“I played in your mind. I didn’t hear you complaining at the time.”
“No. You are not making this okay. It’s not right. You’re not. I don’t even know what you are, and I doubt I’ve ever known who you are.” My voice raises in volume, all the pent up confusion finally finding an outlet of its own. “I mean, what is this place? Sprawling mansions in the countryside that you hide from the world? Horse riding? And you, look at you. Who are you Gray? I’ve been fucking a ghost, someone who only gave me slithers of something in the middle of lies.”
Lies, lies, lies.
My hands go to my head, desperately searching for more things I need to say, as my feet pace around. “And what was that ride about? And you bringing me here to what, fix me? I’m not fucking broken, Gray.”
“Red pill? You tried to kill yourself,” he says, calmly.
“I did not try to fucking kill myself!” I didn’t. It was just another pill at the time. I didn’t know it was for that. Who would? I trusted them all. “I just wanted some fucking sense in a head full of nonsensical feelings I can’t manage. And you did that to me, anyway. You were mean and hateful and you pretended that none of this means anything when it does.”
It does to me anyway.
I look at the floor, still chaotic in my turmoil because even now, when everything seems tarnished and smeared with truths I can’t process, my heart aches so much I can’t bear it. My teeth grate, heart remembering thuds and taps, arms around me and lips on mine.
Tears threaten in my eyes. I can feel them trickling over the rims, burning with anger and confusion and lacking clarity.
“And now I’m here and there are children running around at night, jumping out of the long grass after you’ve told me things I didn’t want to hear.” I’m shaking, both fearful and yet desperate for more answers, more of him.
“Child. Not children.”
My eyes widen, body coming to stop about six feet in front of him. “Excuse my fucking grammar.”
He smirks out of nowhere and pulls his hand out of his pocket. “One child. Charlie. Do you want more truths, or are you done?” My mouth opens, then closes, as he holds up my chain. It glints in the small amount of light reflecting from the house, making me remember all the spinning colours and every inch of his skin on me. “I have more, if you want to hear them, Hannah. They’ll hurt, though. Truths always do.”
“Why have you got that?”
“I haven’t not had it since I left you with Malachi.”
“Why?”
He shrugs and walks backwards a few steps, waving his hand at me as if I should follow him. “I wanted to keep a truth I don’t have. It’s good to feel you on me, and more necessary than I gave credit to for reasons I can’t fathom.”
I don’t follow. I stand firm, not able to feel anything other than the simmering rage flowing through me and complete bewilderment. Why say that? If all this has been a lie, why keep that chain and talk like that at all?
One look back at me, his dark eyes telling me everything I should be feeling, and he gives me the most glorious smile I’ve ever witnessed from him. Strong. Intimidating in some ways, but tinged with something other than arrogance. Small flickers of something I got just the once from him. Compassion maybe. Sentiment.
“Come and finish your seduction, Hannah. Might as well hear it all now.”
My feet move without permission, tempted onwards rightly or wrongly.
Chapter 15
Gray
A nimated.
Volitile.
I keep my gaze downcast and walk away from her, unsure whether she’ll stay or leave when we get to the house. Perhaps she should leave. It would be better for her. She could move on then, forget eventually and discard a point of her life into the abyss it probably deserves. Doesn’t stop me rubbing this chain though, feeling it in my grasp and remembering all the sensations of her on me. Dark eyes. Dark times. Dark times filled with light and connection, though.
Heartbeats.
The horses whinny and kick out at the wind whistling around us, and yet I’m still able to hear her footsteps a way back from me drowning out their sound. She’s probably contemplating decisions about her way forward, trying to work out if I’m worth bothering about any longer.
I doubt I am, but that’s not stopping me thinking of possibilities I shouldn’t be envisioning. It’s only a few switches. One minute’s worth of time and everything changes.
“Gray?” I look back at her, disturbed by the way her small form seems to own the expanse of space around her and me with it. “Is he your son? Is that another truth?”
I’m not ready for that yet.
I wait for her to catch me up and point to the house, nodding at it for her to go on up the steps. “If you don’t want to stay, I’ll have Jackson take you home. I’d like some dinner, though.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No, it’s not.”
She stares. She stares so long, and so hard, that I can almost see my reflection in the tears still glazing her eyes until she brushes them away again. No turning away from me, though. I chuckle a little at that. She never has. Never looked away when I’ve stared her down. Never let me discard the emotion she causes in me as irrelevant either. Tenacious.
“Are you staying?”
Still no movement from her other than her gaze drifting up and down my body, one arched brow showing contempt or scorn for the truth she already knows. “I’d like it if you’d join me for dinner.”
“You don’t deserve my company.”
“Possibly right. Doesn’t mean I don’t want it.” A frown covers her features, as if she’s still considering telling me to bring Jackson out here rather than coming inside.
What feels like hours passes us by before she eventually looks away towards the steps and makes her way over to them slowly. No smile on her face. No attempt at seduction or sexual endeavours. It’s jarring in some ways. Unusual. My body follows her at a distance, halfway ready to close the space down and force skin on skin again. It’s easier like that. Less honest in some ways maybe, but simpler to contend with irrespective.
