19. Macy

Chapter 19

Macy

" M acy," Walter says curtly, rushing past my dad. Then, his mouth is on mine and it's wrong. His tongue is sweeping in without permission and his hand are claiming me as if I belong to him. How many other girls has he kissed while we were together? My lips are unmoving, yet he continues to assault them. Bile rises to my throat, and I shove at his chest.

He feigns hurt. His eyebrows come together but his nostrils are flaring when I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

My dad clears his throat in discomfort and awkwardly passes us, following my mom into his parent's house.

I hold up my hand, so Walter doesn't come any closer, but the idiot smiles and interlocks his fingers with mine. I quickly tug my arm back. "You need to leave."

His eyes flash with disbelief, and then my mom calls. "Walter, honey, bring Macy in here. You two don't need to stand out in the heat."

He grabs my hand again and it's so different than when Grayson does it. Everything about Walter is a stark contrast. He tugs me inside and my mom says, "We'll leave you two to talk." She turns to my dad, who is quick to open the sliding glass door and leave.

I'm frozen in disbelief. The man I detest is standing in the living room of my grandparent's home. He is making himself cozy on the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table, not even bothering to remove his shoes. He drapes my grandma's hand-knit blanket over his legs. "Come sit next to me."

I pinch the bridge of my nose and let out a steady breath. "I have nothing to say. We're broken up."

"Sweetheart." I wince at the endearment. In the beginning, I loved the pet name. Funny how three years later I never want to hear it again. "I know you're mad about our video call. I like your small tits, so you don't need a boob job. I was just annoyed when I said that, okay? Why don't you start packing and we'll leave in the morning?"

"Oh my God, you are so vapid!" I grip the back of a chair that's tucked into the dinner table and say in a voice so calm it unnerves me. "Get out."

He reels back and stares at me with pure shock. He opens his mouth to speak but then stops. I never peel my gaze away. I just watch him stumble over my rejection and then he finally speaks. "I was trying to be nice before, but you're clearly on your period. Let me put it to you this way. You're getting on a plane with me, you're going to put my ring back on your finger and stop acting like a brat." He's off the couch and moving toward me.

"Get away from me," I say through my teeth.

He doesn't. His mouth is on mine again and this time I won't let him happen to me. I take his bottom lip between my teeth and bite down as hard as I can.

"You fucking bitch!" he growls, bringing his finger to his lip to find it dripping scarlet. I almost crack a smile from the shock on his face.

"You need to leave. Right now," I demand for the third time.

"This isn't your house." His lip splits into a sardonic smile, blood staining his teeth. "And your mom invited me to stay." He sucks his injured lip to appear thoughtful. "I think I'll go grab my luggage and put it in our room."

This house embodies a version of myself I've been striving to return to, and it's in this very moment, standing with Walter in the space, that I realize he turns everything in his vicinity to gloom. I never knew misery until I met him. His pessimism rubbed off on me, and I haven't been myself in three years. I used to frolic through this very living room as if it were a field of flowers. I danced my way through the day and saw the world for every bit of beauty that it is. The glass was always half full until he taught me to see the emptiness.

This vile man is going to corrupt my corner of heaven, and there's nothing I can do to stop him, but I can leave.

He goes out front to grab his belongings from the driveway, where the Uber left it. He's using one of my suitcases since he doesn't leave the five-mile radius of our house to need his own.

I step into my sneakers, not bothering with socks. I knock on Grayson's door, hoping he'll answer before Walter sees where I went.

"Well, you aren't Amazon." All six wonderful feet of him greet me with dimples and an endearing grin. I glance at my house with unease which is quick to sober his expression. He steps aside for me to enter.

"What's going on?" he asks in a fleeting voice, like he's ready to fix whatever it is. His hands are on my face, cupping it tenderly. "Talk to me, Mace."

I don't want to. Once I voice it, it becomes real, and I'll have to accept that everything I've been avoiding chased me here.

He stiffens from my silence. "Did someone hurt you?"

"No." I sigh. "Walter is here with my parents," I say with dread.

