Just as Mia thought that her life had moved onto a new chapter that didn't involve Grayson, a handwritten letter from Grayson himself threw everything into a frenzy.
With a choice between beginning a new life free from Grayson's dark world or subme...
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GRAYSON
The taxi pulls up at curb side and we throw ourselves in, the cold wind unforgiving as it attacks our skin.
I blow into my hands once I'm seated—backseat with Mia—begging my fucking heart to not make a show of itself until we're back to the apartment at least.
What the hell was that in there?!
As I watched Mia sing, something ripped through my whole body—felt like it turned it inside out completely—laid bare for all to see. I felt so fucking vulnerable but also so fucking in love. Which hurts me so much because it only intensifies the fear and pain of us potentially never working again.
But I know Mia felt it too—feels it too. It's so obvious from how her hands are scrunched tightly around her knees and how her eyes stare at the headrest directly in front of her, begging not to gaze to anything else. Especially me.
In the small cabin space of the back of this car, I can practically hear her heartbeat. And maybe she can hear mine. Maybe something has finally changed between the both of us in a new, mature way we haven't felt before. In New York, we can be anyone we want. In New York I don't have the darkness of my previous life lurking around every corner. I don't have the strain of fulfilling my father's life ahead of me because it's what he wants. Here, I can be anyone I want. We can be anyone we want.
The taxi rocks up to our apartment block, and, having stayed wordless the whole ride back, I shift round to Mia's door, opening it for her as she stays just as quiet as she's been the whole time.
I can hear my blood pulse through me as we ascend up the lift, our eyes anywhere but on each other. I can feel the almighty, invisible force in the small space that separates us that's doing everything it can to pull us together.
But we don't crack. In fact, it seems we are now hiding it all better than we ever have.
Once we're inside the apartment I dip into the bathroom. My hands grip the basin so tight that my knuckles turn white. In the mirror my face looks a ghostly white, my heart pounding from somewhere within me.
I need this girl.
I need her but I can't have her. Not just yet. If we rush then we're doomed to repeat history. We have been too greedy with our passion before that we've let other things slide. But not anymore. This time, things are going to be different.
"I need to use the bathroom," Mia says from outside the door, her silk words trickling from under the lip of the door and up into my ears, tranquillising me.
