Alicia had been spending more and more time at the office, working out her emotions from missing Gray and Jace. She hadn’t even gotten home until nearly midnight the night before, and it hadn’t been far from that any other day she had worked since the guys had left. Meanwhile, I was all alone, slowly drowning in the quiet and loneliness of a house that was way too big for just one person to inhabit.
But I wasn’t going to tell Gray any of that. I didn’t want to give him a reason to worry about me. If he thought I was miserable, he would blow off everything to come back to me, and I wasn’t that kind of girl. I would be fine—was fine—just lonely. And no one had ever died of loneliness… Right?
“What about that boy who lives on the corner of our street? The one who liked Jace a little too much?”
I could hear the smirk in his voice and found myself grinning. He got off on pissing my brother off.
“Aren’t you two friends?” he asked.
“He’s one of my closest friends and you know it. But his dad has taken him camping in hopes it will make him realize that he’s not actually gay, just going through a phase or some BS.” My mouth twisted in disgust because I really hated David’s father. He couldn’t accept his son for who he was and thought he could “fix” him. “They won’t be back for two weeks.”
“That sucks for the boy.”
I snorted at his description of my friend. Gray called him a boy as if David were twenty years younger than he was when there was only a four-year age gap between them. “You make yourself sound like a bitter old man. Has the big-city living aged you so much?”
“Being without you has aged me, Kas.”
Hearing things like that from him only confused my heart. Words like that only made my heart sob when my head reminded it that Gray only thought of me as a friend and nothing more.
“Kas?”
At the sound of the concern in his voice, I realized I hadn’t spoken for a while, having been lost inside my own head.
“Sorry. I saw someone running by the house,” I lied and cringed at how high my voice was. I didn’t lie well when it came to Gray. “It reminded me that I needed to get some exercise in before I turn into a cow.”
“You could eat everything in the house and not gain an ounce. I don’t like the idea of you out running by yourself. Go to the gym if you want to get some exercise.”
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to go running on my own. I think I’m going to go down to the gym and spend an hour on a treadmill or something. Maybe take a Zumba class later.” I hadn’t been to a class in months, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. At least I would be around people.
“Okay, then I’ll text AJ and let him know to expect you. Have him walk you to your car tonight when the class lets out.”
My heart smiled at how protective he was even on the other side of the country.
“Hope you have fun, caterpillar. Love you.”
“Love you more,” I whispered.
“Not possible,” he whispered back.
I closed my eyes tight, but the tears fell anyway. I hit disconnect before letting the sobs free. Curling into a ball in the middle of my bed, I hugged my pillow tighter, needing it to cushion the jarring force of my broken sobs as I cried and cried until my throat was hoarse and my eyes were swollen.
It was a long time later before I was able to bring myself to get out of bed. My head was throbbing so badly that my face hurt. I climbed into the shower and washed away all signs of my emotional meltdown. By the time I had gotten dressed in my favorite well-worn yoga pants and a faded old shirt that had belonged to Gray before he had gotten serious with weightlifting a few years before, I felt a little better, but my heart felt even heavier than it had before Gray had called.
This shirt still smelled of him, his sweat seeming to be a physical part of the shirt now no matter how many times it was washed. Not that I cared. I loved the smell and would have lived in that shirt if I could. After pulling my hair into a ponytail, I grabbed my car keys and my gym bag.
AJ’s Gym was where Gray had lived whenever he hadn’t been taking classes at the local college or doing something with the band. It wasn’t just to hook up, either, because the majority of the women who worked out there were married or close friends of Alicia’s.
No, Gray had saved his hookups for the groupies that seemed to stalk and follow him around at the bars Tainted Knights performed at on the weekends. When he worked out, he zoned out most of the people around him. It was where he burned off his frustrations and anger at whatever life was throwing at him.
He had bought me a lifetime membership as a Christmas present when I was fifteen. For a while, I had gone a few times a week, but over the years, that had dwindled down to every few weeks. School and extracurricular activities had gotten in the way, so going to the gym had been a rarity for me this past year.
As soon as I walked through the door, AJ came around from behind the desk, where he had been on the phone. A welcoming smile graced his weather-leathered face as he hugged me. His arms were massive even at the age of fifty-seven, but he took great care of his body. AJ was like a mentor for Gray, a father figure he had always needed without being judgmental about his lifestyle. And, for that, I would always love AJ.
“I just got off the phone with Gray,” he confessed as he stepped back. “He texted me earlier to le
t me know you were coming in, but when you didn’t show up right away, I got worried.”
Even before he had finished talking, my phone went off inside my gym bag. I grimaced and let it go to voicemail, unable to hear Gray’s voice right then without having another meltdown. “I took my time getting ready.” Not a lie. I had spent forever letting the hot jets of the shower ease the aching muscles my earlier sob-fest had caused.