It never made sense.
Until right then.
Casey.
And all that acid leaking out of my shredded stomach drenched my system, I couldn’t hold it back anymore so I turned and dashed straight to the bathroom. I hit the tiles painfully as I fell to my knees, sliding. I tagged the toilet and barely got the lid up before I let fly.
Breakfast. Gone.
My back arched and bowed with the strength of sick pouring out of me but I could vomit forever and never get it all out.
It ran in my veins.
It was me.
Vomit. Sick. Filth.
Fucking Casey.
My stupid, fucking, loser, dickhead, user, asshole brother.
“Ivey, baby, Jesus, you’re scarin’ me,” Gray’s voice whispered from close, his hands shifting my hair away from my neck. I couldn’t endure his touch so I lurched away.
Throwing myself on my ass in the corner, pressed between the wall and tub, I saw Gray crouched by the toilet start moving to me.
My arm flew out straight, palm up toward him and I cried, “Don’t!”
He stilled.
“Don’t,” I whimpered, dropping my arm.
Then I looked at the wall, reached out, grabbed a towel from the rail, pulled it down and gathered it close like a security blanket, holding it to my body, the edge of it to my mouth.
Gray closed the toilet lid, flushed it, sat on it and leaned his elbows into his knees before he begged, “Dollface, talk to me.”
“He had money,” I told my bent knees, curling them closer, wrapping one arm around.
“Get outta that corner, honey, come with me. We’ll talk in the other room.”
I didn’t move.
“He had money. A lot of money,” I semi-repeated.
“Ivey –”
My eyes stayed glued to my knees. “I thought he’d stolen it. Now I don’t know. I don’t know where he got it.”
Gray was silent.
I kept talking.
“He said they were after him, us. They’d beaten him badly. I saw that. But months we were on the run. He never pushed the hustle. Never asked for money. Never dropped a con. I looked through his stuff and found the money. I just thought he stole it.”
“Please, baby, let me come to you, get you off this floor.”
I ignored him.
“I never saw them. He told me they were following us but I could spot a tail. I was better at it than him. He was acting weird. All over me. Never left me alone. Never. Never let me get near a phone. Twitchy. God, so damned twitchy. It freaked me out.”
“Right, Ivey, I’m comin’ to you.”
I kept ignoring him even as my ass was suddenly off the bathroom floor, Gray’s was on it and mine was in his lap.
I held my towel to my mouth, looked into his eyes and kept talking.
“Something was up with him,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Gray whispered back, holding me close, holding my eyes, his holding clear concern as he kept his gaze locked to mine.
“I never got it. Never. In the end, I thought he’d made his play just to get me back so we could go on the hustle again because he couldn’t make it without me. But I don’t think it was that. I don’t know what it was but all that money, Gray. I don’t think it was that.”
“So you got shot of him and came back to me,” Gray said quietly.
I nodded vaguely. “I promised you in the note that when the danger was gone, I would. But I can sense danger, Gray, and as we ate up the miles, town to town, state to state, days into weeks, I never felt it. We weren’t being followed. Casey lied to me. The way he was acting, all over me, all sweet to me, but watchful, jittery, it wasn’t right. I couldn’t get a lock on it then I thought I figured it out. I stole his car, left him behind and I went back to you.”
Gray closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tile.
Then he opened them and looked at me. “And you saw me with Chandler.”
Tears filled my eyes and I nodded.
“Fuck, baby,” he whispered, staring at me.
“I thought you saw my note and didn’t care. I thought you moved on. I thought you didn’t want my hassle. I thought you didn’t care I had bad men after me. I thought,” a tear slid out of my eye, “I thought you didn’t care.”
“I loved you, Ivey, and I thought you cleared out on me.”
“I wrote you a note.” My voice broke on those words.
He pulled in breath then sighed.
Then he asked, “That fuckin’ brother of yours, he have the opportunity to grab that note?”
I thought about it and nodded but added, “He couldn’t grab my stuff, though, Gray. And I left stuff. Not a lot of it but it meant something to me. I worked for it, earned it. My skirt, my dress, my heels. I wouldn’t leave that behind. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”