There, on the lock screen of my phone, was a Facebook message notification.
Ben Craft: Forever, Grey.
The phone slipped from my trembling fingers, and I pressed my hands to my head as the sound grew louder. It wasn’t until my door was wrenched open and I was being pulled out of the car that I realized the deafening noise was my screaming.
Someone was shaking me, someone was gripping my face and forcing me to look at them, someone was shouting—but I couldn’t hear the words, I couldn’t focus on the face, I couldn’t feel the jarring effect the shaking should’ve been having on my body. All I knew in that moment was the paper filled with vows, and the message waiting for me to view.
Impossible. I was going insane. This is what it felt like to truly lose yourself, and for a second, I wondered why it had taken so long for it to happen, or if it had been happening all along. I wondered if I was going to come back to reality and find myself in a bland, white room where a nurse would come medicate me. Because this—this couldn’t be real, and I wasn’t dreaming, because if this had been a dream, I would’ve woken up by now.
“Grey! Grey! What’s happening?” someone shouted, followed closely by someone else’s yell, “Has anyone called an ambulance yet?”
My screams had ended, only to be replaced by a hyperventilation so extreme, I was waiting for the moment when it would become too much for me to handle. I hung, hunched over in someone’s arms, clawing viciously at them as I tried to steady my breathing, but the panic only seemed to rise.
“B-Ben!” I shouted through rapid breaths, and I heard the person behind me sigh sadly.
“Poor girl still isn’t over what happened.”
“You need to try to breathe, Grey,” another voice said soothingly. “Calm your breathing. Big, deep breath in. Hold it as long as you can, and then let it out.”
No matter how many times she said it, my breathing never changed.
“Graham’s already on his way, I called him a few minutes ago. He’ll be here soon. Big, deep breath in, Grey.”
I looked back up at the girl, and even though I knew I’d grown up with her, I couldn’t focus on her face, I had no idea who she was. All I knew was Ben.
Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben.
Forever, Grey. Forever, Grey. Forever, Grey.
Another scream tore through my throat before my world went blurry with tears. I placed my hands on the sidewalk below me, allowing the person behind me to continue holding me up as I sobbed toward the ground until I heard my brother’s voice above everything else.
“What’s happening?” he asked loudly to everyone surrounding me before pulling me out of the man’s arms, and curling me onto his lap. “God, Grey, it’s okay. What’s wrong? What happened, kid?” he crooned. “Talk to me.”
I sobbed into his chest as the people around me spoke to him.
“Grey, you gotta tell me what’s wrong. The ambulance is almost here, do you need to go to the hospital?”
It was then I heard the sirens, and I shook my head fiercely as I tried to back away from him. My breathing was ragged again, and I tried to look past the crowd circling us, toward my car.
“B-Ben. H-h-he . . . vows.”
“Grey,” Graham whispered. “No, it’s okay. He’s—kid, he’s gone.”
“He’s not!” I screeched, and tried to scramble from his lap, but he didn’t let me get far. When I looked back at his face, I saw a look conveying thoughts I’d just been having. He thought I’d lost it.
“What the hell is going on?”
I turned quickly at the sound of Jagger’s frantic voice, and Graham helped me stand in time for Jagger to wrap his arms around me.
“I’ve been getting calls for the last ten minutes. What’s happening?” he asked Graham, but then cupped my cheeks and lowered his head to ask me, “Are you hurt? Why is there an ambulance pulling up?”
Even if I could say anything in that moment, Graham would’ve beaten me to it. “From what everyone’s saying, she isn’t hurt, but I think the medics should check her over.”
Jagger’s green eyes bounced over my face before looking over at Graham. “Why? What’s going on?”
The EMTs started parting the crowd, making their way toward us, but Jagger just tightened his grip on me until Graham said, “She thinks Ben is here.”
I felt a jolt go through Jagger’s body, and he slowly pushed me back so he could look down at me again. “Grey, you . . . you think that—what?”
