Delaney James was wearing Chanel the night her husband told her he didn't love her anymore.
In an instant, her picture-perfect Manhattan life-complete with a brownstone on the Upper East Side, a blossoming career as a fashion journalist, and a devas...
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Be at my place at seven. Bring an appetite.
That's the text Greyson sent me this morning.
The message has been sitting at the top of my screen all day, and I've probably read it a dozen times by now. Not because it's particularly romantic, but because it sounds exactly like him.
Somehow Greyson has always managed to make even an invitation sound like a direct order, and not only does it turn me on something fierce, it also makes me smile.
The passenger seat is crowded with shopping bags from an afternoon that was supposed to be nothing more than a quick trip into town. Most of them are practical things I actually needed – a bottle of wine, ingredients for the peach cobbler I plan on making, more paperwork from my lawyer I had to personally pick up at the post office – but tucked between the grocery bags is a small white one from the beauty supply store holding a bottle of light blue nail polish I absolutely didn't need. I bought it because the color reminded me of the hydrangeas growing beside Greyson's front porch.
I used to make fun of women who bought things because they reminded them of a man. Apparently, I've become one of them.
Maybe happiness changes you in ways you don't notice at first. Maybe it simply makes the world feel a little less precarious. Either way, I'm not interested in examining it too closely.
I gather my bags and climb out of the car.
Dinner with Greyson shouldn't have me this excited. We've had dinner together more times than I can count. I've eaten takeout on his couch, stolen fries off his plate, and fallen asleep with my head in his lap while some documentary neither of us was actually watching played in the background.
Still, something about tonight has me looking forward to it more than usual. Maybe it's because things between us have finally stopped feeling so fragile. Or because neither of us seems to be waiting for the next thing to go wrong anymore.
Whatever the reason, I find myself smiling as I head toward the house. When I reach the front steps, a streak of gold tears across the yard.
Hercules.
He barrels toward Greyson's Jeep parked in front of his parents' house, and my gaze follows him automatically. A second later, Greyson comes into view, and the smile already forming on my face widens before I have the chance to stop it.
"Greyson, hey!" I call, jogging toward him.
He doesn't turn right away.
At first, I assume he hasn't heard me over Hercules barking at the passenger side door, but then he slowly lifts his head, and the sight of him makes me stop so abruptly my shopping bags swing against my legs.
A knot instantly forms in my stomach.
He looks terrible.
The color has completely drained from his face, leaving his usual olive-toned skin pale beneath the late afternoon sun. His eyes are bloodshot and glassy, the skin around them red and blotchy, and for one disorienting second I wonder if he's been crying. Even the way he's looking at me feels wrong. There's no warmth in his expression, no flicker of recognition, just a distant sort of confusion that makes me feel like he's trying to place where he knows me from.
