“Yeah, you are. We are,” she whispered. “You didn’t have to stay.”

I didn’t respond to that, because anything I would have said would’ve been too much. Instead, I stood there holding her until she was ready to leave.

Grey

May 16, 2014

JAGGER SET DOWN a box and sighed as he wiped sweat from his forehead. “That’s the last of it on your end, I think. If I find something when I’m unloading, I’ll just bring it by here later.”

“Okay, it’s not a big deal if we missed anything. Most of it is going to stay in boxes until I get an apartment . . . or figure out what I’m going to do,” I mumbled, and glanced around at the bedroom I’d grown up in. “I mean, it’s not like I have a lot of use for an entire apartment’s worth of stuff in just one room.”

The corners of his lips curved up in a smile as he looked over all the boxes. “Well, let me know if you need anything. I’m gonna go start on everything else.”

I stood from where I’d been going through a box on the floor and walked toward him. “I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t need to, Grey, I can do it.”

I made a face. “So, you can help me load and unload my things, and then you’re going to do the rest by yourself? All the couches, the beds . . . all of it? Because that sounds fair to you,” I mumbled sarcastically.

He stopped my advance with a hand to my shoulder, and his green eyes bored into mine. “I’ll be fine. Aren’t you supposed to go to your brother’s?”

“I told him I was coming back tonight; he’s not expecting me until later.”

“Grey . . .”

“Jagger.” I mimicked him, and waited until he relented with a sigh.

“All right, let’s go.” He pushed away from the wall and turned toward my bedroom door, waiting for me to leave first.

It wouldn’t have mattered to me what we were doing. I would have wanted to go with him. As much as I’d prepared to come back to Thatch, the memories I’d been blasted with had hit me harder than I could’ve ever expected. As good as it felt to cry and see Ben’s grave today, I was terrified to be alone. I was afraid my happy feeling would leave, and I’d be left with nothing but the consuming grief.

“What are we doing here?” I asked ten minutes later when we pulled up to a building his family owned.

The outside was made up of dark bricks, and was otherwise nondescript. It didn’t look old or new, just like a warehouse. Although I’d been here a few times when we were growing up, I’d never actually been inside. Jagger’s grandparents had used this place for their business before retiring, and it had sat untouched for years until his mom went through one of her many phases. She’d decided to try her hand at pottery due to whatever it was her husband at that particular time did for a living, and to her credit, it was one of her longest-lasting phases and relationships. The phase had lasted a whole two and a half years—the length of her relationship—before she’d given up on it during our senior year of high school, and as far as I knew, this place hadn’t been used since.

“Are you going to store all of our furniture here until we get places?”

Jagger turned to look at me; his eyes were bright and mischievous, and I knew he’d been hiding something from me. “Something like that.”

“Jagger Easton, why do I have a feeling you were trying to keep me from coming with you for a reason?”

He raised one eyebrow at me, and his signature smirk crossed his face as he rested one arm on the steering wheel. “I have no idea what you mean, Grey LaRue.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure you don’t.”

“Well, are you going to get out and help me with everything, or are you going to sit in here and try to figure out what’s going on?”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t see you moving.”

He leaned in so close that my next breaths got lost in the way he seemed to fill the entire cab of the truck. “I’m always moving, Grey. I’m just waiting on you to move with me.”

Before I could respond—or figure out how to get my heart started again—he was pulling away and getting out of the truck, and I just sat there staring blankly for a few seconds before I followed.

Instead of going to the back to open up the truck, he went to the door on the side of the building and pulled his car keys out of his pocket. Once he found the one he was looking for, he unlocked the door and gave me another playful look before opening the door and stepping in, flipping on the lights as he did.

“Oh my God, it’s huge in here!” Shock coated my words as I looked around the massive space.

“This is just the front.”

“There’s a back to this?” I asked, shooting him a look.

He nodded absentmindedly as he walked over to a large kitchen, separated from the rest of the room by a long, L-shaped granite bar. There was a piece of paper propped up on the island in the middle of the kitchen, and he picked it up to read as I looked up at the second-floor loft, covering half of the view of the high ceiling.

“Charlie must’ve stopped by,” Jagger said, pulling my attention back to where he stood in front of the refrigerator.

“Why do you say that?”

“Fridge and pantry are stocked.”

My brow furrowed as I looked at the empty space, then back to him. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”