Grey: New Beginnings (Spectrum Series Book 5)

by Allison White

  I slap him, and he looks at me in shock. Noah gasps behind me.

  “What the he—” he begins, face twisting up, veins bursting against his neck.

  “He came over because he needed a friend to talk to. I cried about you, I got a call that Dean was detained, and I cried some more. I wanted you by my side because, fuck, Grey! You’re my boyfriend, the love of my life…I thought you would have been there with me when they finally found the man who almost ripped my life away! But you weren’t. You were off doing God knows what. But before that, you were with Red, leaving me with some bullshit crap note. And now you come back and think I’ve betrayed you? What the fuck, Grey?” I rant and push him away from me.

  He grabs my wrists and pulls me off the bed. “I had to get away to clear my head.”

  “There’s something called yoga,” Noah croaks behind us.

  Grey lifts his intense black eyes, snarling. “Shut the fuck up and get out before I strangle the loafers out of you.”

  “Don’t talk to him like that.” I do some twist thingy with my wrists he taught me when he trained me. He looks shocked, proud, and turned on. I roll my eyes at his short attention span and push him away. “I’m sorry he’s being a major dick right now. He hasn’t taken any of his pills, since they’re all in the trash.” I shoot him a glare, and he twists his mouth up, a frown curved in his head. Low blow, I’ve hit too far down the belt. I lick my lips and look over at Noah.

  He gets up with a sigh, cracking his neck. “No problem.” He smiles lazily as he walks over to me, disregarding Grey’s piercing scowl with ease. “It was nice having your company, Livvy.”

  I smile warmly at his silly nickname for me. “It was my pleasure, No-No.” I bring out the big guns, my nickname for him when we were six and playing hide-and-seek in his parents’ backyard.

  “Ooooh, no-no on the No-No.” He shakes his head as his shoulders bounce in laughter.

  “I’ll punch you in the nose-nose if you don’t leave. Now.” Grey tenses up behind me, muscles bulging and patience wearing thin.

  I begin to tell him off when Noah delightfully surprises me.

  “Oh, I’m not scared of you, Grey. You get used to assholes with pent-up anger when you deal with Red Sylvetti.” He even goes as far as to pat Grey’s shoulder. I hold my breath and watch Grey intently for a reaction. “Speaking of which, you better hope you didn’t lay a hand on her head. If you did…well, let’s just say the color red will be on these walls.” Noah’s smile drops as he squeezes and adds, “If you ever go on a road trip with my girl again, I will not hesitate to kill you, understand?”

  Silence falls in the room, thick and unrelenting.

  “Get your fucking hand off me before I throw your scrawny ass out of the window, spilling Red on the concrete,” Grey warns, tone laced with promise, a creepy wide smile that sends chills down to my toes.

  “Okay, that’s enough of that. I’ll walk you out.” I remove Noah’s hand and guide him out of the door to the elevator. What the hell was that? I don’t know what to be more shocked about: Noah talking back to Grey with confidence, promising to hurt him, or the clear love he has for Red that he would risk his life.

  “Where did that come from?” I ask with an uneasy laugh. He’s being such a bad ass…I love it! It’s unexpected, but I admire it all the same.

  “Told you, from being with Red.” He winks at me, then he’s gone.

  “I didn’t do anything with her,” Grey’s voice whispers behind me. I turn around and sigh, looking up to meet his sad black eyes, and frown. He looks sincere, but also like he’s annoyed by me. But what the heck did I do to annoy him? Question him? We are in a relationship, we sleep together, have sex, fight, get through everything together—I deserve to be able to question why he decided to jet off without any warning whatsoever.

  “Okay.” I nod and begin to walk around him.

  He grabs my hand and pulls me into his chest smoothly. He tucks a hair behind my ear while promising, “I did nothing with her, nothing I would do with you.”

  “Great.” I do the wrist twist thing again—glad I learned it—and begin walking away again.

  “Come on, why are you being like this? Just hear me out,” he says, and I stop walking, heart pounding like a maniac wanting to get free from her cage, wishing I could beat this desensitized asshole up.

