My chin dropped to my chest, and my shoulders shook once, twice, before I sucked in a breath and got control of my overwhelming emotions. He was going to listen. And at that second, I wanted nothing more than Grayson waiting outside the doors to hold me, to tell me he was proud of me. But I’d said I needed to do this on my own, and I would.
The chairs were brought in by a couple older classmen I recognized, and by the looks on their faces, it was mutual. I raised my chin and smiled. No more making assumptions about me.
“Please have a seat, ladies,” Dean Miller said once they’d left. He cleared his throat. “I assume you’d like to keep this investigation private and behind closed doors?”
“Oh no,” Carrie said, gripping the arms of her chair next to me. “We’d like it out in the open.”
“But given the delicate nature of the situation…” he urged.
“We’ve all spoken,” I said, confirming with a few looks to the girls beside me, “and our pride and that of the University, which I assume you’re trying to protect, isn’t as important as identifying other potential victims. We want it out there, so if another girl is enduring the same hellhole we have been, she’ll have the strength to come forward.”
“This isn’t going to be easy for you girls.”
I sat up a little straighter and thought of Grayson, his dyslexia, his determination to stand by Grace, even if in friendship only, and still maintaining that number one spot.
“Nothing that’s right ever is.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Grayson
“Nothing like Thanksgiving dinner at the hospital,” Grace said with a tired smile from her bed. “They promised this was the last round of testing, but at least they let me stay here for it.”
“Actually”—I placed the plate Mom had made for her on the rolling table—“this would be the sixth Thanksgiving dinner I’ve brought to you while in a hospital bed, so I like to think of it as tradition.”
“How about we not repeat it next year, or ever. I’ve had enough of hospitals for the next three lifetimes.”
My eyes narrowed as I spotted my book on her dresser. “Is that my Odyssey?”
“Yeah. You left it after your last visit. I’ve been reading, I hope you don’t mind.”
When I came home after the tornado. Images flashed through my mind, laying under Sam, catching her limp body as I dislodged it from the lockers, praying I wasn’t doing further damage. “No, go ahead.”
“So…” She glanced sideways at me a few times, her telltale sign for working up the courage to say something unpleasant.
“Are you about to harp on me about Sam?” I asked. “It’s been all of twenty-four hours since your last lecture.”
She blinked. “No, actually, but while the subject is open…”
“Ugh.” I leaned my head on the back of the chair. “Nothing’s changed. She wants to finish school in Colorado, and see that all through.”
“Go be with her,” she urged.
“And if by some army miracle, I find a loophole and move out there? Not that one even exists, but let’s say I do, and she still wants nothing to do with me? Keeps insisting that she’s second choice? What then?” I’d be crushed.
“Take a chance. Call her, send a carrier pigeon, or use Morse code. I don’t know, but do something besides mope. I lay here for five years, and life just kind of kept going, except for you. Sure, you went to college, joined the army, went to be all bad-boy pilot, but you still had one foot stuck here. I know it was because of me, and I’m cutting that tether. Go. Move. Live.”
“It’s not that easy.” I closed my eyes, wishing it was.
“Why? I know you feel like you need to protect me, but you don’t. Gray, I was aware of what was going on for most of the last three years of that coma.”
My eyes jerked to hers. “You what?”
Her cheeks flushed crimson. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel guilty, or think about me being aware, trapped here.”
“You were? How did—? How much do you remember?” An edge of desperation crept into my tone, and her smile was sad. Shit.
“A lot. Enough that I knew who Sam was when Mia left her in here. She talked to me, and I instantly knew she was it for you. I mean, I honestly knew the first, well, maybe the second time you talked about her.”
“And before that?”
Her forehead puckered. “Umm. I think I remember right around your junior year at The Citadel? When that physics class was giving you a hard time?”
My eyes widened. “You do remember.”
She nodded and tears welled in her eyes. “And that’s not all. A couple weeks ago I started to remember everything…before.”
The hairs on my neck tingled. “How much of before?”
“You mean, do I remember enough to know that we broke up before your birthday party? That we were fighting when we went off the bridge?”
The air was sucked from my chest. “Grace, I’m so sorry.”
“Stop. Stop now. I have heard enough.” Her hands slammed onto the table, and her plate jumped. “We broke up, Gray, for very good reasons.”
“We wanted different things. Ironic, right? That’s why Sam won’t try.”
“I wanted you to go out and discover your dreams, and maybe I wanted that for me, too. We’d been best friends since we could walk, and loved each other all through high school, and when I looked around, my entire life wasn’t just built around you, it was built on you. I had no idea who I really was unless it was in relation to you. Breaking up was the right move to make, despite that love we felt. You and I both know it wasn’t the kind of love we crave—the kind of love we both need.”