Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Layla

2 years earlier

“Tell me something about you that no one else knows.”

Gray scratched at the scruff on his chin. We’d been sitting at the library table for hours, supposedly prepping for the class I had to teach in an hour, which is how we’d been getting away with spending so much time together on Saturdays for the last eight weeks.

“I don’t eat watermelon,” he said.

I squinted. “How is that top secret?”

“It’s not. But no one knows the reason I don’t eat it.”

I leaned my elbows on the table. “Go on…”

Gray pointed to me in warning. “No laughing.”

“I’m not sure I can make that promise.”

He shook his head with an easy smile. “In nursery school, my teacher read us Jack and the Beanstalk. I guess that somehow led me to think giant things could grow from seeds, if planted in the right place. At home, we’d had this round watermelon sitting on the kitchen counter for a while, and one day my mom decided to cut it open. She said it was seedless, and I didn’t see any of the regular black seeds, so I dug in. On my third piece, I told my mom I liked the round watermelons better than the oval ones she usually bought because they were crunchier.”

“It was crunchy? Your watermelon was bad?”

“No, there were little white seeds inside that were soft, but the edges had a crunch to them, I unknowingly chewed up the seeds. My mom pulled them out of a piece and showed me. She said they were harmless. But I had it stuck in my head that a giant watermelon was going to grow in my stomach, and I’d wind up exploding. Every night I went to bed and pushed out my stomach to see if it was growing. And I was so sure it was going to happen, I thought I saw my stomach getting bigger.”

I covered my mouth and laughed. “Oh my God. And you stopped eating watermelon after that?”

He nodded. “Going on twenty-five years watermelon-free now.”

“That’s crazy.”

He pointed. “And there’s the reason no one knows why I don’t eat watermelon.”

I watched as Gray’s eyes roamed my face, flickering to my lips, then climbing their way back up to meet my eyes. “You have freckles on your nose,” he said. “But you try to cover them up.”

I raised my hand to my face. “Apparently I’m not doing a very good job.”

“I like them. They remind me you’re real. Sometimes after you leave, I start to wonder if I’ve imagined you.”

For some reason, that caused my heart to swell.

A guard interrupted by popping his head in for his occasional check. “Everything okay in here?”

I waved and nodded. “All good. Thanks, Marcus.”

“Be back in half an hour for the start of class.”

My face fell. The few hours alone with Gray each Saturday had become the highlight of my week. But they seemed to go faster and faster lately. By the time I’d relaxed enough to again convince myself I wasn’t crazy for starting to fall for a man who lived in a federal prison, it felt like it was time to begin class. I’d started to arrive three hours early every week, feigning the need to prep for the course with Gray. But the two of us really just sat across from each other and learned everything we could in the time we had. It was like a date—I spent extra time getting ready beforehand, felt the adrenaline rush when he walked into the room, and wanted to know more and more about him. The hardest part, though, was trying to ignore our physical connection. It was always present, and last week, we’d ventured into new territory when Gray described the kiss he wanted to give me. I never knew just talking about being physical could be so erotic.

“Your turn,” Gray said.

My mind had jumped the tracks. “For what?”

Gray’s eyes dropped to my lips, and the corner of his mouth twitched like he knew where I’d gone in my head. “Your turn to tell me something no one else knows.”

When I didn’t immediately respond, I looked back up and found Gray’s hint of a smile had grown into a full-blown grin. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it.

“Ummm…” I thought of something not even my best friend knew about, but might be too crazy to share. “I have a yeahway notebook.”

His brows drew together. “A what?”

“A yeahway notebook. Well, actually, it’s more like seven yeahway notebooks now.”

“What exactly is a yeahway notebook?”

“It’s a list of things I analyze to decide yeahway or no way. Don’t knock the name. I started it when I was seven. I’d asked my dad if we could get a dog, and he said a dog needed a lot of exercise, had to be cleaned up after, and was expensive. I said they were good as watchdogs and would teach me responsibility. He laughed and told me it was a nice try, but the pros outweighed the cons. So that night, I took out a fresh notebook, opened to the first page, and drew a line down the middle. I wrote out all the pros and cons I could think of, and then took another shot at my dad. Of course I’d come up with twenty-five pros and only ten cons.”

Gray smiled. “The lawyer in you came out early, I see.”

“Yeah. My list didn’t change his mind, but my mom did, so we ended up getting the dog anyway. And I found I liked writing out the pros and cons of things. Sort of helped me organize my thoughts.”

“What other type of stuff do you make lists for?”

“Anything. Everything. Should I kiss Danny Zucker in eighth grade? Should I go away to college? Is it worth spending fourteen hundred dollars on a pair of leather boots.”

Gray’s eyes glinted. “Did you kiss Danny Zucker?”

I held up my left hand and started to tick off the pros. “He was popular. He had nice lips. He had experience kissing.” I held up my right hand and ticked off the cons. “His experience included swapping spit with…” I wrinkled up my nose. “Amanda Ardsley.” I ticked off more cons. “Everyone knew all the girls he’d kissed before, so people would probably know I did it, too. Germs. Braces.” I ticked up my last finger on my right hand and deadpanned. “Halitosis.”

Gray threw his head back in laughter. “I take it poor Danny lost out.”

I grinned. “He did.”

“Did you go away to college?”

“I did. That was probably my most uneven list. The cons had that I’d miss my mom and friends. And that I was afraid. The pros took up a front and back.”

