“I made a vow to him,” he said brokenly. “Because I thought…and all this time…” He moved away from the window, pressing his back against the wall next to it. His legs collapsed beneath him, and he slid down to the floor, burrowing his head in his arms. I let out a small startled cry and rushed forward, dropping onto the carpet with him and wrapping my arms around his shaking body. And as I held him, he did what he had probably needed to do for six long years, or more likely his whole life: he cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kira
Hawthorn Vineyard was far too quiet. Grayson had stayed in our room for the rest of the day, not returning to work, lying on the bed staring at the wall. I’d come into the room several times, but he hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words. I understood that he needed to process what he’d learned. Who wouldn’t? He was deeply wounded, anguished, the belief that his father had loved and accepted him in the end now completely obliterated. He’d been living to fulfill a singular vow—a vow based on what he now knew were falsehoods. And the truth that lay beneath was ugly and soul-crushing. I didn’t have to wonder if he felt directionless—I’d been there once too. I just wished he’d talk to me. Instead, we went to bed, and for the first time since I’d moved into his room, he didn’t reach for me.
I’d woken in the middle of the night to find his side of the bed empty and cold, and alarmed, I’d gotten up and gone in search of my husband, tiptoeing through a dark, silent house, in my nightshirt. “Grayson?” I called softly. No answer. I stood still and listened, finally hearing something very far away that sounded like breaking glass.
I followed the distant noise until I came to the door in the living room that I now knew went down to a wine cellar, although I’d never been inside. It was open just a small crack, a light shining from below. “Grayson?” I called again. When there was still no answer, I opened the door tentatively and descended the narrow, spiral staircase. The sounds grew more distinct, one loud crash startling me and causing me to pause before moving forward.
When I got to the bottom and peeked around the corner, I saw Grayson sitting on the floor, leaning back against a shelf, drinking from a bottle of wine.
He saw me and brought the bottle away from his lips, wiping the back of one hand across his mouth and holding the wine toward me. “Kira, try it. It’s a Domaine Lefl…blah blah blah who cares, from France,” he slurred, giving me a wry smile. Then he tossed the half-drunk bottle and watched as it shattered on the cement floor amidst several other smashed bottles, their contents pooling together in a now-worthless mixture of wine, glass, and soggy bottle labels. “Oops, sorry, slipped right out of my hand. I’m not usually so accident-prone. Here, let’s sample another.” He reached behind him and grabbed a different bottle off the shelf and picked up the wine opener sitting next to him on the floor.
I rushed forward, kneeling down next to him. “Grayson,” I said, leaning forward and putting one hand on his cheek, “what are you doing?”
He stopped in his efforts to open the bottle, looking blearily up at me. “I’m sampling my father’s rare wine collection,” he said. “Walter did a good job protecting it from him before he could destroy it himself, but I’m really only doing what he would have done if he’d been given the chance.” He paused, hurt skittering over his features before he continued. “Do you know that of all the things I sold in this house, I avoided these because I believed it would disappoint my father? When you came along and I didn’t have to part with this”—he waved his arm backward indicating the shelf behind him which still held quite a few bottles—“I was so damned relieved I’d done something else that would have made my father proud.” He laughed, a hollow sound filled only with pain.
Ah, so he was bent on taking what justice he could into his own hands. Only, if the look on his face was any indication, it wasn’t proving to hold much satisfaction.
“So,” I said, scooting closer, “how about we sell the rest of them instead of doing exactly what he would have done? How about we make some money off of these prized bottles and buy…a pet monkey and name it after your father? Or…a double-seated bicycle? We’ll ride around Napa talking about what an ass your father was. Or…a parrot! We’ll teach it to say nasty things repeatedly about Ford Hawthorn.” I placed my hand on his knee. “There are better things to do than this. We’ll come up with something together.”
Grayson touched my naked thigh with one finger and trailed it upward, lifting the material of my nightshirt as he went. “You are so beautiful,” he said.
“And you are so drunk.”
“In vino veritas,” he whispered, repeating the phrase etched above the doorway I had meant to look up. His finger traced the waistband of my underwear. “In wine there is truth.” Ah. So that’s what it means. Grayson paused, his brow furrowing. “Only here, there’s no truth. There are only lies and deceptions.”
“Grayson, no…”
He shook his head, bringing his hand away. “Think about it, though. It really was such a perfectly devious plan—the most impactful way to tell me how much he hated me and how disappointed he was, right up until the very end. The perfect vengeance. If he had had just a little more time, I would have come home to a pile of worthless ashes.” He took a loud, shuddery breath. “I thought it was a gift, and he meant it as a curse. After everything…I thought he finally… Jesus. It hurts so much, Kira,” he said, his voice filled with anguish. The look on his face made me feel as if my heart would crack into tiny pieces to lie among the shattered bottles littering the floor.
Oh, Dragon.
“There’s so much pain for me here,” he said on a broken whisper.
“I know,” I said, moving right up against him and taking him in my arms as he leaned his head into my chest. God, I knew the pain he was feeling now. I understood it, and I ached for him. “Listen to me, Grayson.” I leaned back and took his face in my hands, looking him in the eye. “I know how you’re feeling, I do.” I’d wrestled with similar emotions as I’d lay on a floor mat in Kenya, staring up at the ceiling, the warm, still air pressing in on me along with hurt and doubt and the ache of betrayal. “Sometimes pain is so great, it feels as if it carves out vital parts of who you are. But love is meant to fill that empty space. If you let it, grief makes more room for love within you. And the love we carry inside makes us strong when nothing else can. Let it make you stronger. Better. You can get there. I know you can.” Let me help you. Let me love you.
His dark eyes searched mine. “Do you believe that?” he asked.
“I know that.”
Grayson let out a long, shaky breath, burrowing his head into my chest again. “My Kira…” he murmured, “if only I could believe it too.”
“You will. In time. Let that be the legacy your father leaves you. That’s the perfect vengeance.”
We sat that way for what seemed like a long time, me holding him until my legs beneath me began to cramp.
Grayson finally looked up at me, running his thumb over my cheekbone. “Would it ruin the moment to tell you I want to take you upstairs and fuck you until I can’t see straight?”