“Is this who we were called for?” an EMT asked, and reached for me.
“Don’t touch me! I’m fine!”
“Grey,” Jagger and Graham said at the same time.
Tears were still falling down my cheeks, and my chest was still rising and falling too erratically, but the last thing I wanted was to be checked over by these men. Despite the body-numbing terror that had filled me when I’d seen the note and the message, I needed to see it again to know I wasn’t insane. I needed Jagger and Graham to see it to confirm my sanity.
“Ma’am, are you—”
“Please! I’m fine. I don’t . . . I don’t need help.”
The three medics looked at each other before shrugging and asking around if anyone else had been hurt in the “incident.”
Graham was busy getting people to back away from us when Jagger tilted my head back again. “Talk to me, baby.”
“There was—he left . . . I don’t know how it happened, Jag,” I cried, and pressed my forehead into his chest.
“Mrs. Reil said Grey kind of freaked after she pulled something off her car,” Graham said when he came back. “She said she tried to get Grey to talk to her because she looked like she was panicking, but Grey got in her car, and when she did, she just started screaming and wouldn’t stop. They had to pull her out of her car and she kept screaming.”
“What’d you pull off your car?” Jagger asked quietly in my ear, but fresh tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t force anything from my mouth. “Where is it, Grey?”
I shook my head against his chest for long seconds before whimpering, “I can’t be crazy. I know what I saw.”
“Babe, look, you need to help me here. I want to help you, but I can’t if you’re not giving me anything to go on. What did you pull off your car, and where is it?”
I stepped back from him, and looked from him to Graham’s worried expression before glancing at the remaining people on the sidewalk. I didn’t want them there; I didn’t want an audience. Because if I was wrong—if I hadn’t really seen what I thought I’d seen—I didn’t want a dozen people who had known me my entire life to witness my loss of sanity. And if the letter and message were still there, I wasn’t okay with anyone else getting a glimpse of something so personal.
Taking a ragged breath, I gripped Jagger’s hand and walked slowly toward my open car door. Each step felt weighted. With each one, the dread of what might not be in there, and the fear of what I somehow knew was in there, continued to grow.
I reached down to grab my phone from the floorboard before sliding into the seat of my car. My hands shook when I saw the piece of paper lying on the passenger seat, and when I grabbed it, I turned to look at Graham and Jagger standing by the door, blocking my view of everyone on the sidewalk. Both looked worried, confused, and like they weren’t sure what to do with me.
Once I calmed my breathing enough to speak, I told them about finding the letter. Both listened closely, neither saying anything as they listened to my weak and shaky voice.
“I was only in the shop for maybe six minutes, seven tops. I hadn’t been looking outside while I was in there, so I don’t know who went past my car. But when I came out, this was tucked under my windshield wiper.” I held up the folded piece of paper, and both Jagger and Graham sent me looks of pain. They knew where my thoughts had gone when I saw the paper, but they had no idea how bad it was yet.
“It could’ve been a coin—” Graham started, but I kept talking.
“I opened it, and I thought I mus
t have been dreaming, or someone was playing a joke on me. There was no—” I cut off on a sob. “No way this could’ve been here. I got inside my car to call you,” I said, looking at Jagger. “But when I found my phone, there was a push notification on my lock screen, and that’s when . . . that’s when . . .” I shrugged helplessly, not knowing how to continue.
I clicked the lock button on my phone and a strangled cry bubbled past my lips when I saw that the message was still there. I hadn’t imagined it. It had been real. Just as the guys began asking what had been on my phone and the paper, I handed over both, and a weighted silence seemed to fill the space of my car for a few moments before Graham erupted in curses.
Jagger’s face went completely pale, his head shaking back and forth. “Who did this?” he asked himself before turning around to yell the same thing. Holding up the vows as he glared at the people still standing on the sidewalk. “Huh? Who the fuck pulled this shit?”
Graham was asking everyone who had been near my car, but the way he was asking was scaring people to the point where all they were able to do was shake their heads and back away from him.
