Chapter 100
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༨ ཋཱི, 63% –
JESSICA
Grayson is sleeping beside me. He looks so peaceful. I rested my hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat as quickly as my own.
Maybe we’re both pretending to be okay. Maybe that’s enough for tonight.
His fingers twitch where they rest at my hip–instinctive, possessive even in sleep. He stirred, like he felt me watching him. His lashes fluttered, but his eyes didn’t open. Instead, he exhaled quietly and kept his hand firm on my waist.
“What are you thinking?” he murmured, voice rough from sleep.
“Hm?” I let my head rest on his chest, hoping he couldn’t hear how my pulse was going wild. “Nothing.”
A lie because I’m thinking about everything.
His thumb moves, slow drag along my waist, drawing small circles over the fabric of my shirt. It’s nothing. It’s everything. I close my eyes and try to memorize the weight of his hand–because part of me still thinks this won’t last, and I want to keep something when it ends.
“Jessica,” he says again, softer this time, and I don’t know if it’s a question or a reassurance.
I shift slightly, angling my body toward him. “I missed this,” I say, barely a whisper.
His eyes open at that. Dark, heavy with sleep and something else–something older, aching.
“I know,” he says, voice raw. “I’ve missed you too, baby.” Grayson rolls halfway on top of me, pinning my body between the mattress and the full weight
of him. “I’ve missed us.”
I tilt my head just enough for my mouth to graze his jaw. “Do you think…” I start, then pause, wetting my bottom lip with a flick of my tongue. “Do you think after this… everything will go back to normal?”
“There’s no such thing as normal after you,” he says, voice low and rough, like it’s dragging truth straight from his chest.
That makes me bite down on a pout. I turn my face slightly, cheek brushing the pillow. “That sounds like a no.”
“It sounds like I don’t want normal if it means pretending we didn’t happen.”
1 close my eyes for half a second–just to breathe, just to not let everything show on my face. The part of me that wants to believe him, to trust this, to let go of every reason I built for keeping him at arm’s length.
But it’s also the part that’s terrified.
“Since…” My voice is soft, my words catching like thorns in my throat. “Since when did you know I’m your mate, Grayson?”
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now. Turning it over in my head, over and over again like a stone in my palm. Wishing I could forget the question–and even more than that, desperate to believe the answer if it’s real.
He goes still above me. “Jess!
“I want to know”
No. I need to know.
I have to know about it or I lose my goddamn mind.
“It was always you,” he says after a beat. “From the start.”
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Chapter 100
My chest tightens look up at him. His eyes are open now, fully. Awake, Guarded
“Then why?” The words fall out of me, cracked and raw. “Why were you such an asshole to me back then, Grayson? You were cruel. You bullied me.”
My voice trembles but I don’t stop Fean’t stop
So keep going. Pecause ill stop now, the silence will eat me alive.
“You bullied me, Grayson. You made me feel stupid. Small. Like I didn’t belong near you. Like I was just some annoying little girl you couldn’t be bothered
His jaw ticks Mix nostrils flare once. “You think I wanted to treat you like that?” he says finally. “You think I wanted to look at you every day and act like you weren’t already under my goddamn skin?”
I forgot if we ever had this conversation between us but then Grayson always lies to me before. He kisses me and tells me lies and then kisses me some more as if he’s trying to shut me up.
“You were seventeen, Jess. You were fearless and bright and wild and… good. Too good. You walked into a room and I couldn’t breathe.”
He stops, swallows. His voice drops lower, almost hoarse.
“And I was already ruined.”
My pulse trips
1 let myself even look at you the way I wanted to…” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have stopped.”
I stare at him. My hands curt slightly against his chest.
“Then why didn’t you just walk away?” I ask, “You didn’t have to torture me, Grayson. You didn’t have to make me feel like–like I was in the way.”
“I wanted to walk away,” he growls. “God, I wanted to walk away.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I couldn’t he says, eyes blazing. “Even then. I couldn’t stay away from you, Jess.”
it was always me- If he knew–If the bond was there all along Then how the hell is Riot my mate too?
