“It was a little white lie, Gray. I’m not sure I understand why you’re so pissed off about this. You love a good joke as much as the next guy. Hell, you and I have played more than our fair share of pranks in the past ourselves. Remember that time we hid a Bluetooth speaker in Jace’s bedroom when he was younger and played odd sounds until he was convinced the farmhouse was haunted?”
“This is different,” he grumped.
“How?”
Grayson blew out a breath. “There was some flooding at the hotel we reserved for the festival. Wren and I ended up sharing a room.”
Maverick’s eyes widened. “A room? Or a bed?”
“There was only one bed.”
Maverick rubbed his jaw. “Wait a second. Did you have sex with Wren, thinking she was Lark? Because, bro, that’s not okay and I totally get why you’re mad.”
“We didn’t have sex,” he corrected quickly. “But we talked and…kissed.”
Maverick nodded slowly. “Ooookay…”
“She pulled away, so it didn’t go beyond that.”
Maverick waved his hand, as if that fact solved some issue. “So there you go. She knew it was wrong, so she stopped it.”
Grayson wasn’t entirely sure why Wren had stopped that kiss. There were a few times during that weekend when she’d acted, well…skittish. But stronger than that. Sometimes he got the sense she was downright scared, which had bothered him a lot in the weeks since the festival.
“The thing is, I didn’t really know Wren before that weekend. I mean, I knew who she was, but before the festival, I doubt we’d said more than a dozen words combined in our entire lives. Then Mom asked me to return a library book for her, right after we got back from Norfolk. Wren acted like we were strangers.”
Maverick frowned. “I wonder why they kept the joke going. Do you think they thought you’d be mad?”
Grayson shrugged. Wren tried to explain why they’d pulled the prank, but he’d been too pissed off at the time to hear it. “I have no idea. But I went to the library twice more and she never confessed.”
“Why did you go back to the library? I thought you read books on your phone.”
He grinned, despite his misery, recalling Wren giving him shit for reading eBooks. “I went to see Wren.”
“Is that why you went to Whiskey Abbey last week? Because it’s usually impossible to get you down to the bar.”
He grimaced. “I went because I thought Lark would be there. I still thought…” He cursed under his breath at his own stupidity. “Lark did show up. With Wren. I spent most of the night talking to her.”
Maverick crossed his arms. “Dammit, dude! Stop feeding this story to me piecemeal and fucking spit it out.”
The truth lodged in Grayson’s throat. He’d spent days trying not to say it anymore, trying not to believe it. Since his conversation with Jace, he’d worked overtime to convince himself he’d imagined that overpowering, soul-shattering feeling. But he hadn’t.
The second he held Wren at that festival, something happened. And it happened again the other day in the library, when he kept her from tumbling off that stool.
“When I touched Wren at the festival…” Grayson raked a hand through his hair. “She’s the one.”
Maverick whistled low and slow, and for nearly a full minute, he simply stared at Grayson. Then, “Well.”
Grayson scowled. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me? Well?”
Maverick smirked. “Well, that changes things.”
“No shit,” he spat.
“You really felt it? The lightning? The electricity? The sparks?”
Grayson didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Maverick could read the truth written all over his face.
“Yeah,” Maverick said quietly. “You did.”
