Page 44 of Gray Area

He touches his forehead to mine. “I meant what I said last night, Vivian. You are important to me. We are together now, right?”

He searches my eyes for confirmation, and I nod, scared it could be the wrong answer. “Then you are mine,” he says softly, taking my hands and lacing his fingers in between my own, “and I take care of what is mine. Got it?”

“Yes,” I answer. I’ve never belonged anywhere, or to anyone. Even time with my mother was always temporary and unsettled. I was always waiting to go to my next holding place. Declan claiming me, telling me I belong to him, ignites something in me I hadn’t known I needed.

“Good, I’ll pick you up at six thirty for work then,” he says and leans down to kiss me. The kiss starts off innocent and then it gets deeper and more passionate. Suddenly our hands are on each other until Bailey, wearing just a towel, clears her throat at the doorway.

“Look, I’m real happy for you both, but I’m dead on my feet tired, so if you could move this little Hallmark movie goodbye to like anywhere else, I’d be forever grateful.”

“Sorry, Bails,” I say, pulling Declan out of the room. “I’ll be right back to change the bed,” I call to her.

“Forget it. I’ll just sleep in the sleeping bag,” she calls back, slamming the door on us.

Chapter 22

PRESENT DAY

DECLAN

Ilost the ability to breathe the day she left. It’s like the knowledge of how to take in a deep exchange of air had been erased from my mind and it was a skill that I had to relearn. But I had done it. It has never gotten easier to breathe, but slowly, over time, I distracted myself enough by throwing myself into work and building up Falco Enterprises with my brothers. And now I did it—just took a breath and didn’t think about the pain. It has just become a part of me.

But one look at her and it is suddenly easy to breathe again—nothing hurts, and the tension is gone. Well, at least the tensionof me never seeing her again. But now there is new tension, a different tension. This tension is from watching as another man slides his hand around her waist, as he smiles at her, and as she laughs at whatever it is he said.

I am going to fucking kill that man.

“Declan, what are you doing to that glass?” Slade asks me. I hear him but I can’t answer him. Instead he looks to what has my attention. “What are you looking— Oh, fuck.”

I watch as she and the dead man walking start a conversation with another political idiot. There is some discussion between them, and he continues talking while Vivian makes her way to the terrace.

I’m up and walking, before I can think better of it, to the terrace after her. I’ve gotten about halfway there when Slade steps in front of me. “What are you doing, Declan?” he asks me in a tone that is more about getting me to rethink my own actions than about him wanting an answer.

I don’t even spare my brother a look. “I need some air,” I say, knocking him with my shoulder as I continue on my way to the terrace.

It’s a nice evening, still quite warm, so there are lots of people outside admiring the gardens below. I pay all the bystanders no mind, even as some call to me, as I stalk my way over to the woman alone in the corner, her back to me, her black hair like a beacon.

I come to a stop about three feet away from her, opening my mouth to speak, but I’m struck dumb. I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure of my approach.

But it doesn’t matter because as I stand there dumbfounded, Vivian turns to me, as if she’s been expecting me. “Hello, Declan,” she says. Her voice and expression are neither happy nor angry; it’s just as her voice had always been—impassive.

“Vivian,” I reply, my voice harsh as her name forms on my lips for the first time in a long time.

“How have you been?” she asks with a small smile and a tilt of her head.

Something in me snaps at her question. Her asking me how I’ve been after nearly ten years as if we are just acquaintances. As if she hadn’t totally blown me apart like a goddamn grenade and left me to reassemble myself into whatever I am now.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” I growl at her.

A look of confusion clouds over her face. “What—”

I lean in, my face millimeters from hers. “You left me. You said nothing and you left,” I say through my teeth, breathing through my mouth so that I don’t inhale her scent.

Without missing a beat, Vivian replies in an even voice, “You left me first, Declan.” I know what she is doing. She is holding her emotions back, the way she did when we first met, the way she did when she wasn’t sure what would happen because the person was a stranger.

I am a stranger to her.

“I didn’t leave—”

“There you are!” a man says, coming up to Vivian and me.

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