Forsaking Gray (The Colloway Brothers Book 1) (29 page)

A lone tear of humiliation streaks down my cheek, rolling into my ear. I am in utter agony. The pain in my heart radiates throughout my entire body and I can’t seem to get it to stop, no matter what I do. I rub my chest, feeling the hurt physically constrict it. This is a million times worse than losing her before. I thought she had run away. I thought she had abandoned me. And it turns out she just played me and left me for another man. How did I not see that one coming? Is that what they mean when they say love is blind?
No
. Love isn’t blind. It just makes you plain fucking stupid. Love and hate are on the opposite sides of a sharp blade, and if you tip too far to either side, you’ll get sliced apart. It will be bloody and it will be painful. I should know…I’ve been on both sides now. Twice.

Townley sent me a brief one-page summary of his findings. Actually it was one paragraph. I paid thirty thousand dollars for about fifty earth-shattering, ego-bruising, gut-wrenching words. She married a man named Peter Wilder two days after she left me. She must have been seeing the asshole during at the same time she was me and I guess he was the better man. Had more to offer. Maybe he was richer than I am. Maybe he had a cock the size of an anaconda. It pains me to wonder what he could offer her that I couldn’t. And the only reason she wasn’t with him any longer was because he was six feet under.

I’m overwhelmed with emotions that I simply can’t deal with. I have to turn off my brain. I need a reprieve, if only for a brief fucking moment. I close my eyes and try to let the drunken haze take me into blessed oblivion when I hear my locks turn and my door open. Never mind that I don’t know that many people in New York, let alone anyone that has a key to my apartment, but I don’t move. I don’t think I can. I tell my limbs to defend me, but they won’t respond. I hear voices in the background and I vaguely wonder if I’m going to be robbed. Maybe they’ll kill me and put me out of my sad misery. At this moment, it would be a blessing.

I’m mentally trying to place where I left my cell and if I can reach it in time when the lights turn on and I’m temporarily blinded.

“What the fuck,” I yell, throwing a protective arm over my pupils before they’re scorched.

“Well, at least he’s alive. Shitfaced, but alive.”

“What the fuck are you doing here, Ash?” I slur.

“Check the condo for any naked women that may be passed out,” he directs someone. Like I would be able to get hard for another woman. I never will be able to again. I’ll be one-handing it for the rest of my life to my memories of the only woman I’ll ever love. How pathetic is that? As much as I want to, I can’t hate her. I still love her deep down to my core, even after what she did to me. What seems like an hour later, I hear my other brother respond, “Clear.”

“Why are you here?” I moan. I want to wallow in my despair and misery alone. I don’t want help. I don’t want to be saved. I don’t want anyone to try to console me and tell me everything is going to be alright. It will never be all fucking right. Ever. Again.

And remembering what Ash said in my office I sure as fuck don’t want my brothers to bathe me. “And if you so much as look at my junk, I’m cutting yours off. Just as soon as I don’t see two of you.”

“Come on, Gray, let’s get you to bed.” Then, with a brother on either side, they drag me from the couch into the bedroom, throw me unceremoniously onto the mattress and strip me down to my underwear. The last thing I remember before I pass out is the sad looks on my siblings faces at my condition.

Or my predicament. It doesn’t matter…it’s one and the same. A big pile of stinking shit.

_______________

Moaning, I roll over, holding my head. I feel like a tractor-trailer hit me when I wasn’t looking. The last time I felt like this was…
fuck
. Everything comes rushing back like a dam that just burst. The entire week that I’ve tried to erase through self-medication flashes back like a bad movie stuck on instant replay.

She was married.

I groan when I sit up, grabbing my throbbing skull. I sit there for several agonizing minutes before I notice three aspirin and a glass of water sitting on my nightstand. Then I remember that my brothers are here and for once, I’m grateful. I need to be surrounded by my family. Learn from my past mistakes and lean on them, not push them away.

I down the medication, stumble into the bathroom, and half an hour later, I feel marginally better. My skin is still pink from the scorching water I let pummel my aching flesh. It felt good to redirect the pain for a while away from my soul to another body part.

I throw on a pair of faded jeans and blue polo shirt and pad barefoot into the kitchen. Conn and Ash are sitting at the island, heads together in a low, heated conversation that I can’t hear. As soon as Conn spots me, they stop, both heads swiveling toward me, gauging my mood. I ignore them and walk to the coffee pot, pouring myself a cup of the strong brew. I wish it were bourbon instead. I could use the hair of the dog about now.

“What happened?” Conn finally asked, breaking the silence. I take a deep breath and try to find the right words deep inside me and force them out.

I was a fool.

I was duped.

I was played.

I was deceived in the worst possible way.

But I can’t. I can’t say any of them, because every time I try, they get stuck in the top of my constricted throat, so I walk to the living room, grab the brief report and throw it on the counter in front of them. A couple minutes later, two sets of eyes look up at me questioningly.

“I fucking knew it,” Asher hissed. “I knew she was hiding something. I knew she would do this to you, Gray.”

“Wait a minute, both of you.” Conn…always the most level-headed one of the group. “Is this from a reliable source?”

I nod. Robert Townley is one of the most sought out private detectives in the United States. For a reason. He wouldn’t be as successful as he is if he gave out bogus information.

Conn shakes his head in disbelief. “I don’t know, Gray. Something doesn’t feel right about this. I don’t think Livia would do this to you. I see the way she
looks
at you. Like you’re her entire world. Have you talked to her?”

“No,” I reply flatly. I can’t stomach hearing any more lies. Even if they have been lies of omission.

