He quickly jumped to the most recent thoughts that would counteract the inappropriate desire surging through him. “I was just thinking about my prom,” he said then, instilling as much casualness into the words as he could muster. Hoping it was enough. “I was lost in space, and you asked what was wrong,” he continued, as though they were discussing bubble gum machines.
Nodding, Sage’s expression cleared, wiping away those lines he’d seen himself soothing. “So, why couldn’t you go to your junior prom?”
“My grandmother wasn’t well. She had a lot of things wrong, some things that flared up unexpectedly. A neighbor, who’d been a good friend of hers for years, would come over during the school day, if there were issues, but she worked nights, caring for an older woman in her home, and there was no one else but me.”
He heard how ridiculous he sounded. A grown man, spilling his guts like a teenager, but the feelings he was invoking inside himself were doing the trick. A bit of humiliation was well worth that.
“So...you thought you were going, but she had a flare-up?” Sage’s expression had taken on her lawyer-at-work look. Interested. Concerned.
But professional.
He welcomed it. Felt success in his grasp.
“Yeah,” he said. “There was this girl in my English class...”
“Trina? The one who turned out to be suspicious and possessive and started showing up at your locker at school, and at your house and calling you to see if you were home when you said you would be?”
He’d forgotten he’d told her that part. It had been early in their relationship, when they’d talked about dates they’d had that had gone wrong. About things they didn’t want in a relationship.
He hadn’t mentioned his abhorrence at the idea of having kids. Hadn’t mentioned children at all. No, he’d talked about not wanting to feel like he was being stalked.
He gave his standard nod. “Yep, that’s the one.” And because he couldn’t afford not to, he continued. “I asked her to prom, she accepted. It would have been our first date. But I couldn’t go.”
If he had, maybe he’d have found out sooner how desperately possessive the young woman had been. At a dance, with all the other classmates there, dressed to the nines...he’d have wanted to hang out with them. Trina had been big on it always just being the two of them.
Which mattered not at all. He was digging deep for emotional triggers that would keep him away from thoughts of reacquainting himself with Sage Martin’s body.
The woman was frowning again. Shook her head. “And you were lost in thought about this now?”
One more nod.
“Why?”
Well, now, that part wasn’t for the sharing.
He glanced over at her, still standing behind her desk from where she’d risen to reach the applicants folder. Standing above him.
Much like she’d stood above him in the sand...
And it hit him. Bringing up the prom...he was more on task than he’d realized. Was just taking some time to get up to speed with himself. It was the exact topic they needed.
Him coming clean. Out loud. To the one person who most needed—most deserved—the rotten part of his truth.
Chapter Twenty-One
Was Gray about to tell her that he’d met up with Trina again after all these years? That the woman might be showing up with him at the beach?
The idea was ludicrous. But she couldn’t get it to blink away. The thought of him bringing any other woman to Ocean Breeze was...just...wrong.
Chest tight, she watched him, and knew the second he’d made a decision. Was shaking inside by the time he started to speak.
“My grandmother had multiple sclerosis, among several other things. I knew from the time my mother died that my grandmother wasn’t expected to live a normal lifespan. She’d wanted me to know, to be prepared. To be ready...”
Sage fell back to her chair. Staring at him.
“And by ready, I mean she instilled in me a need to make my own way, to strive and achieve and not settle. To make more of my mother’s having lived by succeeding and making a difference in the world.”
He stopped talking, took a couple of quick swipes at his chin, and Sage swallowed back tears. Gray would neither want nor understand them. He’d see pity. Where she felt...love.
