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And the next thing she suggests knocks the wind out of me.
“She needs to move in with you to make it look serious. If you’re going to fake it, then you have to fake all the way around.”
Just after she says those words and before I even get the chance to react to them, there’s a knock at the office door. Ellie gets up to answer it, and I stand from my chair.
There she is.
My chest tightens as Ava walks into the room a little timidly. She has flour on her sleeve, but none on her face today. She’s somehow this combination of sexy and cute all at once, and I’ve honestly never met anyone like her.
She’s modest and sweet, yet that night we shared was the complete opposite of all of that.
And I think…I think…holding her in my arms last night when she was scared did something to me.
Something irreversible.
Something terrifying.
Something that makes me want to break that record I just shared with Ellie of fucking up everything that’s good.
I don’t want to fuck up Ava. I want to be better with her. I want to be better because of her.
I want to do right by her.
I don’t think I want to fake this, either. But for now…it’s the right thing. It’s the only way to keep Beckett in the dark while I explore whatever this is with her.
“Hey,” Ava says quietly to me.
“I’m Ellie, Grayson’s new publicist,” she says, sticking her hand out to shake hers. “I hear you two are in a fake relationship?”
Ava’s eyes go wide. “You told her?”
“I signed an NDA, so anything we say in here stays in here,” I say.
Ellie takes her seat behind the desk, and Ava sits beside me.
“I was just telling Grayson how fake relationships are my specialty,” Ellie begins.
Ava’s eyes widen as they meet mine, and I’m not sure why, but I get the feeling that this is going to be a whole hell of a lot of fun.
Chapter 31: Grayson Nash
Civil Wars Are Not Laughing Matters
“What the fuck are you wearing?” I ask my brother when he opens the door to the house my parents bought when two of their boys landed in the same place.
As I glance around, I see my mom’s touches are everywhere. She decorated this place, but it’s my dad who’s living here. It hits me once again how strange it is that they’re getting divorced.
I always figured kids were the ones affected by their parents’ divorce. I didn’t realize how much it could fuck up adults, too.
Asher is my dad’s favorite of his four boys, and he’s never made a secret of that. I’m certain it’s why he agreed to allow Asher to stay with him when he got into trouble last year, but I think Asher might be good for my dad, too—at least as he’s going through the divorce, he’s not alone.
My mom, though…she’s all alone in upstate New York, two hours from civilization on her goat farm in the middle of nowhere. There’s a little downtown area with a diner, a market, and a gas station, but otherwise there’s not much around unless you’re interested in a solid thirty-minute drive.
I worry about her, but she insists she’s happy with her goats.
She comes out to visit, and now that three of her boys are on the same team, certainly she’ll spend most of the season either out here or traveling to our games.
She always loved watching us play, and I know it’s been hard on her having us all in different cities. She’d make it to at least one home game and one away game for each of us during the season, but it’s a lot to manage with four boys in the league.