I press my lips together and stare up at the ceiling like it might spell out the answer for me in the cracks.
“I still don’t understand it,” I whisper before i can stop myself. “The bond.”
i feel hun trying to read me, even with his eyes closed “What part?”
“All of it,” admit, because if i don’t say it now, it’s going to fester. “How can it be you and Riot? How can I feel both?”
Grayson sits up sleety las he’s moving through myd His hand drags down his face. I should stop. I should shut up. But the words keep pouring, sharp and desperate and wrong
“I feel Riot,” I say “Like an echo in my bones Like something alive that’s not mine but still part of me.”
I look at him “But with you?” I’m sorry Grays. “With you 8’s just… silence. Nothing. I keep waiting to feel something when you touch me. A spark. A tug Anything” My voice shatters “But it’s not there, Grayson
He looks like i stabbed him But I can’t stop. This conversation needs to happen.
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09:41 Tue, 26 Aug M
Chapter 100
“I want it to be you” The confession rips out of me like a sob. “God, I want it to be you. Do you know how many nights I begged for it to be you?”
His eyes flicker. Pain. Fury. Something close to ruin.
“But I can’t force itel can’t lie to my own fucking skin.”
I’m trembling. I don’t even know what I want from him anymore–answers, apologies, time rewound until this all makes sense.
63%
“You say it’s me. That I was always yours. That you knew” My hands curl in the sheets. “Then where the hell is it, Grayson? Where’s the bond? Where’s the part of me that should be clawing its way toward you if this is real?”
He breathes in, slow Dangerous.
“You think I don’t ask myself the same thing every time I look at you?” His voice is low, rough. “You think I haven’t ripped myself apart trying to figure out why the hell I can feel you like fire in my blood and you don’t feel shit?”
flinch.
He doesn’t apologize.
“You were mine before Riot even fucking touched you,” he spits, jaw tight enough to crack. His voice scrapes raw, all rage and something worse–hurt. “) felt it. You didn’t. And maybe that means I’m broken. Or maybe someone broke it. I don’t know. But don’t stand there and act like I haven’t been clawing through hell to make sense of this.”
My chest squeezes tight, ribs straining like they might splinter. My mouth tastes like copper. I drag in a breath that feels like it scrapes raw down my
throat.
My fingers twitch, nails catching on the edge of the sheet, picking at a loose thread until it snaps. I can’t look at him, not right away.
Then I do. Really look.
Eyes glassy, red at the rims like he hasn’t slept in days. Shoulders bunched so hard they look carved from stone. Breath ragged, nostrils flaring with every inhale like it physically fucking hurts him to stand this close.
He’s shaking–barely, but enough to see. But he won’t beg. Grayson never fucking begs.
“wanted you to feel it,” he rasps. His words scrape out, like he’s bleeding them. “I waited for you to fucking catch up. Thought if I loved you hard enough, long enough, you’d finally feel it clawing at your bones the way I do.”
His throat works, bobbing His mouth pulls tight at the edges, a crack of something breaking through. “But you didn’t. And now you look at me like I
led”
My breath jerks, ribs flaring wide like my chest can’t hold it all in. My palm slides to my sternum, pressing down like I can hold my heart still, like I can keep it from beating itself bloody against my ribs.
He least closer, the mattress dipping under his weight, the heat of him rolling over my skin. I smell sweat, salt, the sour tang of old hurt. His hair fails across his forehead, shadowing eyes that don’t fucking blink.
Voice splintered her broken glass, low and raw enough to cut: “I didn’t he, Jess I’m your mate Even if you never feel it. Even if you pick him.”
My gaze drops to his band, curled tight at his side phed he lets go he’ll reach for me by fingers itch, traitorous, wanting to touch him, to hurt him, to feel something sharp enough to drown out the ache
I swallow, tongue dry and heavy behind my teeth haven’t picked anything
It’s just that i don’t think I ever really had an iption at all.
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