Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Gray walked in carrying two cups of tea and saw our serious faces. “Oh, Jesus. Don’t believe any of the crap Etta tells you.”
Etta scolded him for his use of the word crap, but I saw the light in her eyes when he spoke. She loved the man fiercely.
We sat and had tea with Etta before Gray reluctantly said we had to get going. He hugged her goodbye and said he’d be back to check in on her over the weekend.
When it was time for me to say goodbye, she pulled me into an embrace. “It was wonderful to finally meet you, Layla.”
“You too, Etta.”
“Gray, would you mind getting my TV Guide out of the car before you go?”
Once we were alone again, she squeezed my hand. “I see the way he looks at you. He cares for you a great deal. I’m happy for you that you’ve moved on. But I know my Zippy; he’s strong willed. He won’t move on if he thinks he has the slightest chance of making things right with you. He’s just lost three years of his life that he didn’t deserve to lose. If you have it in your heart, just hear him out. Let him finally tell you his story. Seeing that you’re not interested after you know everything might help him move on, too. He’s lost enough time.”
Chapter 6
* * *
Layla
“Thank you for this morning,” Gray said as we took our seats on the plane—next to each other, in first class.
I assumed that was another detail on my itinerary Gray had chosen to fix, because the seat assignment my assistant had provided was in row twenty-three. I didn’t complain about this change at least.
“Anytime. Etta’s great. She cares about you a great deal.”
“She’s more like a parent to me than the one I had. Most of my teachers in grade school thought she was my mother after my mom died. Etta was the only one who showed up for parent-teacher conferences and chorus concerts. My father never did.”
I felt myself going soft, slipping back to the type of heart-to-heart conversations we’d spent more than a year having. I didn’t want to be mean when he spoke so nicely of a woman who was obviously important to him, but I also didn’t want him to use this situation to get back in with me.
Offering a sympathetic smile, I turned to look out the window. Gray might be a lot of things, but at the top of the list was perceptive. He took the hint, and we were both silent for the rest of boarding and take off. I’d brought my headphones and had planned to put them on to avoid small talk with Gray, but after this morning, it felt ruder than I wanted to be.
Fifteen minutes after we hit our cruising altitude, he shifted in his seat to look at me. “Now that your choices are jumping thirty-five thousand feet or listening to me, I want to explain myself.”
We were in row two, so I could see the door of the plane. I eyed it. “Give me a minute; I’m weighing my choices.”
He smiled before his face grew serious. “I’m not going to tiptoe around what I need to say. I’ve been waiting a long time to get it off my chest.”
Our gazes caught, and he read my silence as safe to proceed.
“I was married. Briefly. But technically, I didn’t lie to you when you asked me. I had the marriage annulled. Which means it never existed.”
I felt a sudden, overwhelming wave of nausea. On a few occasions, I’d considered going back and calling him out on catching him in his lie, but I’d been so hurt and felt so stupid for falling for a guy who was in prison.
It had been a year of bad choices for me, and I’d gotten to a point where I doubted all of my decisions. If Gray had been a regular guy I was dating, and I’d found out he was married, I’d have marched to his house to call him out on his lies. But with Gray, deep down I think I was a little afraid to give him the chance to explain. My heart had fallen fast and hard, yet my head was still screaming it was a bad idea.
“She signed in as your wife on the visitor log.”
“I can’t explain that other than to say when I’d made my list of visitors, things were very different, and she was still my wife.”
“Why wouldn’t you have just told me that you were married, and the marriage had been annulled, when I asked if you’d ever been married? You also told me you’d never been in a serious relationship before. I think marriage qualifies as pretty serious.”
Gray raked his fingers through his hair. “I was afraid to.”