IT WASN’T OKAY. GREY’S CAR was in the driveway, and he was on the floor next to the couch, face buried in his drawn-up knees. His phone lay a few feet away, like it had been tossed. I dropped my bag and hurried to him, fear clawing through my chest.
“Oh my God, what happened? Are you all right?” He didn’t answer, and a sudden horrible thought blew a hole through my mind. “Is it Skye? Are Skye and Dad all right? Greyson, you have to talk to me.”
The sound of his name seemed to rouse him; he shifted and spoke, his voice a blank reflection of his face.
“I got into Duke.”
It was the last answer I expected—so completely out of nowhere, it didn’t register as a real sentence for several beats. Then it engulfed me, sending a strange burst of joy through the middle of my misery.
“Are you serious? Grey, I’m so proud of you, I—” I paused. He didn’t budge. “Shouldn’t you be happy?”
“I got into Duke. Then I told Sadie.” He lifted his head and stared through me, then at me, then right into my eyes. “And then we broke up.”
His words twined around the memory: Sadie in the warehouse lot, disheveled and angry and covered in tears. My heart swooped low, a bird diving too close to rocks.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I told her I got into Duke,” he said again. “My top school. Everything I’ve been working for since I can remember. And do you know what she said? She said: ‘Grey McIntyre, how could you do this to me.’ ”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Yeah, ‘wow.’ She made it all about her, just like every other thing.”
“Well, I’m sure she didn’t mean it, Greyson—you know how she is. Once she gets used to the idea—”
“Not this time. She doesn’t want to leave Asheville. She wants me to get a local job, and marry her, and never want anything more than that for the rest of my life.”
I shrugged, mouth twisting as I looked away.
“I’m sorry. It sucks. But if this is your dream and she won’t support you, maybe it’s for the best.”
“It damn well has to be,” he snarled, “because I’m not giving up Duke. I’m not waiting for ‘we’ll see’ to turn into permission. And you warned me, right? That we were incompatible, and I always took her shit. You warned me, and I blew it off.”
“Yeah, what else is new?” I threw him a mirror image of his own glower. “Look, I love Sadie. She’s the sweetest girl in the world. But she’s got you so trained.”
“She does not.”
“Grey, you were too scared to tell her you applied for college until you had your acceptance letter in hand. This might be the first time you ever actually told her no, and look how it ended.”
His face was a landslide, anger and sorrow engulfing his remaining dignity. He slumped forward, elbows on knees, hands gripped in his own hair.
“I can’t lose her,” he howled. “She’s my whole life. Why am I doing this, Elaine? Why can’t I just be happy with her, like I always was?”
God. He was doing that weird, gulpy, wheezing thing guys do when they’re too upset to function—not calm but not exactly crying, every breath a miserable, wet grudge. I wanted to yell at him and hold him and love him so fiercely, he’d never again know what it was to hurt. I wanted to run away, as far and fast as I could go.
Instead, I focused on peeling my boots and socks off my sore feet, rubbing the raw spot left by the pebble. Giving him space until his wheezes turned to sighs.
“If she made you that happy, you wouldn’t have looked for more in the first place,” I finally said. “Greyson, what did you think would happen? You’d take all your years of studying and put it toward … what? Crafting artisan soap, with my dad? Was Skye going to get you a job at the fucking Biltmore? You’re better than that. You’re going to be so much more than Sadie can imagine.”
He sat up, scrubbing a sleeve over his face. Those eyes, weary and swollen, still beautiful. Still so lost. He took my hand before I knew how to stop him, threaded his fingers through mine and held on tight. The chills were automatic, less a thrill than a shudder. I was so tired.
“Thank you,” he finally said. He peered at me, seeing for the first time past his own tears. “You … Have you slept, Elaine?”
“I sleep,” I said, voice the ghost of a sigh. Not lying by the most technical of technicalities. “I just haven’t been sleeping—sleeping well. Lately.”
“When was the last time?” I could see him counting backward in his mind, and I looked away before he got to the end of that little equation.
“I’m fine, Greyson. Anyway, you’re one to talk.”
“I have a medical condition that literally keeps me awake. If I had the choice—hey. What happened to your foot?”
“I had a rock in my shoe. It was … a long walk home.”
“You walked home? Why?” He blinked at me as if I hadn’t been sitting there the whole time, took in my clumped lashes and tearstained cheeks. “Have you been crying?”
“Oh.” I dropped his hand and rubbed my eyes, fixing them somewhere over his head. “I might have been. Connor—” The name stuck in my throat, blocked by a fresh sob.
“What about Connor?” His eyes bugged. “Did you guys break up? Are you shitting me right now?”
“If you can count it as a breakup. It’s not like we were an official couple, right? Just friends, technically speaking.”
“Oh, technically whatever. The texting, the spinning wheel. That fucking bracelet. He’s been all in for ages.”
“Those aren’t indicators.”
“They are to normal people, Elaine.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how cold you can be, how completely devoid of empathy. You’re like a goddamn Vulcan.”
“I am plenty empathetic, you asshole. I’m sitting here listening to you, aren’t I? Trying to be supportive, even though Connor—”
His name shattered under its own weight, breaking into splinters, then dust. Grey’s sigh was long and loud, heavy with regret.
“Hey. I’m sorry.” He was quiet for a moment, then shifted closer, pulled me into a hug. “Come here.”
I braced myself for the expected chills, the incomparable high sparked by his touch. Nothing. A different kind of tremor seized my body, minuscule and unsettling.
If this was love, I damn sure wasn’t missing much.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek—hard enough that I almost couldn’t hide my wince, or the shiver of revulsion at the taste of blood. Every nerve ending crackled, startling me awake with a sickening jolt.