Just One Regret(22)

“I’m sorry,” I spit out over choked sobs. Shaking my head back and forth, I can’t look Grayson in the eye when he looks back at me. Instead I peer over the railing only to find three sets of eyes staring back at me: Sarah, Lynx, and Rodney. They’re all here, witnessing my shame. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want your fucking sorrys,” Grayson whispers harshly, rising to full height. “I want to know what happened.” He points a finger at me, glaring with an intensity that shatters my heart. “I’ll give you two fucking minutes to get downstairs, and then I want my answers.”

I stare at him as he turns around, watch as Landon’s hand thumps him on the shoulder, and then I keep watching the space he’s walked away from, knowing that the amount of anger he’s just shown me is only the beginning.











“Are you okay?” Sarah asks when I reach the kitchen.

She managed to dig up some clothes for me from Landon or Lynx’s room and set them down on the bed where I had just spent all night wrapped in Grayson’s arms.

When I cried so hard I couldn’t tell her thank you, or that I didn’t want to talk, or to leave me alone, she simply wrapped her arms around me and held me tighter. “I’ll go get you some coffee,” she’d whispered gently and soothingly into my ear before she’d left me alone.

It’s taken me longer than two minutes, and even though there isn’t a single sound in the suite and I have no idea where the other men are, I can feel Grayson’s restrained impatience growing closer to snapping with every second it’s taking me to get ready to tell him everything.

I can’t stop crying, and tears only fall harder when Sarah hands me a coffee with sugar, just the way I like it.

“The guys are in the media room,” she says softly. “I can stay here, if you need me.”

I shake my head and bring the coffee to my lips. “I have to do this on my own.”

Her smile is sad. I stiffen when she wraps her arm around my shoulders and presses me against her in a side hug. Gingerly, she kisses my temple. “You’re not alone. I’ll never let that happen.”

“Thanks,” I mumble through tears and the haze of the last ten minutes.

I can’t believe I woke in bed to shouts and angry words filtering up the stairs and into Grayson’s bed. I had only seconds to take in the fact that I was actually in Grayson’s bed before the memories of the previous night evaporated when I heard him bellowing my name so loudly that the floor of his room vibrated.

“He’ll calm down, I’m certain of it,” she whispers again and pulls away. “Just be honest.”

I nod and take a sip of coffee, hoping it wakes me up enough to face my one-man firing squad.

With my nerves on high alert, trepidation fills my feet with lead as I move toward the living room. Grayson is sitting on the couch, his back to me, but I can still feel his anger.

I don’t blame him.

He’s had a visit from his dad and a bomb dropped in his lap all in one morning.











The silence between us stretches to unimaginable levels as soon as I take a seat in the living room chair. I’m directly across from Grayson, but he has yet to look up or acknowledge my presence in any way.

Nervousness trickles through my veins in an unyielding pace as I sip my coffee, trying to form all the words to what I want to tell him.

I can’t bear to witness his tortured posture any longer. “By the time I found out I was pregnant, you had already left town.”

His shoulders shudder with my quiet announcement.

Closing my eyes, I chew on my bottom lip, trying to fortify myself for the argument I know is coming. I can’t imagine how he’s feeling right now, finding out about our baby by someone other than me…by his own dad.

I can only assume he was there the day I tried to stop by but lacked the bravery to knock on the front door. Why he’d snap a picture, though, and save it for so long, is anyone’s guess.

“I tried to find you—I really did, Grayson.”

“Stop saying my name.” His voice sounds as if he’s been shredded. I flinch from the cold pain in his words and roll my lips, fighting back more tears.

They fall anyway, and I brush them away.

His hands clasp together, elbows braced on his knees spread wide, and he cracks his knuckles.

“I met Sarah when I moved back to school,” I continue, backing up a few steps in my story. “For the first couple weeks, I was really upset, my heart broken over how you’d left me.”

His eyes snap to mine with a searing glare. It chills my body and I shiver.

For several moments he stares at me, and I feel the intensity that his opponents must face in the cage across from him. It’s terrifying, and my adrenaline spikes.

I suck in a long breath and bite my tongue. “When I missed my period, I chalked it up to stress…to you leaving, me moving, starting school… It wasn’t until I started throwing up every morning that I knew something else was going on.” I close my eyes and think back to that day in the student health clinic when the physician’s assistant told me I was pregnant. My entire world paused. “So I went back to Braxton and looked for you. I asked everyone, searched for all your friends—hell, I even went to the Corner Bar and asked some of the girls I knew you’d slept with.”

I flinch from the pain of that memory. Nothing was more humiliating than walking up to Grayson’s one-night stands as the homely and awkward best friend they had never liked.

“You should have tried harder,” he says. Every word he spits at me makes tears fall faster. “Or fuck…Kennedy…God.” He clasps his hands at the back of his neck, lacing them together. “Damn it!” He sits up, his back rigid, every muscle taut, and shakes his head. “I have a kid.”

He doesn’t sound like he’s speaking to me—more to himself—so I stay quiet and let him continue to process the news that was so horribly thrown at his feet.

“Where is he?” he asks, looking at me, his eyes imploring. “She…?”

I choke over a sob. I know what he’s asking. I just can’t bring myself to relive that moment. My labor wasn’t easy. It lasted thirteen hours and was filled with excruciating pain along with an ache in my heart that increased with every contraction.

I hadn’t wanted to give our baby to another family. I just knew, deep down, it was the best thing for him.

“He went to a really loving family, Grayson. The woman is a second grade teacher, the dad a general contractor for a construction company. They tried for years—”

“He?” Grayson stands, his frame scary and intimidating as I realize what I’ve said. My eyes widen along with his when his hands swipe down his cheeks. “You said ‘he.’”

“I—”

He leans over me and I push back into my chair to add space between us when he shouts, “I have a son? And what do you mean…family?”

“Grayson—”

His eyes widen as understanding dawns. “You didn’t keep him.”

“I did what was best—”

“No!” He takes a step back, finger shoved in my face. “I have a fucking son and you hid it from me, took him away without giving me a choice. Jesus fuck, what in the hell is wrong with you!”

“You left me!” I shout back. My tears fall so fast I can barely see him.

I hate having to relive this. I hate having to explain it. I hate that he’s so fucking pained, that he’s no longer in shock but he’s completely filled with rage—hating me. I knew this would happen as soon as I told him; it’s why I avoided this moment for so long. Why I allowed myself to get swept into his promises and his pleas and his seductive touches.

“I know I should have told you, but I didn’t know where you were, Grayson!” I jump out of the chair, leaning forward, my anger and my pain colliding. “I’m sorry that you didn’t know, but you’re the one who left! You walked away. You refused to take my phone calls. I tried to call. I tried to make things right after that night. I apologized and begged and pleaded for you to forgive me.” I stop and pull in a breath. My throat is dry, my voice scratchy. “You ignored all of it! If you had just picked up your phone and called me back, listened to a single damn message I left, you would have known!”

“So this is how you punish me?” He presses his finger into his chest. “By selling my fucking kid to the highest bidder?”

“I didn’t know what else to do!”

My hands clamp into fists and then straighten. There’s too much emotion, too many memories all swirling inside me. I don’t know whether to beg for forgiveness and tell him how much I desperately love him or blame it all on him for turning his back on me.

“I needed you. I needed my best friend and you had just vanished. What did you expect me to do? Move home to Braxton and raise our baby in my parents’ home?”

He jerks back.

“Is that what you wanted—our kid being raised around my drunk of a mom and my asshole of a dad? Better yet, I could have dropped him off at your dad’s doorstep. He could have raised him!”

“Fuck you!” he roars.