The phone vibrated in my lap where Graham had dropped it, and I looked down to see a text from Janie, the notification from Ben sitting untouched below hers. My fingers felt like ice as I slid my thumb across the screen, opening up the Facebook messages. I looked at the small picture of Ben and me before glancing down at the message that had been sent to me almost thirty minutes ago, the ones before that from well over two years ago.
In my head, I knew he was gone. I knew this wasn’t him, and I couldn’t let myself believe he was sending me messages. He’s gone, Grey. He’s gone. With a steady breath out, I typed back a message and hit send.
Who is this, and why are you doing this to me?
Just before I closed out the app, a bubble popped up indicating Ben was responding—no, not Ben. Someone. I stared at the screen, holding my breath until it all came out in a hard rush when I saw the response. There was a picture of Jagger kissing my forehead from just a couple weeks ago. Below, the words:
Ben Craft: How could you do this to us? We were supposed to be forever, Grey.
“No, no, no, no,” I whimpered. “Ben, no.”
“I don’t know how—Grey, what is it?” Jagger asked in a rush, reaching for my phone. I tightened my grip, but he somehow swiftly and gently pulled it from my fingers. “It’ll be okay, we’ll find out who did . . . what the hell? You sick fuck!” he roared out toward the street, and people turned to look at him. “Stop hiding, you have something to say, come and say it!”
Graham walked quickly over to where Jagger was turning in circles, his eyes looking suspiciously at everyone. Wrapping his arms around Jagger’s chest, he started pulling him back toward the car. “Calm down, man.”
“I swear to God I will find out who you are!” Jagger yelled at everyone, and yet no one.
“Calm down, Jagger,” Graham grunted as he released him. “Calm down and get Grey out of here.”
“This piece of paper came from my place. It was in my fucking house!” Jagger hissed at Graham, shoving the vows in his face. “You know I wouldn’t do this shit to her, now tell me how this got here. Tell me who took this!” he yelled back toward the street. Jagger bent into my open car door and took my chin between his fingers, his eyes were wild and his voice was harsh. “That is not Ben, Grey. Whoever it is, is sick and twisted, but it’s not him. Okay?”
I exhaled roughly and nodded my head once.
Everything about him softened as he continued looking at me. “I need to hear you say it. I need to know you believe it,” he whispered, pressing his lips softly to mine. “It’s not him, baby.”
“It’s not Ben,” I finally choked out, and Jagger released a ragged breath as he moved his hands to cradle my face, holding me close to him. “You had the vows?” I asked shakily. “W-why . . . why would you?”
He moved back far enough to look at me better and shook his head slowly. “He’d been working on them at my mom’s place the week before the wedding. He kept them there because he knew you’d look for them at his parents’ house.”
A startled laugh escaped my lips, because I had looked so many times in the days leading up to the wedding.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to see them . . . after . . . but I knew you would hate me if I got rid of them. So I’ve just been holding on to them until you were ready. I knew one day you would ask about them. But they—I mean, they were hidden in my loft so you wouldn’t stumble upon them, Grey. I don’t understand. No one else goes in there . . .”
My eyes widened. “I’m not doing this!” I said quickly. “I’m not doing this to myself, I swear to God, Jag, I’m not!”
“No, baby, no. That’s not what I was saying, I know you wouldn’t. Someone cruel is doing this, and I promise you I’m going to find out who. Okay?”
I nodded and he pressed a firm kiss to my lips.
“I need to get you out of here. Where do you want to go? Do you still want to come to my place, or do you want to go to your parents’ house?”
My mouth opened to say my parents’, but I quickly shut it. Part of me screamed that I’d just seen the vows Ben had been preparing for our wedding, and now I was betraying him by being with his best friend. But I realized that is what the person who stole the copy of the vows was trying to do; they were trying to separate me from Jagger. They were trying to make me take ten steps back in my healing from Ben’s death.
“Yours,” I whispered.
