Page 39 of A Sorrow of Truths
Annoyingly.
“Leave it and go,” I snap again, at her this time. “Assuming you’re still capable of making your own choices.”
He does nothing other than stare at me, eyes narrowed as he tries to work out what this is. This is me, is what it is. This is pissed Hannah making her presence felt and her anger palpable rather than internalising it all the time or hiding it under pills and stupid fucking dreams.
Eventually he waves her off, not once removing his eyes from mine. Good.
“Truth, Gray. This isn’t a date. We’ve never done that, have we?”
His hand moves slowly after a while, the palm of it landing flat in the middle of the table on top of the chain. “Did you miss not having this on your skin?”
“I missed having you on my skin, that doesn’t mean you deserve to be on it.”
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much did you miss me on your skin?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“No, shall I then?” He’s so still again. So perfectly still, not the slightest animation or movement. No smile. No smirk of self-importance. “Some pleasant truths to counter the ones you’ll hate me for?” Hate him for? My chin lifts, body stiffening under the possibility of something I don’t want to hear. “Shall I tell you how I slept with this chain, how I had it in my pocket every day, wrapped it around my fingers like you did just so that I could feel you near me?”
The heart I was trying to harden cracks a little, splinters like the shards of ceramic on the floor beneath me. “Or would you like to know how each night I dreamed of something I can’t have because of my circumstances?” I gulp another swill of red wine, hoping to ignore a passion that I can’t hear from him after those women. “What I should tell you, is how I haven’t been able to concentrate on a goddamn thing other than you since the moment I left you with Malachi, and how much that’s pissed me off and yet made me feel alive for the first time in years.”
Oh god, no. Don’t do this.
My lips quiver, hand shaking slightly as I try to control the wine glass and ignore all of it, including the thuds that have started pounding loudly.
Thud, thud, thud.
He leans forward, making sure my gaze isn’t going anywhere but directly at him. “Being with you, and having you with me, was extraordinary to me. You’ve made me think. You make menotthink.” He smiles solemnly and leans back, his eyes going to his own hand and the chain rather than looking at me anymore. “You’re remarkable, Hannah. I never saw you coming, and I wouldn’t change a second of our time together.” My toes scrunch against the floor, heart beating wildly as it reaches across the space for him. “And now, because of you and all that, I need your guidance.”
I don’t think I heard that last bit right.
I gulp wine again, unsure what the hell Grayson Rothburg would need my guidance for. I don’t even know how to guide myself lately, let alone him.
He stares some more at his hand, his fingers toiling over the chain, and then a sigh falls from him as if the world is about to end around us. I wouldn’t care if it did. Just those words and the rest doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Maybe that’s all I wanted to hear – some honesty, some thoughts that he’s withheld from me even if I felt them somehow when he refused to acknowledge them.
I’m smiling, smiling for the first time since the horses and that sense of freedom that came with them. I can feel it creeping across my face, concerns of everything else evaporating as it breaks and finds a home in this darkness we’re in.
“You’re so beautiful, Hannah. Always were. Intriguing, fascinating, and worth everything I have to give.”
Tears well in my eyes, happiness rendering the time before him, before this adventure with him alone, irrelevant. All this seems to mean more than Rick ever did. It lingers somewhere deeper, burrows in without care for the past. Joined. Connected in ways I never knew possible. “I don’t know who I am out here, though. In the real world. Not anymore. I just wish I’d found you before,” he murmurs.
I watch his eyes harden at that, watch them drop away from me and down to the table. His smile goes with it, the jaw cutting like glass again rather than softening for me, as he stares downwards. The sudden change makes me cling to staring at his face rather than looking downward with him, some inbuilt fear tunnelling through the thuds that were starting to beat loudly again. It twists inside me, churning and turning. Building a storm.
Truths.
They’re coming.
And I don’t want them now.
Following the line of his gaze, courage fuelling me there, I gaze downwards until it reaches something that makes everything, every single moment of time I’ve spent with him, rotten and abhorrent. My chair scrapes on the floor, as I push it backwards away from him, the glass of wine crashing to the floor in my despair.
A wedding band.
A man’s wedding band.