Page 73 of You First
Against her mouth, Gray laughed bitterly. “Not yet.” The whisper of each word brushed over her lips. “Meredith… you feel so good. When nothing else does, you do.”
Despite their audience, the words swept down her body, but she needed to get ahold of herself. Something was wrong. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with her.
Ignoring everyone else in the house — everyone else in the world — she drew back just enough to look into his eyes. They were tortured. And sad. And the sadness in them burned her like a brand.
“What is it?” she whispered back. Here against the door, only a few feet from what she now guessed was the whole of his family, she and Gray existed in a kind of bubble, alone and together. She felt no need to pull away and face the others. She just needed to know what hurt him.
Gray frowned, the sadness turning to regret. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He kept his voice low, trapping the words in their bubble, acknowledging that this moment belonged to no one else.
Meredith squeezed his shoulders. “You don’t hear me complaining.” She wanted him to smile, and when he didn’t, the volume of her fear grew, but instead of pushing away from him, she held tighter.
“I’ve kept something from you.” Gray’s eyes were anguished. “And I kissed you just now because I probably won’t get the chance again. You won’t want me to.”
It was her turn to frown. While she knew it was a terrible idea to kiss her boss — especially in front of his whole family — she couldn’t imagine not wanting to.
“You’re wrong,” she swore. “And you’re scaring me.”
Gray squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to curse himself before opening them again. “I don’t mean to scare you. This is just hard. I thought I could count on having the right words, but I don’t.” He took a deep breath, never letting his eyes leave hers. “I told you last night I could wait. But I can’t.”
Meredith willed herself not to cry. She expected this, and she didn’t blame him. She’d just have to—
“I can’t wait, Meredith, because I have a brain tumor, and it’s trying to kill me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“WHAT?” SHE STAGGEREDin his arms, and Gray gripped her tighter. “What did you say?”
Her voice was paper thin, and the color his kiss had brought to her cheeks drained away before his eyes.
Gray hated himself. This hours-old intimacy they shared, this hopeful, thrilling attraction was as doomed as he was. And he hated himself for how narrow and greedy he’d been with her.
Stealing the kiss at his front door was the most selfish thing he’d ever done, but he would carry the beauty of it to his grave. Meredith would likely walk away from him today, so, it might be his last memory of her.
And certainly his last happy memory.
“I have a brain tumor. And it’s bad.”
He watched her wide brown eyes as understanding sunk in, the recollection of their weeks together, of his headaches, his exhaustion, and the seizure now making perfect sense in her mind. And to his surprise, that understanding rounded her eyes with terror.
He’d expected anger at his deception. He’d expected shock and self-preservation — the instinct everyone has to pull back from disease and death, even someone else’s. But Meredith defied expectation.
He should have known that.
Before him, she mastered her terror, shaking her head.
“No,” she said simply, surprising him again.
She’d said“no,”as if the tumor in his head could be refused as easily as a waiter’s offer of dessert. As if the existence of his lethal overgrowth of cells could vanish with a word.
“No?”
“No,” she repeated. “I don’t accept that. You’re the first good thing to happen to me in two years. You cannot die.”
“I knew I liked her,” Bax interjected behind him.
Gray had almost forgotten his family looking on. He’d resented their intrusion in the moments before she arrived. Now it was an offense. Gray turned to shoot his brother a scowl.
“Bax, Mom, Dad, please give me a minute with Meredith.”
