“Jade—”
“No, Boone,” she cuts me off. “How long has this been going on?”
I’m frozen. I don’t know what to say, or where to go from here. Colt’s advice to wait until the end of the season, see where Grady and I go, is all out the window now. My knee-jerk reaction, as much as I hate to admit it, is to lie, but I can’t. Shesawus.How much did she see?I replay that night in my head, letting out only a sliver of relief when I recall that the most we did in the kitchen was kiss. Everything else was done behind the privacy of his closed door.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, before I can even try to explain myself, I hear it. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, my blood running ice cold as the creak of Grady’s door reaches my ears. At the same time, Jade and I slowly look in that direction, and I swear my heart stops beating as I watch Gradywaltz out of his room. He comes to an abrupt stop when he looks up and sees both of us watching him.
“Uh, hi?” he mutters, confusion clear in his tone.
This won’t end well.
34
Grady Wilde
What the fuck is going on?
My sister’s face is completely unreadable as she stares at me, while Boone looks as if he’s trying to tell me something with his eyes alone, but I’m not comprehending his telekinesis.
“Sit down, Grady,” Jade barks, her tone taking me by surprise. My eyes dart from her to Boone again, and suddenly, the look in his eyes is crystal clear.She knows.
As my legs carry me from my doorway over to the counter, they don’t feel attached to my body. I sit on the bar stool on the opposite end of the counter as Jade, with Boone remaining by the sink. Nobody speaks for a moment; there’s just this daunting, world-altering tension floating in the air. It’s enough to choke me, and I think I might be sick.
“What’s going on?” I finally ask when I can’t take the silence any longer.
“How long have you and Boone been hooking up behind my back?” Jade spits, making me nearly swallow my own tongue.
“Jade, this is between you and me,” Boone grits out. “Leave him out of it.”
My sister laughs without humor, raking a hand through her hair. “You have got to be kidding me, Boone.” Sliding off the stool, she looks between both of us, hurt and anger written all over her face. My stomach lurches into my throat. “I catch my ex-husband and mybrothermaking out in the kitchen in the middle of the night, and you have the fuckingnerveto tell me to leave him out of it? How on earth is it between you and me? Clearly, it’s between you and him.”
She gestures toward me as she clips out the last part, and it’s a knife to the damn chest. A knife I wholeheartedly know I deserve.
“How long has this been going on?” she asks again, but I can’t get myself to respond.
Boone’s jaw is clenched so tight, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cracked a molar. His eyebrows are furrowed and his face is a shade of red. “Jade, let me?—”
“Goddamnit, Boone!” Jade shouts. “Just answer the damn question. How. Long. Has. This. Been. Going. On?”
There’s a part of me that wishes, selfishly, that he’d lie. Say it was a one-time thing. A lapse. He won’t, though. No matter how messy and fucked up this situation is that we’ve put ourselves in, to his core, Boone is a good person. He’s honest and caring, and I know the very last thing he’d ever want to do is hurt somebody.
Still, it steals the air from my lungs when he exhales a deep, resigned sigh and says, “Not long. Just before the season started.”
Jade huffs out a breath, her eyes glassy from unshed tears, sliding over to me. “How could you?”
The tip of my nose burns as my eyes blur, heart shattering into a million pieces, as Jade looks at me like she doesn’t even recognize me. “I’m so sorry, Jade.” Emotion clogs my throat,voice cracking. “This was never supposed to happen. We tried to ignore it.”
I don’t dare glance over at Boone. I’m afraid if I do, she’ll see it written all over my face how much he means to me. She’ll see that this wasn’t just a fling, no matter how much I truly tried to make myself believe it was.
She’s never going to forgive me for this.
“I can’t believe this,” Jade mutters, her hands clasped behind her neck. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. “I’m going to bed. I can’t look at either of you.”
“Jade, please,” I beg, not even totally sure what I’m begging for.
“Don’t, Grady,” she bites out, pointing a finger at me. “Not now. I can’t do this with you right now, or I’m going to say something I can’t take back.”
She storms out of the kitchen without another word, and with her goes my ability to think or breathe or move. It feels like I’m paralyzed, all my limbs losing the ability to function. I don’t know what to do. Is there anything Icando? Probably not. The panic in my mind is so loud, I don’t even notice Boone walking over until he’s directly in front of me.