  “Do you know how hard it was to see you gone without a second’s notice?” I ask, wrapping my arms around myself to hold myself steady. “How hurt I felt, how worried I was when I found those pills scattered on the ground? Grey, I thought you’d lost your mind or something, and you were just gone. I didn’t even get a phone call or anything. You disappeared, and then I find out you were with Red. A girl I barely know?” I shake my head and finally turn around. He’s walked up to me, but I didn’t notice, too lost in my sullen thoughts. I take a step back as a tear falls down my cheek.

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” he says softly, voice cracking.

  I laugh pathetically, because that’s what I’ve become since I’ve met this man, pathetic. “That’s all you have to say after you’ve hurt me?”

  He clenches his jaw and looks to the ground.

  “What was the real reason you left?” I question him.

  “I told you, I had to clear my head.” He runs a hand through his hair.

  I shake my head, calling out his bullshit. “Bullshit. Why can’t you tell me? Why can’t you talk to me? I thought we were in this together. I thought you opened up to me, were able to clear your mind with me, not away from me.”

  He gulps. “I was going through something?”

  “What was it?” I ask, pleading now.

  Silence and soft eyes.

  I suck in a deep breath to still my raging heart. “Grey, if you don’t tell me the real reason, I will leave you how you left me. Minus a shitty note.”

  He scoffs, and I finally get a reaction out of him. “You will not because there is no reason to. Stop being such a drama queen.” He reaches for my hands, but I pull them up to my chest and take a step back. Hurt flashes across his eyes. “Liv.” His voice wavers.

  “No, just…no.” I walk away from him, like he did me. I gave him a chance and he didn’t lunge after it.

  Sounds familiar…huh?

  Chapter Forty-One

  Like Grey, I have to leave to clear my mind. I hate to do this, to leave him, but I gave him a chance to explain himself. To salvage the crumbling trust I had in him. And I don’t mean trust where I don’t have to worry he’d betray me in that way. I know he would never cheat on me. We are too deep in what we are to ever do something like that. He has my entire heart, body, and soul, and vice versa. We built a connection so deep for each other, it went through the soles of the earth and hit rock-bottom in another dimension. I mean the trust where we can communicate without him building barriers. The trust where I can come home and not worry about him being gone, but at the elevator waiting for me.

  But that trust decayed, and the sad part is I don’t know why. It all just came out of nowhere. Actually, it was after he beat up Sam, claiming he had something to do with the shooting. I don’t truly believe it, but I played along with him. The look of pure rage and anguish and guilt in his eyes took all the opposing out of my mouth, and I ended up agreeing with him. Sam had hurt me, the closest thing he could pin on the incident, That Night that has ruined so many lives, including mine. But now we have the person really responsible for the fight behind bars, waiting to go on trial, to be transferred to a facility that will be his home for the rest of his sad life.

  Yet that seems to not be enough for him. It was almost like he ventured out to find a solid suspect, the guilt of something he couldn’t possibly control driving him like a blind man in a monster truck of destruction. He was ripped free of his vision and thrown in the driver seat of a truck of guilt. And he mowed over common sense, logic, and even me to pin down that one thing—himself.

  He blames himself for That Night. Says that, if it weren’
t for him being with me in general, I would have been safe. From the scars etched into my body, from the storm of torment in my mind, and from the natural pain of being with someone as dark as him. Someone that was destined for the bad, the ugly, and the damaged.

  I told him, “Babe, you couldn’t be worse or damaged, but you are damned handsome. Don’t deprive yourself of that basic fact.”

  We were lying in bed on a lazy Sunday, legs entangled like noodles, skin warm like the sun, and eyes dancing the tango, effortlessly.

  He had intertwined our fingers and chuckled. “So you admit I’m no good for you?”

  I had huffed defiantly and pressed my chest to his. “Don’t twist my words around.”

  He scrunched his eyes together. “But you just said…”

  I pressed a finger to his lips. “I didn’t say anything about you not being good for me. You’re bad, sure. There is no away around that.” I brushed back a curl of his dark, thick hair, smiling softly. “And you are damaged up here…but that doesn’t mean the wreck doesn’t harbor beautiful jewels.”

