Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 133321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 667(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 667(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
I reach up and brush my fingers over his jaw. “Yes. We protect each other, but next time, you don’t get to go around me.”
“You’re right, but just know this, baby. When I look into your eyes and you ask for something, it’s hard as hell to deny you.” The buzzer on the oven goes off.
“Even pizza? Because I’m really hungry.”
He cups my face, and he’s not focused on pizza. “If you hold back, if you get ready for me to leave you, then you’ve already left me again. Or just never came back. All in, Mia, or all out.”
“All in,” I say, despite the fact that I am unreasonably afraid of being hurt. He didn’t betray me. I betrayed him. I hurt him. I need to be vulnerable. I owe him that. And I have to trust him not to hurt me, the way I should have trusted him a year ago.
“How about that pizza?” Grayson asks, kissing me. “It’s been far too long since we shared one together.”
“Pizza with you sounds like everything.”
Tension eases from his body, and the hard lines of his handsome face soften. He’s back. He’s here with me and relief washes over me. I need him. I need him in ways I tried to deny and failed every time.
He walks to the oven and pulls out the pizza and I turn to watch him return. He sets it on the island counter. “How’s your dad?” he asks, flipping open the lid.
My eyes go wide. “Going out of town this weekend and I don’t have my phone. What if he calls?” I dart away toward the bedroom and hunt down my purse and my phone. Once I’ve located it, I check my missed calls and go cold. Ri has called not once but three times.
I glance at my text messages and there’s one there from him as well: Mia. We should talk. Immediately. Call me.
Chapter twenty
Mia
I’ve barely read the message from Ri when Grayson appears in the closet doorway. “Is everything okay?”
I don’t even consider anything but honesty with Grayson.. “I have missed calls from Ri.” I offer him my phone. “And a text message.”
He steps forward and takes it, glancing at the message. “Fuck Ri. Let’s go eat our pizza.” He grabs me and starts to walk with my phone still in his hand.
I catch his arm and dig my heels in. “Wait.”
“You are not working for him if that’s what you’re about to say,” he says, rotating to face me. “You don’t need him, his job, or his money. You have me.”
“I know that, but until we hear more from your team about whatever he’s up to, I think we need to hear what he has to say. Just let me do some information-grabbing.”
“I’ve had about all of you with Ri that I care to handle, Mia.”
His voice vibrates with anger, the kind of anger I deserve considering I left him over a lie that wasn’t his. The kind of anger that tells me he’s affected by my leaving, we’re affected, no matter how much we both just want to go back to the old, untainted us.
“I can’t take back what I did,” I say, “but I can make it work for you and us. I’m protecting you, and as you said, that’s what we do. We protect each other. It’s a call. That’s all, and you already know he’s up to trouble. Let me find out what I can with you right here with me.”
His lashes lower, his expression all hard lines and angles, seconds ticking by before he looks at me and says, “Make the call. Get it over with.” He looks down at my phone and I swear there is this moment when he realizes he’s holding it captive as if he didn’t even know he’d done it. And that’s not Grayson.
I push to my toes and kiss him and it feels really good to have him right here where I can do that. “Getting it over with now,” I say, settling on my feet and taking my phone from him. Grayson leans on the dresser in the center of the closet, his back pressed to the wooden surface. I do the same next to him, making sure my legs are aligned with his, making sure he knows that I’m right here with him.
Only then do I hit the callback button for Ri. He answers on the first ring.
“Mia,” he says.
“Ri.”
“I called you an hour ago.”
“I didn’t hear it ring,” I reply, glancing at Grayson with a question in my eyes. Can he hear?
He gives a nod.
“Word is that you’re looking for a job,” Ri snaps.
I don’t play coy, which is another form of a lie and I hate lies. “You’ve been an ass to me since that incident, Ri. I haven’t been feeling exactly secure.”