Opening the door, I usher her in and cut through the halls to the back lounge. She stares around it, taking in the lines of a home built for family.
“This is nothing like you,” she mutters. She’s right. It isn’t. Never was, other than the horses outside.
Never will be either.
I pick up a bottle of red wine and pour two glasses, taking one back to her. “Do you want to shower and change?”
“Into what?”
“I can have someone find something.”
“One of the many women you have lying around?”
She sneers and drinks half the contents of her wine.
Ignoring the taunt, I walk out the room and crook a finger at her. She follows again until we’re up the main stairs and into one of the guest suites. “I’ll have someone bring you something.”
I leave after that, giving her some space to get rid of any anger she’s holding onto, and head back down. It’s unnecessary, and not welcome regardless of how much I might deserve it. Slow feet lead me through the halls to the one room that renders me inadequate, and I stop in the doorway, looking over the interior. Confusing. Pale curtains. Pale floor. Heather. It’s all insipid. Lifeless, but for the attempt at pretence. Nothing dark.
Nothing sensuous or engrained like Hannah is either.
A sigh falls from me, as I pick up the one thing I came in here for, and I pocket it and lean on the doorframe. I don’t know what’s happened in the last half an hour. Something changed in me when I saw her running away from me. I felt … lost. I yearned and ached in ways that countered the need to cut her off, and then I chased with nothing but her in mind. I never expected that, never thought it would be a real consideration to deal with. And now it is.
Because of her.
“Gray?” I blanch and look back at Beatrice, uneasy with the fact that she’s still here. I
check my watch absently, wondering why she hasn’t gone home yet. If I’d have known she was still here I might not have done what I’ve damn well done. I don’t need sisterly interventions in this. It will be done my way. “She looks better now. I can see why you like her.”
I grumble to myself and walk straight passed her, looking for a maid to order some dinner through to the dining room. My body stops, as I get to the orangery, a smile tipping my lips at the dark content of the space. Dark greens, dark leaves wrapping along vines and twining their way around harsh metal trellising. Twinkling lights gently caress the area, showing a view of all this fucking dishonesty spread out in front of me.
Dinner. Truths. Maybe then there’s an answer that isn’t the only one I’ve got.
Heels come up behind me, one hand resting on my shoulder. “It’s alright, Gray. It always was. It’s okay for you to live.”
I frown and keep looking at the view, not sure it is. Why would it be? Who has that right? Fucking around with minds to find answers is one thing, changing someone’s actuality in life is another even for me. And I want my truths, too. I always have. I want to understand why someone would do that to me, regardless of me probably knowing the goddamn answer anyway. Need to hear it, though. Process it. I won’t if I do what I’m considering.
My head shakes, as I turn to face Beatrice. “Would you mind giving her some of your clothes? She’s only got the sweats she’s in. The clothes she arrived in are over at-”
“Of course not. I’ll go do it now. I’ll get her things sent over.” She smiles at me and points at the small table in the orangery. “If you’re going to attempt romance, can I suggest there rather than the twenty seat dining table.” I snort and nod, watching as she smiles again and walks away from me.
Romance.
How that hell that works between us is confounding. We’re already passed fucking, passed touching and kissing and being part of each other. Physicality is engrained, instinctive. I can smell her everywhere I am, feel her in every second of time that passes me by without her. This now, this is about truths that will do nothing other than push her further away in the hope that she might understand enough to stay irrespective of the decision she’ll have to help me make.
I end up showering and changing, then ringing through for the food and waiting in the orangery for her to get to me, chain gripped in my fingers. A maid brings place settings in, a bottle of wine with them, and is then organised to meet her. She’ll bring her down to this space I barely ever use other than to sit and contemplate on occasion, and then we’ll attempt something I’ve only ever considered as irrational thinking before now. A dream is what it was then, a vision that I never held onto for a more than few minutes. Future. Possibilities.
Love.
Quietly chuckling at the thought, I accept that as a reality I am now in. Love. Amusing that she caught me, found a way in to highlight the need I thought I cared little for. She’s been such a little storm chasing me down for her truths. And one kiss was all it took. One feel of her on me, one moment of sensing that body on mine, her arms around my neck, and all my defences were obliterated.
“Gray?”
I stand instinctively, the chain still clasped in my hand, and look at her. Red dress.
Unused to seeing her in anything but black, I focus on her face. Still pale, but now brightened in beauty by the colour on her skin. She frowns and looks around the large room, eyes peering at the all the vines and lights above us. She seems as lost as me for a few seconds, and she wanders the space, bare feet padding the cold slabs underneath her.
“Shoes?” I ask.
“Didn’t feel like wearing them,” she replies, looking upwards. “I run better like this.”
“I don’t want you to run.”
I don’t. I don’t ever want to see her running from me again, despite the fact that she should.
“I’m not sure you’re worth staying for.” Her body swerves back to me, a relaxed sway bringing her to within inches of my face. “Are you? I don’t know anymore.”
