Page 7 of Even If the Sky is Falling
“You got it.”
Halley stepped out of the door and headed down the hall, Griff right behind her.
Halley stormed down the hall and thrust open the door to a small private sleeping quarters. Against one wall, a couple of scratchy surplus blankets and a white sheet dressed a drab mattress on a twin cot, which was topped with a thin white pillow. A red-and-black-plaid throw blanket was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Across from the cot was a work desk and open shelving filled with emergency supplies. The wall connecting the space was bare other than an old pedestal sink and a small wastebasket.
Griffin squeezed into the room before Halley could slam the door shut.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do, Griff? We’ve incited nationwide panic!” She tore a couple of paper towels from a roll on the work desk, then blotted the sweat from her forehead and the bridge of her nose. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her breath was short. She stood with her hands on her hips, willing herself to calm down.
“You don’t know that, Halley. We don’t have any reports to indicate that anyone is hurt.”
“Oh, you really think that people just went into these bunkers and aren’t freaking out right now, worried that the world is going to end? Like people hear those sirens and are like, bet—let me just proceed in an orderly fashion??” She thunked down onto a corner of the cot harder than she intended—the cot’s springs creaking sharply in response.
His full lips curved into a lazy half smile as his dark brown eyes bore into hers playfully, his head tilted slightly. “What would you want to do if you thought the world was possibly coming to an end?”
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “But it’s not!”
“You and I know that, sure, but no one out there does. Come on, Hal. You don’t even want to think about it?” He stretched his arms above his head, wrapping his fingers around the top shelf of supplies, his arms threatening to burst through the sleeves of his shirt. “I know what I’d do.”
Halley felt the tug, as if he had become the center of gravity. She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue, willing herself to maintain her distance. “What’s that? You know what? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
“Oh, I think you do. Come on, the sky is falling, you wouldn’t want to sit outside with me and watch for shooting stars? We could count them, one by one.” He grinned at her, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth as his brow curved upward. He used to make that look at her from across the room whenever they were at some event that he wanted to leave—his signal that he was ready to take her home and take off her clothes.
She rolled her eyes. “Is that really where your mind is right now?” Of course, now that he mentioned it, that was all she could think of—how annoyingly romantic of him.Here is Griffin, king of bad timing, first of his name. Why is he still so sexy?Halley watched the way Griff’s chest expanded with each breath below those sculpted shoulders. She hated how she could remember the tickle of his stubble against her sensitive skin. She glared at him, angry that he took her mind to this place so easily.
Griff leaned back against the supply shelves. “My mind is always there a little bit, but honestly, right now I’m just hoping to distract you enough to calm you down. You’re so focused on Song, and while he deserves to be within your crosshairs right now, is this really about what he did, or are you just projecting your anger with me onto him?”
“Are you kidding me? Millions of people are sheltering right now because of that fool! What the hell does that have to do with you? But you know what? Yes, let’s talk about you, because apparently I have time today.” She blinked at him, resting her elbows on her knees.
He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
Halley felt her intuition split into two—the pros and the cons resting on either of her shoulders. The pros wanted closure, while the cons believed nothing good could come from reopening the same can of worms. Closure won. “Why did you do it, Griff? We were great together.”
“It’s like we’re right back to the same argument. I thought we were both past this.” Griffin rubbed the back of his neck, a pinch between his brows.
“How am I supposed to be past something when I don’t understand why it ended? You broke things off without any explanation—you sent a text, you refused to talk about it and you completely shut down. I’m just supposed to magically know what happened? I couldn’t fix it, I couldn’t move on, because I didn’t even know what went wrong. I mean, what the fuck did I do to you?” She gulped in a breath, tears threatening to spill. “Can you just give me that so that I can finally move on?”
Griffin rolled his eyes, staring at something on the ceiling. His chest heaved, as his thick arms crossed in front of him. He bit his lip, shaking his head as if he was holding back.
Clearly he’s not interested in having this conversation.“You know what, Griff? Never mind.” Halley narrowed her eyes as she pointed at him, standing up as if to leave the room.
“You know what, Hal, maybe I didn’t want you to move on.” His tone resigned, he fixed his gaze on her.
“What? I don’t understand.” Halley shook her head.None of this makes sense.“Why wouldn’t you want that? You moved on first, so why wouldn’t you want that for me?”
Griffin’s face twisted as he snapped at her. “Don’t you know that was the biggest mistake of my life? Walking away from you was the worst thing I’ve ever done—I didn’t know what ‘being ready’ meant. I just knew I was supposed to be ready first—that’s what Pop always said. I thought that I was supposed to have all my shit together, but I didn’t have any sort of plan, and I was afraid of my feelings for you.”
Confused, she stared at him, as if he’d grown another head. “What was it that you were supposed to do though? We already lived together. I wasn’t pressing you for anything—we both had work goals that we wanted to achieve before we took any next steps.” She felt like she was missing some of the figures in an extremely complicated equation.
“That’s true, but Ifeltlike I was supposed to be ready to propose or make some other big gesture. The second that I knew I loved you, it’s like this ticking clock hung around my neck. Everyone was waiting for me to make a move, and I couldn’t handle the pressure. You didn’t ask me to do anything, but friends would joke, and you know my mom has been asking me since the day we moved in together when I was going to ‘make an honest woman out of you.’” He rolled his eyes as he made air quotes with his fingers. “By the time I figured things out for myself, you had already moved out, and you wanted nothing to do with me. We got assigned to different teams and that was it. But I never stopped loving you, Halley.”
“How am I supposed to believe you now? I didn’t just opt to move out. You told me that you couldn’t do this anymore.” She gestured between them. “You ended this and let me think for a year that you stopped loving me—that I wasn’t enough or had done something wrong.”
Griffin turned to face her, a pleading look in his eyes. “The sky could come falling down tomorrow, Hal. I don’t want to be anywhere that isn’t with you. If that means we’re engaged, or married, or you’re barefoot and pregnant, I’ll be the happiest man alive because I’m living my dream with you. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize it right away—honestly, it took me losing you to really get it. And I’ll do whatever I have to convince you. For starters, there’s this.” He pressed his lips against hers, cradling her face with his hand.
Their lips touched softly at first. Halley pulled back briefly to press her lips together and frown at him, but something inside compelled her to lean forward and kiss him again. Her cheeks flushed, and he stroked his fingers against the nape of her neck. Her lips parted, and he kissed her hungrily, gliding his tongue against hers before sucking on her lower lip. His fervor ignited her appetite, and she let down her walls, throwing herself into his kiss.
Neither wanted to stop for air. Frantically, Halley pulled her sweater over her head as Griffin removed his tactical belt. He took off his polo shirt over his head and lifted Halley to her feet, pressing her against the wall. “The cot is going to make a lot of noise,” he whispered, returning his mouth to hers before trailing his tongue down the side of her neck.
