Page 10 of Really Truly Yours

Sydnee leans against a wall. “Grayson, why don’t you have a seat?”

Reached her limit, has she? She’s scowling at me much as she did this morning when I confused her with some cheap one-night stand.

“No thanks.” She should stay out of my business.

Donny lays his forearms on once-puffy armrests that are now a slippery, shiny dinge. “I was surprised when Sydnee told me you was in Chandor.”

Glutton for punishment, I shrug my bad shoulder. “I’m not in the game right now.”

Until approximately eleven o’clock this morning, my stupid injury and stupid surgery and stupid rehab and stupid uncertain future were all I had to worry about.

“But what a coincidence, you being so close. Why Chandor?”

“Who wants to know?” I bob my head with attitude, as if I’m still a jerk teenager. But it’s kind of a suitably loaded question, isn’t it? Who is he to me? Father, sperm donor?

Daddy?

Not a freakin’ chance.

“Grayson.”

“What?” I snap, spinning on Sydnee this time. I’ve already accustomed myself to this neighbor of Donny’s, all huddled in a sweater, wringing her hands, keeping her distance, the picture of meekness.

Until now. Her hazel eyes flash fire and shame. On me.

Fine. I’m a civil human being. I can throw a dying louse of an old man a bone. “I’m sure you remember Tripp. He lives in Chandor. I’m staying with him and his wife.”

“Tripp? In Chandor?”

“Yes. I’ll be there until their baby comes.”

“A baby?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry. It’s not yours, and it’s not your grandkid either, so you’re off the hook on that one any way you slice it. Good news, huh?”

Donny’s face crumples, and he starts to cough, the kind of cough that doesn’t like to stop once it starts.

Sydnee pops off the wall. “Okay, I’m calling this. You should leave, Grayson.”

Donny, still struggling, clutches Sydnee’s sleeve. “N-no.” The tubing from the oxygen catches on his arm and pulls from his nostrils. “My oxygen! Sydnee!”

“Shh. I’ve got it, Donny. You’re okay.” Carefully, she frees the clear tubing and helps him reinsert it. She stabs me with her eyes. “Have you done what you came for, Grayson?”

The tone she wraps around my name says a load more than the question itself. In the sights of those big eyes, I shrink smaller than Donny over there, heaped into a ratty old recliner, gasping for air.

Look at me, making Mom proud again.

But this is different. She might even understand.

Two steps cross me to the exit. I lay hold of the doorknob and yank. For my effort, I come away with a half-open door and a tarnished fixture in my palm. I toss the metal ball and slip through the opening.

The pitiful old guy in the cockeyed recliner may be somebody’s problem, but he isn’t mine.

I refuse to let him be.

Chapter 3

Grayson