  “You are too fucking poetic for your own good.” He laughed and cupped my face, hovering his lips above mine.

  I shook my head. “Not too good for you, though. Never too good, and you are never too bad, either.” I pinched his ear, and he laughed, pinning me to the bed. I moaned as he ran a hand up my thigh and gripped my hips. Gently. Teasingly. “Okay, it’s okay to be bad right now. Like, really bad.” I laughed, and he joined in, swallowing mine with his open mouth.

  “We are here, Miss Westerfield,” a low voice gently pulls me from my daydream. When I didn’t escape to my mother’s to escape. I never thought I’d come to her and not hide away from her. A messed-up statement, but my mother’s lost her mind. I just, I just had to get away, to show him that what he did and is holding back from me is not okay, that I can run away as easily. Maybe my little weekend away from him will drill it into his thick brain that talking things out will result in less heartache.

  “Miss Westerfield?”

  “Hmmm?” I look up from his charm I’d been twisting. I am met with Trevor’s baby blue eyes and tender smile.

  “I said we’re here.” His tone is teasing, and I blush and push a piece of my hair behind my ear.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you.” I let out a lengthy breath and look out the dark window. The mini white mansion of colossal pillars, dark shutters, freshly mowed lawns, and an obnoxiously massive fountain—they all stare back at me, daring me to enter the lavishly designed house. It’s odd and sad that I have spent the last eighteen years of my life in this house, yet I am kind of terrified of walking inside.

  “Olivia, are you okay?” He touches my knee. I look at it, thinking Grey would chop his hand off. Instead of saying that, I hum a reply and glance out the window. He raises a dark blonde eyebrow. “You look like you’re about to enter a courthouse.”

  Funny. I will in a few weeks.

  My stomach hears my mind and twists into impossible knots.

  “No, no—it’s not like that. I just haven’t been back here in a long time.”

  The last time I was here was last year for Thanksgiving. A lot was happening during that time. Grey revealed his horrid past, I lost my virginity, and we officially became a couple. In that moment by the fire, I had unknowingly given him my everything for as long as he wished to possess me. Would I still do the same if I knew all the tragedies that would result from it?

  I subconsciously rub my chest, where the bullet wound is. “If you knew bad, horrible things would happen because of loving one person, would you still pursue them? Or would you let them go?” I ask without meaning to, but I don’t take the words back. I need to know his thoughts, if I really made the right choice in giving my everything to a man who doesn’t trust me enough to talk to me.

  He is silent, not responsive. I feel bad for putting him in such a weird, awkward position. But then he answers, “Not if the love was worth all the pain. Tears mean nothing if your heart doesn’t feel dry anymore. If, before that person, you were lost, almost thirsty for more, then you are with the right one. You have your person. They may bring on heartache and pain and difficulty, but who wants an easy vanilla love that does nothing for the body, when you can have a love that conquers all, breaks all boundaries, and replenishes your soul and everything in between?”

  I am speechless and teary-eyed.

  I sniffle and do a little nervous, weird laugh. “You’re too poetic for you own good.” I use Grey’s words.

  His smile widens a tad. “Never too good to speak on love.”

  I blush and look at my palms.

  “Well?”

  I look up and frown. “What?”

  He laughs and rolls his eyes slightly, playfully. “Would you still go after the one who hurt you the most?”

  I laugh uneasily. “Wanna hear something funny, Trevor?” His eyebrows raise, and I smile a crooked smile. “The ones you love the most are the ones who truly hurt you the most. No matter how much you tell yourself you don’t love them to protect yourself…you never get rid of the invisible thread linking you to that person.”

  He nods, seemingly turning my words in his head. “That a yes or…?”

  I take a deep breath and wipe a tear away. “Always and forever a yes.”

  Finally, after some catching up with the charming driver, I get out of the SUV. I wave him goodbye and smile as he waves his hand out of the window before rolling down the long driveway and out of the open gate. I watch as the black gates close and listen to the wind whistle in my ear.

