Lies and Love (Graylu)

Family Dilemmas

After spending a total of three days in the hospital, Layla was finally discharged - after a lot of begging and three sets of puppy dog eyes. And although Gray had to work on the weekdays, he now made it a point to stop by Lucy's house right after shooting. This time, he spent equal amount of time with the boys and Layla, though Layla was still trying to avoid him. After a week, even with all the gifts that had accumulated- gifts Gray had bought for Layla -she still didn't fully trust him. However, she has slowly become more willing to accept the gifts than she used to the first few days of his visits. But whenever Gray attempted to talk to her, all she said was the usual 'yes', 'no', and 'thank you'.

Besides not progressing with his relationship with Layla, he hasn't gone very far with his relationship with Lucy either. Not that he minded.

**Flashback**

"I need to talk to you," Gray said into Lucy's ear as they watched Grey and Grayson doing impersonations of a character they saw on TV to entertain Layla who was giggling from the patient's bed.

Lucy frowned at him but nodded. After excusing themselves and leaving Mira in charge of the kids, Lucy followed Gray out of the room.

"What is it?" she asked, wanting to get straight to the point.

"About what I said yesterday, about Layla," he started, in such a low voice it was a miracle Lucy could even catch his words. "I'm sorry about what I said."

Not expecting this sort of thing from Gray at all, Lucy's brows shot up to her forehead in obvious surprise.

"I thought wrong and my own thoughts got the better of me," (No kidding! He tried to make a cute lil kid jealous!) he explained, sighing and leaning onto the wall with his arms crossed in front of him. "I had assumed that Layla wasn't my daughter. I never even considered the possibility that she could be my daughter. I thought you remarried or something and had her. I also never knew you'd been to the hospital with her for her check-ups all those times you left the boys with Mira at home. I had thought you genuinely preferred her over the boys because I'm the boys' father and therefore disliked them as much as you dislike me. So I ended up hating Layla too."

"I-I understand," Lucy said, leaning onto the wall beside Gray and following his gaze to the blank white wall opposite them. She never expected to understand their entire situation but from what Gray had just said, it certainly explained a lot.

Gray glanced down at her looking amazed and doubtful. "No you don't, how could you possibly understand?" he blurted out in an incredulous voice without thinking.

Mentally smacking himself, he hoped Lucy wouldn't blow off again and start screaming at him.

"And I don't dislike you," Lucy added, completely ignoring his last statement, much to Gray's relief. It was also much to his surprise as her words registered to him. Seeing the look on his face, Lucy smiled at him. "I haven't fought, much less screamed, at anyone like that...ever. That was a first for me, so I think I got a bit carried away."

"A bit?" Gray repeated with his brows raised. "If you screamed any louder and any higher, you would've broken every piece of glass present in the area," he pointed out sounding quite sure that could happen.

Lucy couldn't help but giggle at this statement, guessing that Gray hadn't forgotten just how high her voice could get when the notes call for it whenever she sings.

K

Can't help the grin forming on his face, Gray gave in to his emotions and laughed with her for a while until both calmed back down.

"I can't just blame you for what happened you know," Lucy started after their laughter subsided. "We both know that we're both at fault," she added somewhat sadly with traces of regret in her voice. "We were both so caught up with our own issues, the kids got affected. And Layla...Layla just got the worst end of it."