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She looks deep in thought. “I can feel the sadness and pain you carry when we’re together. Your home shows it too—maybe if you made it seem more homey, it could make you feel better?”
“I just haven’t had reason enough to care.”
“Then why do you have a house this big?”
God, why did she ask that question?
“It’s nothing, really.”
She pouts slightly, drawing my attention to her gorgeous mouth. “It’s clearly not nothing. Please tell me?”
Hell, I can’t tell her no. Now I have to look like a big idiot in front of her.
“Honestly, I didn’t think it would take me this long to find you. I wanted to find you and give you everything you ever wanted. A big house for however many kids you wanted or whatever. I wanted to give you all the space you could ever need to make your dreams come true.”
She pauses, and turns to look me in the eye. “Greyson. I don’t need all this. I lived in a big ass house for nine years and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
The air turns cold and dreary at her statement.
Desperately wanting to change the subject, I decide to give her a glimpse of what’s missing in this house. I motion toward the stairs. “I want to show you something. Follow me?”
“Lead the way.” She gives me a smile as she follows me upstairs to my office. “What do you want to show me?”
I hold up a finger, signaling for her to be patient, before I grab a small black box that I keep hidden in my desk. Opening the lid, I grab a couple of photographs and hand them to her. She sets her glass down on the desk and takes the pictures from me. I may not display them around the house, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any. I just keep them in this box.
“Oh. My. God. Greyson. You were the cutest baby! What happened?” She throws her head back, laughing at her own joke.
Fuck, I could hear that laugh for the rest of my life and never get tired of it.
“I got cuter, angel. You can’t keep your eyes off of me,” I throw back at her with a wink.
She giggles a little more, before her expression turns back to a serious one. “Seriously though, Greyson, you were adorable.”
“I get my looks from my mom. She was so beautiful, with dark curly hair and these piercing blue eyes.” It feels strange to actually talk about my mom with someone.
“Tell me about her,” she whispers, looking back down at the picture.
I take a deep breath, pausing before I speak. “When my father was working, my mother and I would spend the whole day together. I’d help her in the garden, and we’d read books together. She had a small box of toys that we kept hidden from my father, because he wouldn’t allow them. She’d always protect me from him. She was selfless and would take any beating for me that she could.
“But one day she was gone. My father told me she ran off with another man, and didn’t love us anymore. Ever since that day, I’ve just had this anger deep inside. She left me there with him.”
I can’t believe how easily all of that just rolled off my tongue. Talking about my mom isn’t my favorite subject, but if it helps Lainey understand me better, I’ll tell her whatever she wants to know.
Lainey’s eyebrows scrunch and her mouth turns down at the mention of my father. I don’t fucking blame her. The thought of what he did to her makes me want to burn down the world. Now that I think about it—even though I carved him up with my knife and ripped his fingernails off before I killed him, he deserved worse.
“Grey… I’m so sorry. Do you have any pictures of her?”
“No, my dad burned every single one of them after she left. He said she was dead to him.” I wince at the memory of that day. I tried to sneak one to keep, but he caught me and punished me for it in the woods.
She looks around the room while pulling at her jacket uncomfortably. “It’s getting a little warm in here. Can I take this off or something?” Her face is a little red, and she’s starting to fidget.
“Of course.”
She lays my baby pictures carefully on the desk, before unzipping her jacket and sliding it off. All she's left in is her black jeans and a black tank top, but her baby pink bra strap is peeking out. The sight of it drives me crazy.
I wonder what the rest of it looks like.
What her perky breasts look like in that bra.
