Grayson's Vow (101)

I let out one singular sob and then I turned toward the door and flung it open. I raced past Sugar Pie, who whined mournfully, following along behind me. Sobbing openly now, I ran to the master bedroom and stuffed clothes and toiletries in my suitcase. I was sure I was leaving a few things behind but was too distraught and grief-stricken to do a thorough search.

Hadn’t I done this before? Stuffed clothes in a suitcase to make a hasty escape? Only that time someone was pursuing me. This time…this time I was being tossed out.

By my husband.

By the man I love with all my heart.

And maybe it’s what I deserve.

I bent down and looked Sugar Pie in the eyes, rubbing my hands over her wounded head, attempting to control my harsh breathing. “There’s my beautiful girl,” I said. “You take care of everyone here, okay? And know I love you and that you’re a good girl, such a good girl.” I stood up before I collapsed in more tears and made my way down the stairs.

When I got to the front of the house, I paused to look in the open door of the office. Grayson was standing behind his desk, leaning over, his hands flat on the surface in front of him. I almost stepped toward him, but he looked up, his face hard and remote as he stared at me wordlessly.

I backed up, then turned and ran through the front door, out to my car, where I tossed my suitcase in the back seat and got behind the wheel. Another sob shuddered from my chest as I again struggled to catch my breath. It felt like the world had collapsed all around me.

Grayson was standing at the window now watching me leave, just as he had that very first day.

I started the engine and pulled around the bubbling fountain, past my little cottage and the oak tree I’d once climbed, out through the gates, speeding away from Hawthorn Vineyard. Speeding away from the only home where I’d ever felt I belonged.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


Grayson



Misery. It was the only emotion I seemed capable of feeling. Everything I thought I knew—everything that gave me reason for moving forward—had come crashing down around me. They were all liars. Liars, cheats, users, manipulators. I couldn’t count on anyone, least of all myself.

My home now felt more like that small prison cell I’d lived in for five long, lonely years—dark and bleak. I prowled through the rooms at night, drinking when I couldn’t sleep, and then drawing the blackout shades and sleeping the day away. Work no longer held the welcome distraction it once had. What was the point in bringing this vineyard back to life? So I could live in the place my father had wished to use as a tool to punish me, reminding me how worthless I was? Seeing it thrive held no satisfaction anymore. It was only one giant, painful reminder of how much that man had hated me and how I’d pathetically never given up hope that he’d come to love me one day, blindly grasping on to the belief he’d left this vineyard to me out of that love. I saw my father everywhere here, and now, instead of bringing me pride in my own accomplishment, it brought only shame and bitterness. If he hated me, I could very well hate him in return. It became my new vow.

The words I’d heard my father swear in the midst of a fight with my stepmother came back to me now. Goddammit, Jessica, it was a fucking mistake. If I could take it back, I would. I was that mistake. Well, I’d made one too. Trusting him was the most desperately foolish thing I’d ever done. Trusting anyone at all was foolish and stupid. I wouldn’t make the same error twice. Never again.

I had Walter sell the last few bottles from my father’s wine collection. I’d gathered what little strength I had left to meet with José, Harley, and Virgil so I could let them go. I couldn’t pay them anymore. I used the money from the wine sales to pay them up until the end of the month. Their shocked and saddened expressions only made me despise myself more.

And then I told Walter and Charlotte they were dismissed too. I’d fired Charlotte often enough over the years, but I could see in her eyes she knew this time I was very serious. Eventually I’d have to sell the vineyard just to survive, to start over, but I couldn’t call forth the strength just yet.

Charlotte and Walter both tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to listen to either of them. Even they had lied to me—the two people I thought I could trust with my very soul. They’d let me believe my father had loved me in the end, and it had only been a cruel, vicious withholding of truth. They’d watched as I made a ridiculous idiot of myself and it hurt.

And Kira… My heart stuttered in my chest. The very worst of all. I’d given over the whole of my heart to her—every last part—and all along, she had been lying to me too. What else was she lying about? What other things would she have me believe, hope for desperately, only to find out I’d been made the fool yet again? I squeezed my eyes shut as I thought back to that moment in my office when she’d told me she’d been lying to me from the beginning. It had felt like a knife plunging into my heart. The only thought going through my mind had been, Not you, anyone else, but please not you too.

I threw my wineglass against the fireplace in the living room, enjoying the sharp shattering sound of the glass. I braced my hands against it and then lay my forehead on the cool stone. Even still, weeks after she’d left, just the thought of Kira’s name brought a gut-deep, heartsick yearning and a throbbing emptiness.

She had told me she had nothing but disgust for Cooper Stratton. And then I’d seen her talking to him, standing close with her hands on his chest, trying to convince him of something. Coop she’d called him. I had recognized the guilty expression when I’d surprised them. Little lying manipulator.