Chapter 16
-GRAYSON~
We had barely stepped off the plane when my phone started vibrating in my pocket.
Lily’s name lit up the screen.
I already knew how this conversation would go.
I stepped a few feet away from Blair and the waiting staff, turned my back to the ocean breeze, and answered.
“Lily-”
‘Are you serious right now?” Her voice came through sharp and loud enough that I had to pull the phone slightly away from my ear. “You’re on your honeymoon? With her? And you didn’t even tell me?”
I closed my eyes for a second. “I tried calling you last night. You didn’t answer.”
‘Don’t.”
‘I planned to call the second we landed,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Which I just did. We literally just got off the plane.”
‘Oh, well that makes it so much better.” The sarcasm was loud and clear. “How could you agree to this? A honeymoon, Grayson. On a private island. With the woman you claimed meant nothing. Why the hell didn’t you take me?”
I glanced over my shoulder. Blair was standing near the car that had been sent for us, phone in hand, expression unreadable as she spoke quietly to someone on the other end. She wasn’t looking at me, but I had no doubt she could
sense the tone of the conversation.
‘If I brought you, the press would say I was cheating on my wife,” I said. “It would create a media mess my father and the Monroes would have to clean up. This whole thing is about image. You know that.”
‘Image,” she repeated, the word full of disgust. “You never should have married her in the first place. You keep saying you didn’t have a choice, but you always have a choice. You just keep choosing the version that leaves me looking like an idiot.”
‘Lily-”
‘No. I’m done listening to excuses for a second.” Her breathing was uneven. “Do you even know who you married? Or did you just sign the papers and decide that was enough?”
Something in her tone made my shoulders tighten. “What are you talking about?”
There was a short, bitter pause.
Then she said it.
Your wife was Chase Holt’s girlfriend for six years.”
The words didn’t register properly at first.
stood there with the phone pressed to my ear, the humid island air sticking to my skin, and felt the ground shift under a act I had somehow never been given.
Blair.
And Chase.
What?” My voice came out flatter than I expected.
‘Six years, Grayson.” Lily’s laugh was sharp and humorless. “She was with him for six years. Everyone on that side of the eague knows it. Sophie told me everything. Blair trailed after him like he was the only man alive, and the second he married Sophie she somehow ended up attached to you. And you didn’t even know.”
Blair used to date Chase.
The same Chase she had invited to our wedding.
The same Chase who had stood in my reception with that smug look on his face.
The same Chase I had nearly put through a wall for showing up at all.
That Chase? My fucking rival?
A slow, cold anger started working its way throur‘
Successfully unlocked!
She had stood across from me for days and nev
ad kissed me at the altar knowing the man she used to belong to was watching. She had worn my name on her back at the game and smiled like she was only playing a part, when the entire time there was a history with my biggest rival sitting under every interaction.
What the fuck was this to her? Some revenge plot?
yson? Lily’s voice cut back in “Are you still there?”
Tm here
“You shouldn’t be with her. You should be on a plane coming back. Or better yet, you should never have gotten on that one in the first place.”
She was crying now, making me feel worse. “I keep waiting for you to fight for what we had. Instead you’re on an island with your rival’s ex–girlfriend playing the perfect husband for the cameras.”
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Don’t bother if you’re just going to-”
I ended the call.
For a moment I didn’t move. The truth raced through my head, rearranging every conversation, every look, every deliberate push she had made since the wedding. The invitation to Chase hadn’t just been about proving a point to me. It had been personal. The tension at the reception had been more.
I should have noticed the way he’d looked at her. The way she had looked back.
I turned.
Blair had finished her call and was watching me now, head slightly tilted, as if she could already tell something had shifted. The ocean wind moved through her hair. She looked calm. Composed. Completely unaware that I now knew about her past. I walked toward her, phone still tight in my hand, feeling the weight of the marriage and this new piece of information all pressing down at once.
She studied my face as I got closer. “Everything okay?”
I stopped in front of her.
‘Get in the car,” I said.
Her brows lifted slightly at the tone. “That doesn’t sound like everything is okay.”
‘We need to talk.”
‘About?”
held her gaze and let the truth settle between us before I said it out loud.
‘About the six years you spent with Chase Holt.”
For the first time since I had met her, Blair Monroe’s composure slipped–just for a second. Not guilt. Not panic. But she definitely looked like this was not a conversation she wanted to be having with me.
Too bad.
She recovered fast.
But not fast enough.
I opened the car door and waited.
E
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Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.