited to see if his old friend had anything else to say. Gray took it as a good sign when silence followed the end of his little speech.
“So, are you going to help me or what?”
André Washington sighed over the phone. “When you gonna learn? I’ll always help you.”
Twenty minutes later, Gray hung up. With papers to sign, André and two of his staffers who would serve as witnesses would come by the house as soon as the new will was ready.
His headache was merciless, and he had to grip the banister as he descended the stairs as the kaleidoscoping strip across his vision messed with his depth perception. But a sense of peace settled over him.
Gray had one less fate to fear.
If he came out of the surgery with minimal damage, he’d be able to resume his old life — this time with Meredith as part of it. He’d be free to share everything he had with her. But if disaster struck, and Gray didn’t make it out of the operating room, now, she’d still have a measure of protection and support, even if he wasn’t around to do the job himself.