“Boots?” he said.

“I’ll wear them for you next week.”

I really loved the little crow’s feet around his eyes when his full face smiled.

“And you’ve kept all the notebooks where you do these pros and cons lists?”

“Yep. Seven full notebooks dating back close to twenty years. They’ve sort of become my own peculiar version of a diary.”

“Do you still do it? Make lists?”

I bit my bottom lip and debated telling him the one I’d started working on last week. “On occasion. I find it soothing for some reason.”

His eyes roamed my face. The man had an uncanny ability to read me. It unnerved me almost as much as I found it fascinating. When our eyes met, I knew he had the answer before he’d even asked the question.

“Have you made one for getting involved with me?”

***

Class had ended ten minutes ago, but I still had a few people waiting to talk to me one on one. The more I taught them about the appeals process and researching case precedents, the more it sparked questions on the viability of overturning their own cases.

A guard I had seen once or twice, but never spoken to, stopped by the classroom.

“Time’s up, boys,” he said from the door.

My eyes flashed to Gray’s. He walked over to the guard, and the two of them spoke for a few minutes. Their eyes occasionally flickered up to where I stood. When they were done, Gray walked back to the front of the room and spoke to the stragglers hanging around.

“Kirkland’s gotta clear the room before the end of his shift. You guys are going to have to ask your questions next week.”

Without much complaint, the last of the students walked to the door. Dealing with the majority of the guys housed here felt no different than dealing with people at work. These men were white collar, many of them educated better than I was.

The guard yelled back to Gray with a warning tone. “You got ten minutes, Westbrook. That’s it. Then I need to take her for sign out.”

I waited until the door clicked closed to ask any questions. “What’s going on?”

“Fourth stack from the library door. It’s a blind spot for the cameras.” Gray lifted his chin. “Take that book with you that you used for class like you need to put it away.”

“But that’s from my firm’s library. I brought it with me.”

He looked me in the eyes. “Trust me. I’ll meet you over there in two minutes.”

By the way his black pupils pushed away almost all the green in his eyes, I suspected I knew what was about to happen. And even though just thirty seconds ago I had felt completely normal, my entire body immediately changed in anticipation. I nodded and walked to the adjoining library, counting the stacks as I went. The skin on my face burned, yet my fingers and toes seemed to go cold and lose their feeling. My head spun while I tried to walk normally on wobbly legs and act natural, knowing that cameras had eyes everywhere.

Unsure what to do with myself when I arrived at the fourth stack, I tried to look busy by fingering through the book titles on the spine. If someone had shown up, held a gun to my head, and told me to read the words, though, I would’ve been dead. I was too wired to see straight.

I smelled Gray before I saw him. He had a clean, fresh, yet masculine smell. My back was to him as he walked up the aisle behind me, and one of his big hands gripped my hip as the other pushed my hair to the side. I gasped. If I’d been on a roller coaster, inching its way up to the top, this moment hovered at the summit—my blood pumped faster, full of adrenaline-laced fear and anticipation, waiting for the hair-raising nosedive down.

His low voice tickled my neck. “Stop me now, Layla, if you don’t want this.”

The coaster car rocked back and forth at the precipice. “What about the cameras?” My voice was so husky and breathless, I barely recognized it.

“Trust me,” he said.

Trust me.

As crazy as it was, I did. And maybe I didn’t even care about the consequences, if there were any. I wanted to touch this man more than anything I’d ever wanted. I turned, and Gray’s heated gaze caught mine. He looked into my eyes, seeming to give me one last chance to stop him. Unable to speak, I gave him the slightest nod as my chest heaved up and down.

Before I could prepare myself for what I’d just agreed to, Gray grabbed my face with both hands and backed me up against the bookshelf behind me. His head dipped down, and he planted his lips over my mouth.

The jolt from feeling his body press up against mine made me forget anything else existed. He licked my lips, urging me to open, and groaned into my mouth as his tongue found mine. I whimpered in response. Never in my life had I felt such hunger, felt so deeply desired. A heavy throb between my legs had me pushing into him, but I still couldn’t get close enough.

As if he sensed what I needed, Gray reached his hands around to my ass and tugged my thighs, guiding me to wrap my legs around him so he could press deeper. He crushed his erection against my aching clit and ground up and down. The friction had me so turned on that I thought it was possible he could finish me off with just more grinding.

My fingers laced through his silky hair, pulling and tugging at the soft strands. He groaned again, and the sound caused a ripple from our joined lips straight down to between my legs. One of the hands at my ass moved up to my neck and tightened as his thumb tilted my head more to one side and he deepened the kiss.

The feeling of weightlessness hit my belly, and I began to fall. My roller coaster car rocked back and forth one last time before careening down the long slope. As we panted and clawed at each other, I lifted my imaginary hands into the air and enjoyed the crazy, scary, wonderful ride down.

When our kiss broke, I was mesmerized by the effect this man had on me. Gray’s hands came back to my face as he cupped my cheeks, stroking gently with his thumb while trailing feather-soft kisses from one end of my lips to the other.

His voice was gruff. “This is real.”

I swallowed, not understanding what he meant at the time.

The creak of the door opening and the guard’s loud voice made me jump. “Time’s up, Westbrook!”

Gray leaned his forehead against mine. “I gotta go. Remember what I just said when you start doubting yourself by Tuesday.”