Chapter 26
~GRAYSON~
Lily didn’t wait for an invitation.
She was standing in the entryway when I came downstairs, arms crossed, eyes red like she had been holding the argument in the entire drive over.
I didn’t want to imagine the argument we were likely about to have. I left without telling her anything, and by now, she must have seen the videos of me protecting Blair while those random people tried pelting her with eggs. That wasn’t all-the honeymoon photos had also been released, and many of them were intimate. Some even showed Blair in her tiny bikini. I swallowed hard. I shouldn’t think about that now.
The second she saw me, the careful composure she usually wore in public immediately disappeared.
“In all the years we’ve been together,” she said, voice filled with anger and rage, “you have never treated me like this. You have never treated me like your outside woman! But that’s all I am to you now, right?”
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Lily-”
“You promised me nothing would change.” She took a step closer. “You stood there and told me this marriage was temporary. That you would make her hate you. That I still came first. And now you’re taking hits for her at airports, protecting her like you have feelings for her, going on honeymoons, letting her wear your name in public. You’ve become a completely different person. I do not even recognize you anymore.”
I ran a hand down my face.
“I have to pretend,” I said. “At least enough that her father doesn’t decide the arrangement is failing. If William Monroe thinks I’m publicly humiliating his daughter or treating the marriage like a joke, it becomes a problem for more than just me.”
Lily’s expression tightened. “So I’m supposed to accept being sidelined because of business?”
“It’s not that simple.” I met her eyes. “Everything my family has is connected to the Monroes. The company. The sponsorships. The opportunities that got me onto the Wolves and kept me there. Even the league relationships that affect my contract and the team’s partnerships run through Monroe Athletics in one way or another. If this falls apart publicly and they pull back, it doesn’t just hurt me. It hurts my father. It hurts everything we built with their help.”
She stared at me, breathing hard.
“Please,” I said, quieter. “Consider that. I’m not choosing her over you. I’m trying to keep this from becoming a disaster that costs all of us.”
For a long moment she didn’t move. Then the fight drained out of her shoulders and she crossed the space between us, wrapping her arms around me in a tight, familiar hug.
I stiffened.
Lily’s body against mine had always felt like home-safe, known, the future I had already committed to Now something in me resisted. Not rejection exactly. Just a wrongness I couldn’t immediately name. The scent of her perfume, the way her hands settled on my back, the expectation in the embrace, it all sat slightly off, like a shirt that no longer fit the way it used to.
I forced myself to return the hug, but my arms felt stiff.
She pressed her face into my shoulder and whispered, “I love you. I don’t want to lose you. We planned our entire future together. This was supposed to be my house. She’s taking it over. She’s taking over everything. Everything. Just because her daddy has mosuccessfully unlocked! lose yourself in this marriage and pretend it isn’t killing me. This is not you. You need to remember who you are.”
Guilt hit from a new direction.
Chapter 26
30 voucher
Not the old quilt of the arrangement, Something else. I had kissed Blair in the pool. I had touched her pussy aid fucking loved it.
I had stepped in front of her earlier to protect her without even thinking twice.
I had listened to heron the phone with Chase and felt something very close to jealousy. And now Lily was
in my arms asking me not to leave her behind, and the only honest feeling I could find was the uncomfortable truth that something had already shifted.
I didn’t know how to name it yet.
I only knew it made holding her feel like a lie I wasn’t ready to examine.
“I’m sorry,” I said into her hair. The words were true and incomplete at the same time. “I’ll do better.”
She pulled back enough to look at me, searching my face for the reassurance she needed. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I said it because she needed to hear it. Because my family’s position still depended on the Monroes remaining satisfied. Because I had spent years building a future with Lily and throwing it away over a forced marriage and a woman who got under my skin felt reckless and unfair.
But as she rested her head against my chest again, I stared at the wall over her shoulder and felt the promise sit wrong in my mouth..
Doing better for Lily meant putting more distance between myself and Blair.
It meant shutting down the part of me that had reacted to her in the pool.
It meant treating the protectiveness at the terminal like a one-time reflex instead of a pattern.
I wasn’t sure I could do any of that as easily as I was pretending.
I had already betrayed the woman who’d been with me from the beginning.
Why? Why couldn’t I stay away from Blair?
Lily eventually let go, wiping under her eyes and straightening her shoulders like she could rebuild her composure through posture alone. “I should go. If I stay, I’ll say something I can’t take back.”
Like what? What else did she have to say?
I walked her to the door. She kissed my cheek and there was that guilt again. When the door closed behind her, the house felt too quiet. Mainly because Blair wasn’t here. She was back home with her family. She wasn’t around to test my patience or drive me crazy. She wasn’t here singing loudly, making random comments about me, or being her usual weird self.
Fuck.
Did I actually miss her?
I ran a hand down my face. I was fucking losing it.
I stood in the quiet hallway for what felt like an eternity, overwhelmed by anxiety as I tried to grasp what was happening to my once peaceful and predictable life.
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.