My younger brother stares me down. “You should. You owe it to both yourself, and to her, to get some straight answers. Even if they’re answers you don’t want to hear, Gray. You deserve to know the whole truth, if for nothing else, so that you can get some closure and put this shit behind you once and for all. You won’t have any peace until you do.”

Conn’s right. I need to stop being a pussy and confront her, but I don’t know if I’m ready.

“She’s not doing much better than you, by the way,” he continues. “She’s pale and has a blank look in her eyes and she’s lost a visible amount of weight this week already.”

My gut clenches, his words like a knife tearing into my already shredded soul. I don’t want to care, but I do. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop. “I don’t know if I’m ready to see her yet.”

Asher speaks up. “I’ll take care of things, but you need to come back home. You need to get back to Chicago, Gray. You’ve got a fucking company to run and you can’t do it by conference call much longer.”

I nod. That’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed away because I just cannot see her sitting outside my office door every day, but I don’t have the heart to do something about it. At least Asher can reassign her somewhere else so I don’t have to run into her, until I sort out what I’m going to do. God, I’m a fucking pussy.

“Yes, fine,” I finally agree.

I take my coffee cup and walk to the bay of windows, looking out at the crisp morning sky. I talk to the window, to my brothers, to no one at all. I just talk, because I need to get the words out of me.

“I remember when I brought Livvy here for her birthday the first year we were dating. We’d only been together just a couple of months. She’d never been to New York, never seen a Broadway play, so while I’m not much of a theatergoer myself, I took her. We saw
Cats
. I’ll never forget that night. I knew I was falling in love with her already, but that sent me plummeting over the edge and I knew I didn’t want to live a day without her.

“My God, she was mesmerized by the play and I was mesmerized by
her
. I’m not even sure I saw any of it because the only thing I could do was watch her and her reactions. She looked like a kid who’d seen Santa Claus in the mall for the first time. She was captivated and childlike and in such awe and I thought to myself,
I
can give her this. I
want
to give her this. I would do anything in my power to make this woman happy for the rest of her life.”

No one speaks for the longest time.

“You’ll move past this, Gray. You got over her once. You can do it again.”

I shake my head. “I never got over her, Ash. I don’t think I’m capable of
ever
getting over her. She’s strength and sunshine and dreams all rolled up into this magical little being. You remember what I was like when I met her. I was a bumbling idiot.”

“I remember,” Ash replies quietly.

“She’s still all of those things and so much more now. She’s not perfect, but she’s
my
perfection. I’ve never met another woman that even comes close to what she gives me and I know I never will. She’s tattooed on my soul and there’s not a thing or a person that can ever erase her mark and I don’t know what to fucking do about it.”

Conn lays a comforting hand on my shoulder, squeezing. “I watched you go through hell when you lost her the first time. I watched you slowly bounce back over the years never quite being who you had been before. But over these past few weeks, Gray, I’ve watched you become the man you used to be. You’re happy, you smile, you’ve got that gleam back in your eye that was dull and lifeless before. Give it some time, but then talk to her. You both deserve that even if things don’t end up the way you want them to. At least this time you’ll have some closure.”

I nod, knowing he’s right, but also wondering where I’ll find the strength inside to possibly let the woman I know I can’t live without go a second time. Only this time it will be
me
running away and I’m just not sure I can get my feet to move in any direction but where she is.

But I also don’t know if I can ever forgive her betrayal either.

Chapter 41

It’s mid-afternoon on Saturday when the final nail in my coffin is hammered in, and for some reason, this one hurts the worst. It’s been a week since I’ve touched or seen or talked to Gray and every passing day is worse than the one before. I had an emergency appointment with Dr. Howard this morning and I could hardly talk. Most of the hour I spent crying. I feel like after a week of constant weeping, that well should be dry, but my treacherous body keeps making more moisture to replenish what I’ve lost.

The doorbell rings and my stomach goes into a free-fall. Maybe it’s finally Gray, but as I look through the peephole, disappointment floods me and I take a resigned step back at who I see on the other side. This is not good.

“Camille, what are you doing here?” I ask as I open the door. It’s a rhetorical question because I know exactly why she’s here. Somehow I manage to keep the waterworks at bay as she produces a severance agreement, effective immediately. It’s grossly over-substantial, two years worth of pay and benefits for a month of work. Now I just feel like a whore he’s trying to buy off. I want to rip up the papers in front of me into a thousand pieces, burn them and send the ashes back in a box with a big
Fuck You
scrawled in magic marker across the top.

But I don’t.

While it crushes my heart just as if he’d reached into my chest and bled that aching muscle dry with his own two hands, it’s clear he doesn’t want to see me again. This is his goodbye.

So if he wants to buy me off, I’ll let him. I’ll use the money to move and start a new life somewhere else. I can no longer live in the city that I’ve come to love if he’s in it. At some point in the future, if I happen to run into him, especially with another woman on his arm or pushing a baby stroller, I’ll lose it. I’ll never be able to accept that he’s not mine. Over the past five years, I’ve always thought of him that way, even when he wasn’t. Maybe I’ll move to a small town in Wyoming where no one knows me and I can live a simple life, alone. The country sounds like a good place to start fresh.

I don’t ask questions as she goes through the terms of the agreement. Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit what it says. I blindly sign, and turn over my security badge and the key to Gray’s office. As Camille hands me the meager personal effects from my desk, she says, “I’m very sorry, Livia. Truly.”

Me too.
I nod. I believe her because you just can’t fake that kind of sincerity. She’s just a pawn. Sent to do Gray’s dirty work. Not only does he not have the decency to hear me out, he doesn’t have the balls to fire me himself. It pains me deeply to learn he’s not the man I thought he was. He’s a coward, but then again, so am I.