“All right. Let’s get you into the passenger seat, I’ll drive you over there.”
“What about your—”
“We can pick up my car later, it’s fine where it is. Just let me drive you.”
I don’t remember the drive to the warehouse, or going inside. Actually, I don’t remember much of that day at all except the fear of getting another message and cringing every time my phone went off. And most of all, wondering what Ben would say about us if he were here.
Chapter 10
Jagger
August 6, 2014
“I DON’T KNOW what you’re seeing, but that is not a dinosaur.” Glancing down at Grey when she giggled, I squinted at her, then looked closely into her gold eyes. “Are you stoned?”
“Shut up, Jag.” She pushed against my chest and kept one hand there to lightly trail her nails against my skin. “That is totally a T. rex! You’re just looking at it upside down.”
I looked back up at the clouds in the sky, and shook my head. “That’s not an upside-down T. rex either.”
Her free hand splashed water up at me, and I laughed. “Babe, seriously, if anything, that’s a tree.”
“You have no imagination.”
Leaning over her body, I brushed my lips just below her breasts and spoke against her skin. “I beg to differ.”
Grey’s hands went up to play in my hair as I placed soft kisses all over her stomach. “I see a T. rex, a bunny, a mug, and a heart. You think they all look like cotton candy or trees.”
“That just means I’m the sober one here.”
She tugged gently on my hair, but only sighed as she relaxed her head against the handles of the Jet Ski.
We’d gone out on a boat with a few friends from high school this morning to wakeboard, and I’d been prepared for it to be a disaster. In spite of her uncaring reaction when she saw Grey and me together, it didn’t stop me from waiting for LeAnn to say some bullshit to Grey. Even when LeAnn’s guy—a different one from the restaurant—went out on the water, LeAnn was talking with all the girls like they were just catching up.
After wakeboarding for a few hours, Grey and I had left them and rented a Jet Ski to spend some time alone before Grey had to get to work. We hadn’t even been on the water for thirty minutes when I’d had to cut off the engine because the way Grey’s hands were curling against my stomach had made it too hard to concentrate on anything else. She’d wiggled her way around me until she was sitting on
my lap so she could lie back against the Jet Ski, and I’d been struggling to keep my hands and mouth only on places they’d already been. Her being in a bikini wasn’t helping my self-control . . . or lack thereof.
Given the way Grey had reacted a week and a half ago when Charlie showed up at my place, I’d been afraid she would regret what we’d been doing. But by the next day, she was back to normal. Staying pressed up against my side, giving me teasing kisses that would quickly build . . . it was how it had been, and I was glad we hadn’t gone back a few steps. But since the day she’d received the copy of Ben’s vows and the message from his Facebook account, I’d slowly watched her drift back into being the Grey I’d come to know so well over the last two years.
There were moments, like right then on the lake, but the rest of the time I’d find her staring off at nothing or she’d just slowly shut down and curl into a ball while gripping the ring around her neck. It was almost as if she’d remember the present and what I meant to her now, but then go back to cling to the past. Never moving on from the point we’d been at a week and a half ago, and going back a few steps for the majority of our days.
I didn’t need more from her physically. If she needed to go back and slowly build up to where we’d been, I would do that for her in a heartbeat. But with the amount of time each day she spent in the past, I knew we wouldn’t be starting over . . . I knew I was slowly losing the girl I’d had for what felt like only a few seconds.
I was slowly losing Grey completely.
She didn’t want to talk about Ben, she didn’t want to talk about what had happened . . . she just didn’t want to talk. She was the Grey she had been after Ben died, but this time she was shutting me out too. So for the few moments I still had her, I wasn’t wasting a single second. I wanted to have memories of the girl I’d waited for once that girl was completely gone.
“I have to go back soon,” she mumbled.
I sat up and looked over at the shore. “What time do you have to work today?”
“Four. So, probably an hour or so.”
“All right.” I grabbed her upper arms and pulled her toward me. “Get behind me and we’ll head in.”
Letting Go Page 13