Gracie & Gray

Chapter 9

G R A C I E

We were all dressed in black: Gray, his mother, and me. His father had no other friends. The Jones' extended family wanted nothing to do with the man.

With solemn, heavy steps, I approached Gray and his mother after the service.

"I'm so sorry for your loss."

Gray grumbled, "Don't be sorry. He was a fucking asshole."

"He was still your dad," I said softly.

Gray's hands closed into fists. A cocktail of emotions clouded his handsome face. Anger, grief, confusion...

Disappointment.

Disappointment of the deepest kind.

It hurt to look at him. Gray was so young. Barely eighteen. Yet, he had been forced to shoulder the burdens of an adult man since he was a child.

This made me angry—at God, at the universe, at whatever fate had decided to make life so fucking unfair. The author of Gray's story clearly had no sense of compassion. She had placed a most senseless and anticlimactic period to a decades-long tragedy.

Two years ago, Stephan Jones barely survived when Gray fought back and stopped his father from beating his mother to death.

Two weeks ago, Stephan Jones drank himself into an early grave.

His death left behind chapters upon chapters of loose subplots and years upon years of unresolved violence, rage, and hurt between father and son.

Now Gray would never be able to salvage any part of their broken relationship. He wouldn't be given the opportunity to right past wrongs—and that, alone, was perhaps the saddest part about his father's passing.

As we left the cemetary that afternoon, my heart ached for Gray.

Like always, I carried his pain as though it was my own.

***

Too scared to respond, I stared at Gray's message for a good two hours as my mind ran through all the possible scenarios that might have prompted him to contact me—of all people.

His text had seemed friendly enough, but I doubted that he was reaching out just for the hell of it.

Gray and I hadn't spoken since he found out about the proposal. He didn't know that Craig and I were no longer planning to get married. He didn't know that Craig had broken up with me because of my POI.

***

"I love you."

"I love you, too. But..."

"But?"

His voice caught. "I need some space, Gracie. I feel all kinds of fucked up right now."

We broke up later that day.

***

Frenzied thoughts churned through my brain.

Why did Gray want to talk to me all of a sudden?

Wasn't he supposed to be deployed overseas right now? How did he even have access to his phone?

Was he in trouble? Was he in danger?

Oh, God.

Did he find out that Lydia was keeping the baby?