Chapter 62
Chapter 62
~GRAYSON~
I was losing my mind.
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Not publicly. Just in the quiet, sweaty, pacing through my own kitchen way of a man who had looked his wife in the eye and said consummate the marriage like he was reading from a script.
Who said that these days? What the hell had been wrong with me?
I could have said anything. Have sex with me. Sleep with me. I want you. Even a honest I can’t stop thinking about you would have been less embarrassing than consummate.
No wonder she was avoiding me.
Hallway? Empty by the time I entered. Kitchen? She was always gone before I got there. If so much as walked in her direction, doors closed in the distance like she had installed an early warning system to let her know when I was near.
I wiped my palms on my sweatpants for the third time and leaned on the counter.
I should have kept my mouth shut after the game.
I should have iced my hand and gone to bed.
I should not have put her in my lap and tell her that.
The doorbell saved me from coming up with a new way to hate myself.
Nico walked in looking worse than I felt, which was saying something.
Bag dropped. Hands through his hair. The restless F1 energy that I was used to at this point.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“You’re one to talk.” He went straight to the fridge, opened it, closed it, opened it again. “Ivy’s in boy trouble.”
I blinked. Our adopted sister. Seventeen. Sharp mouth, sharper brain. “Boy trouble.”
“Yes, boy trouble.” Nico turned, jaw set. “Texts. Late nights. Some idiot with a car and a death wish. Mom’s pretending it’s fine. Dad says she’s ‘finding herself. She’s finding herself into situations that make me want to put a tracker in her phone.”
“She’s seventeen,” I said. “It’s probably nothing serious. She’s young. She’s having experiences.”
Nico’s entire face went flat with pure offense. “Experiences.”
“Yes?”
“That is not a word you use about Ivy.”
I held up both hands. “I meant normal teenage-”
“Stop talking.” He pointed at me, visibly more pissed than when he arrived. “She’s not ‘having experiences. She’s being reckless, and if one more person in this family tells me it’s cute, I’m going to lose it.”
I stared at him. “What did I say?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” He opened a cabinet hard enough to rattle the glasses, then seemed to remember he didn’t live here and shut it again.
He was protective, yes. We were both protective. But he seemed a lot more pissed than I was. She was young. It wasn’t a bad thing if she wanted to explore her options.
“Fine,” I said. “You handle the boy. In the meantime have a problem of my own.”
Successfully unlocked!
Nico’s attention snapped back, grateful for the distraction. If this is about your wife-”
“I told Blair we should consummate the marriage.”
Chapter 62
There was a full secend of silence.
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Then Nico made a noise I had never heard from him and folded forward against the island, laughing so hard he had to brace both forearms on the marble.
“I hate you,” I said.
“You said consummate?” he managed. “To her face? In this century?”
“Yes.”
“Did you also ask for her hand in marriage by candlelight and offer her family three goats?”
“Nico.”
He wiped under his eyes, still grinning. “Please tell me she threw something at you. A girl like her couldn’t have taken that proposal well.”
“She got off my lap and fled the room. She has been avoiding me since. I am losing my fucking mind over this. I am sweating through shirts like a man with a bad fever. I cannot take it back. I cannot stop thinking about it. And if you keep laughing, I am going to put you back on a plane to whatever track you just came from.”
“This is the best day of my life,” Nico said. “Better than winning a race. The captain of the Blackridge Wolves asked his wife to consummate the marriage and is now being ghosted inside his own house.”
I dragged both hands down my face. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You could try talking like a normal person.”
“Or,” he said, stealing one of my beers from the fridge with zero shame, “you accept what you said, give her space, and stop looking like you’re about to pass out every time a door closes. She didn’t divorce you on the spot. That’s something.”
He tilted the bottle toward me. “Also, for the record, this is still less stressful than Ivy and her little car
friend.”
There it was again-the flare under the joke. I almost asked. Almost. Then I looked at my brother’s face and decided one emotional crisis at a time was already more than the Shaw men were built for.
“You’re staying for dinner?” I asked instead.
“Only if your wife appears and I get to see first hand how awkward things are between the two of you now.”
“There’s a real chance.”
Nico grinned.
Blair was still avoiding me.
I still wanted her enough to have made an idiot of myself out loud.
But at least my brother was here to mock me for it.
I ran a hand down my face as I thought about fixing things. What could I say to her next? I didn’t want to make things even more awkward between us.
Fuck.
Why did I have to say that to her?
Fucking Chase. He was the reason for everything. That asshole was making my life miserable.
Chapter 63
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.