His lethal gazes set on the front door, blue eyes flaming with something terribly cruel. He is furious. I've never seen such a strong emotion from him. His pure hatred is aimed at a man he only knows for disrespecting me. Looking at his expression now, I'd never guess he'd have the capability of smiling, let alone possessing dimples.

"Hey," I say, softly touching his cheek. His burning eyes touch mine and everything on his face melts away until he's my Grayson again.

I mean, until he's himself again.

"Are you okay?" he asks, voice so gentle it contrasts the way he looked only a moment ago.

"I don't know how to answer that."

He runs his thumb over the seam of my lips, and it feels as if he's washing away Walter's kiss. "You bring out a lot in me, Mace, but murderous is a new one." He lifts me and sets me on the counter, like when he tended to the shards of glass in my skin. But these wounds cut much deeper. "What are we going to do?"

We .

"I told him to get out three times, but he just smiled at me and put his suitcase in my room." I want to cry. "My mom invited him in. Told us to talk it out. She has no idea how awful he is, and it's my fau?—"

Grayson cuts me off before I can finish the word. "Don't you dare say it's your fault."

"But she doesn't have a clue. She thinks I'm being dramatic over a small argument or something."

He rests his hands on my hips, not bothering to step back to an appropriate proximity. "Then perhaps we can show her."

"How?" I ask.

"Assholes like him can only pretend for so long. I'm sure we can break him in front of your parents if you give me some details about his personality."

I sigh. Walter hasn't cracked in front of them thus far, so I doubt he will now, but I say, "He looked pretty angry when I wiped his kiss off just now."

His eyes flare with hatred yet again. "I might actually kill him." He slowly collects himself. "Anything else?"

"When I said I wasn't coming back to Idaho anytime soon, he told me I was begging for attention and that if I wanted it so badly, I should've gotten breast enlargement surgery."

His grip tightens on my hips. "Torturously slow," he says.

"His true colors show when he's pissed off," I say.

"I can work with that."

Everything he's ever done is tumbling from my lips. "You know, he never congratulates me when I accomplish something in my career? He treats my job as if it's a joke." I shake my head. "He never takes me anywhere either. It's like he wants me to stay the same forever. Like the twenty-year-old girl I was when we met." Relationships shouldn't hold you back. They should inspire you to grow in every way a person can, like sunlight for a tree. But Walter isn't the sun, he's a weed shading me, so I'll never touch the light.

"I'm no expert, but it's obvious that he's intimidated by your success. He wants you to feel small to compensate for his shortcomings."

He treats me the way he treats himself , so I'll never leave him. Because why would I leave when he's led me to believe I'm worthless on my own? That he's better than me in every way and I need him to thrive. He keeps me in the dark because he knows that once the lights are on, I'll realize he was below me all along. A small part of me pities him, but he hurt me. He manipulated me. But most importantly, he lied every time he said he loved me.

Someone who loves me will cheer me on from land as I touch the sky, and if I'm ever in a dark place, they'd show me the stars.

Grayson is watching me patiently, and I think back to the first day we met. He ordered my books, and now he has them displayed in his house. I saw him read words I've poured my soul into. I've heard the names of my characters on his lips. He held me as I cried the night I broke my grandparent's ocean treasures, and he glued them back together the next morning before I woke up. He hosted my friends with no warning. His face lights up when I laugh, and he touches me like I'm something divine.

"Why are you so nice to me?" I ask.

His head tilts. "Why wouldn't I be nice to you?"

"Because I certainly wasn't. I acted like I hated you."

He lifts a brow. "Acted?"

I glance at his orange wall. "We both know you never gave me a true reason to warrant hatred. You did, however, supply me with several to dislike you, but that's neither here nor there," I joke. "But the reasons you've given me to like you win by a landslide."

"Don't—" he says, holding up a hand. "Please don't say any more. Walter doesn't deserve you, but neither do I."

"Why are you saying this?" I whisper.

"Because it won't be long until I give you a true reason to hate me."

I open and close my mouth, but nothing comes out.

"Let's focus on getting rid of Walter, okay?"

No, it's not okay, but what can I say right now? "Okay." My voice is small.