She’ll have to make that choice when I’m done with these truths.
Chapter 16
Hannah
W hat is this place? It’s like a mausoleum. Everything’s perfect and pretty, as if designed for family life, but missing actual life. I looked it all over as the maid led me here, taking in the lighter colours and the pristine demonstration of home. It isn’t a home, though. It feels more lifeless than his apartment in Manhattan does.
And at least there, with the dark walls and dark sculpture and dark corners, there’s some representation of him and who he is. Or who I thought he is. This – I lift my hand, swishing and searching the air for the colours I used to see spinning around his face – is more barren of him than anywhere I’ve been with him so far.
“I missed you,” he says.
My hand stops mid-air, hovers by the side of his jaw in surprise, and then slowly drops away into my own slip stream. Mine. Not his. Not combined or connected. I found me again in that bathroom upstairs, found some evolved nature of me who wasn’t scared or confused. I looked at a dress draped on the bed, unsure where it had come from, and suddenly found some sanity when I slipped it on.
I walk towards the chair at the small table and run my fingers over the back of it. It’s intimate. Barely any distance between the two table settings, which is interesting given this huge space around us. I like it. Especially with the darkness eclipsing the light this house wants to show to the world.
His hand is on my back before I have chance to avoid it, the chair being pulled out for me to sit. The same feelings ricochet through me that always come with him. Desire. Need. Want. It’s so strong still. So infuriatingly fraught with craving.
“We’ve never had dinner properly,” he murmurs.
My brow arches, ass sitting slowly. “No. Too busy with lies for dinner.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“You never told me the truth either.”
“If I had would you have entertained me?”
He sits opposite me and waits for me to say something to that. I’m not saying anything about that. I came for the rest of my truths. Thoughts of what I might not have done aren’t relevant now. I did. And I don’t regret it other than needing more answers. It’s a shame that the thought of touching him, of being with him again, consumes me as much as it does given this news I now know. Perhaps we should invite all the other women here, have them ask him for their truths as well.
“Did you seduce them, too?” I ask.
“If I remember rightly, you seduced me, Hannah. Not the other way around. I refused you several times.” I suppose that’s true. I wouldn’t let it lie, wouldn’t accept no either.
And look where that’s got me.
“But did you seduce them?”
“No. It doesn’t happen like that.”
“How does it happen then?”
“That isn’t the truth you’re after here. You’re after the one that keeps me from you. They’re not it in the slightest. They’re nothing but anomalies in a time line.”
Harsh, but what did I expect? Sentiment? Laughter and happiness? That’s only ever been small snippets of him. My mind floats back to the bar that first night, to him smiling and laughing in drunken disorder, as the maids bring in food. I watch them serve what will, I’m sure, be as perfectly elegant and tasteful as this house. It all feels more of a lie than what he’s keeping from me. This isn’t my Gray. This is someone who’s false around me, changed.
What I had of an appetite dissolves the moment they’ve left, the emptiness in my stomach happy to remain unfulfilled. “Which part of you is true?” I ask, as he pours me wine. He smiles and then frowns, as if trying to retract whatever his mind was thinking about. “Don’t do that. I’m not here for more lies.”
A napkin gets tossed in his lap after he’s poured both glasses, irritable fingers then folding it neatly. “Can’t we simply eat before-“
“No. Hon
esty or I’m leaving.”
Time stalls, as it always does when I look into his eyes. I sip the deep, dark, possibly burgundy wine, part wishing it didn’t stall at all anymore. I wish I could still hear the rest of the world moving around us so that I could dismiss the craving that still holds me in a vice like grip. What truths are there to counter this? Nothing. No amount of forgiveness, no explanation either. And there’s still more to come. More things that, according to him, will hurt. I can’t see what they’ll be. I’m more broken and lost than I was before him.
“For what it’s worth, Hannah, every moment of time I spent with you was as true as my life, without its complications, can be.”
What does that even mean?
I lean back and cross my arms, waiting for a little more information than that. Nothing is offered other than a half smile and more mystery. I’m tired of it, and given where we were earlier, and the things that have already been said, he should be, too.
“You can’t hurt me, Gray. Not anymore. There’s nothing left to hurt me with.”
He lays the chain on the white table cloth between us, stretching it from him to me. “You said that the first time I was inside you.” He’s right. I did. “And I meant nothing to you then other than pills and amusement.”
“What makes you think you mean any more than that now?”
Low eyes look up at me from under a glower. Dead eyes. Killer eyes. I smile and sip again, wondering what it must feel like for wealthy arrogance to have the roles reversed on it. Maybe I should play with his mind. Infuse myself only to drop him when he’s feeling relaxed. I could play to win, make sure all those other women have their pound of flesh.
“Don’t play with me, Hannah. You’ll lose.”
Asshole.
We’re both suddenly smiling again, though, as if the thought of playing is far more interesting than the truths I’m supposed to be getting and he’s supposed to be delivering. “Eat your food.”
A Sorrow of Truths Page 11