  Grey had insisted, demanded really, that he at least drop me off. That is, after he’d argued with me about leaving altogether. Apparently, he was the only one who was allowed to “escape.” But once I brought up Red and the unknown reason why he left in the first place, he shut up and stood by as I called up Trevor. It may have been one in the morning and four hours’ drive away, but he came for me anyway.

  Taking some deep breaths to steady my turbulent nerves, I thumb my lip, charm, run a hand through my hair—all about one million times until I’m sure I look like a complete mess that just dug her way out of a loony bin with spoons. Until finally, the door swings open, revealing my mother dressed in a cherry blossom dress, hair done up in a beehive hairstyle, high heels, and makeup done glamorous enough for New York fashion week. How does she look like this at five in the morning? And why is there a box behind her ankles…?

  “Darling.” She gasps, gazing at my un-brushed curly hair, bare face, tank top and jeans with a stiff smile. Sorry, we can’t all wake up looking like runway models. “I wasn’t expecting you.” She sounds nervous for some reason.

  I grip my backpack strap tightly. “I really wanted to see you.”

  “But I thought you and I thought you were busy this weekend,” she says, not even able to say his name. But at least she’s trying. Security guards aren’t behind my back about to whisk me away to the nearest hospital…I subconsciously sneak a glance over my shoulder. You never know with this woman. She notices but doesn’t say anything, too busy fighting an obvious war inside of her mind. I wonder who the enemies are.

  “Plans were cancelled unexpectedly,” I say bitterly, sucking in my cheeks. But then I inhale and exhale deeply, offering her a little shrug. “But I’m ready to do what we planned. The tea party is still on the table, right?” I joke lightly, but her youngish face doesn’t budge. It actually grows sadder, and I don’t know if she’s reliving some bad memory or just felt a sudden spark to rekindle our relationship that one morning and has since changed her mind. I frown. I wouldn’t want that to be the case. I actually want to fix us.

  “Well, that’s quite all right, then,” she says, but I see it in her eyes—something is wrong; she looks broken. Demolished. Gone in the dust. She steps back. She bows her head to avoid my concerned scan. She’s become softer, more mother-like as of recently. Maybe she’ll reveal to me later why she’s being so weird right now.

 
I take a single step inside and am met with utter confusion. There are boxes everywhere. Art pieces my mother adored are taken down, rugs flown in from all over the world missing. The place looks odd and bare and not…right.

  “Mother, what’s going on?” I begin to ask her.

  “Elena, Vivian just got back with me. She and Winston have agreed to set the meeting for this upcoming Monday, just in time for…” Father says, unaware of my presence until he’s in the room, holding a box of his college degrees.

  Who’s Vivian and Winston? What meeting? Just in time for what?

  “What’s going on?” I ask, looking between my mother’s dropped, almost guilty, gaze and my father’s flushed, sharped features. My heart thunders in my chest, seemingly already knowing what’s coming.

  “Honey.” It’s my father who breaks his long silence, only to break my heart in pieces. “Your mother and I are selling the house….”

  Oh, my God.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Grey

  Blood smears my vision, filling my senses, and blinds me whole. But I do not stop punching. I let the crimson metallic taste settle in my mouth, cover my fists, and rush to my throbbing head. My heart’s erratic beating pounds in my ear like a heavy metal song, my fists heavy as boulders jabbing in the air. I swing my arms wildly, missing hits and receiving them. I hit back twice as hard, taking all of my pent-up anger and frustration out on my opponent, my sparring partner, Steve.

  He was confused when I strolled into the gym since I told him I was leaving for New York with my girl for the weekend. Thankfully, he took my deafening silence and wrapped hands as “I don’t want to talk about it, let’s just fight” and hasn’t asked any questions. Thank fucking God, because I do not want to talk about it. If I do, I’d probably end up killing him instead of punching him. He’s a teasing motherfucker that likes to fuck with me about my footwork most of the time, so I was gladly surprised when he decided to be quiet and just let me work out my anger.