Page 35 of All Out of Love

“Do you have a relationship with your father?”

“Not really. He and his wife had four or five children and he was the perfect daddy to them, and the perfect husband to her by all accounts. But he kind of forgot about me and Keisha. So we forgot about him.”

Grayson understood parent issues. He’d been at odds with his parents from the day he was born. “Have you ever been married, or have children?” he asked Toya.

“No kids, but I was married once.”

This interested him. “Were you?”

“I sure was. When I was twenty-three years old. We lasted less than four months.”

“That’s not very long. What happened?”

“He fell in love with another woman and wanted a divorce. Simple as that. So I divorced him. I wasn’t staying with somebody that didn’t want me.”

Grayson studied her. “But you loved him?”

She hesitated. Then she nodded. “Yes, very much so. Or I wouldn’t have married him.”

“Do you ever see him?”

“He and his new wife left Ocala like fourteen years ago. I haven’t seen him since. And even when I used to see him, he would blame me for our breakup. He said I worked too much. Like that was enough for him to go out and cheat.”

“Right yeah? It happened in my very first relationship too.”

Toya studied him. “You cheated?”

“No. I don’t cheat. She said I worked too much as well, and she didn’t want to have anything more to do with me. But it wasn’t about cheating.”

He didn’t cheat. If she had a dollar every time a man said those words and did the exact opposite she’d be a millionaire. But somehow she believed Grayson. “Did you love her?” she asked him.

“Hell no,” he said so quickly that Toya laughed at the way he said it.

“Besides,” he added with a smile of his own, “what’s love got to do with it anyway?”

Toya wasn’t smiling then. “Love has everything to do with it in my book.” She said it with all sincerity.

Which, at first, surprised Grayson by the level of her sincerity. But then it touched him too. Was this girl for real? Or was she playing him like a fiddle? As he stared at her, he was still trying to figure that out.

But trafficking in deep emotions was a road he made it his business to always bypass. He quickly got back to the subject at hand. “He blamed you for the breakup. Now they’re blaming you for something else that’s not your fault,” he said.

Toya knew he was deflecting, but that was okay too. She nodded. “It’s like no matter where I go, no matter what I do, I can’t get any breaks.” Although she said it with a smile, he knew she meant it to her core.

And the sadness of it staggered him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

But instead of forcing her to relive all of those unpleasantries in her life, Grayson grabbed a remote from off of the side table, pressed a button, and what sounded like piano music, maybe classical music, began playing over the stereo. Toya had hoped he would put on some R&B. A little Anita Baker or Mary J. would have been great. But she was hoping for too much.

But it sounded great. “Very catchy composition,” she said. “Who is it?”

“Camden Stewart. It’s called Lost.”

“Very haunting, isn’t it? Especially the hook.”

Grayson nodded. “I agree.”

“What year did the composer die?”