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“Will youplease let me explain, Jess?” he asked, and the desperation in his words gave me pause, but I didn’t think there was anything he could say that would change any of this. That space in my mind where I’d dreamt of him and I was now a big, black void. An endless expanse of darkness. No end, and no beginning, and nothing in-between. We never were, and we never would be. I got that now. I understood it in the way my heart ached at the idea that thissomethingbetween us never was. It had all been in my head.

It took me a long time to respond, to nod my head and hear him out, but he waited patiently until I did. I didn’t do it for him, but for me. I wanted to hear whatever words he had to say so I could walk away from him once and for all with a clean break.

But his next words obliterated every thought, every feeling, I thought I knew when it came to Greyson.

“I tried to kill my dad once,” he said, and the world around me stopped spinning.

Forty-one Before

“WHAT?” I ASKED.There was no way I’d heard him correctly.

“Last year,” he swallowed, “after one his benders, after my mom had caught him cheating, and I’d found her…” he paused, clearing his throat. I swallowed my fear, and my feelings, and looked him in the eyes. They were full of pain. A pain I’d known my entire life. But he wasn’t trying to hide it from me. He sat there, looking at me, imploring me to understand. “I found her on the bathroom floor in a pool of her own blood…”

I sucked in a breath, held it.Oh my god…I understood so much more than he knew. “I am so sorry,” I whispered, releasing the weight of the world in four words.

He shook his head, shrugged. “She’s okay now. But that night… she had tried to kill herself.” He was still shaking his head, lost in the memory. “My dad—thisselfishpiece of shit who called himself a man—had reduced this amazing woman,my mother,to someone who felt so fucking low that she wanted to leave it all behind—leavemebehind. And I just…I lost it. I wanted to kill him for it.”

He swallowed, his hands gripping his knees tightly. “…But that part didn’t come until later; I had to take care of her first. It was the only thing on my mind when I found her. I hardly remember it—going through the motions. Dialing nine-one-one, and holding her until the ambulances came, praying to any god who would listen that she’d be okay. I didn’t leave her side the entire time…sat in the hospital with her all night…

“At some point Jaymes picked me up and brought me home to grab some things from my house, but when we got there, my dad—my fucking dad—was shit-faced and had no clue what had happened. He was too busy bitching about dirty dishes in the sink and,‘Why wasn’t there any damn dinner on the table?’

“I’d planned on getting in and out, on running upstairs and grabbing my shit and getting the hell out of there. But then I heard him dragging himself up the steps. Screaming for my mom to get her ass downstairs and make him something to eat or he’d pull her down into the kitchen himself.”

He slowly folded forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

“I snapped,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember walking into his room; I don’t remember pulling the gun from his safe and loading it. But I remember the look on his face when he attempted to take that last foot up the stairs and his forehead met the metal barrel of the gun in my hand instead.”

Holy shit.I took a deep breath, pulled my knees in closer to my chest. I was at a loss for words. This shit was…fuck.This shit was insane. But I didn’t feel myself judging him for it. Call me crazy, but I…I didn’t blame him. Not for one second did I blame him for what he’d done.

“My finger was on the trigger,” he continued, “and I swear to God I was going to do it, Jess. I was going to shoot him; I’d never been so sure of anything in my life. In that moment, I was only thinking…he didn’t deserve to keep living this privileged life when he’d spent half of it pushing my mom to take hers, you know?”

The haunted look in his eyes made me want to reach over and touch him. To run my hand through his hair and brush my fingers over his cheek and tell him that it was okay. That I got it. That I completely understood, and had I been in the same situation…I probably would’ve done the same exact thing.

“But Jaymes stopped me.” Greyson’s words cut through my thoughts, and puzzle pieces finally began clicking themselves into place. “I can still hear the words he drilled into me like it was yesterday.‘This piece of shit isn’t worth your life, man. Think of your mom. Think of your future.’It gave me enough pause that he was able to rip the gun from my hands, and that’s when my dad gave me this,” he ran a finger across the scar on his chin.

“…I regret it every day, allowing myself to sink that low…

“…I don’t want to be like him,” he finished, his words soft and low. He looked up at me, his green eyes holding mine.

And I saw myself in him then. In his vulnerability. In the way he’d opened himself up to me but was still fighting to protect himself, too. I think it was ingrained in us, in the people who had been through hell and back, to always be on guard and expect the worst in others.

I reached out and grabbed his hand, sliding my fingers through his. I wanted him to know that I was there, that he didn’t need to be afraid of what I thought of him, because after everything he’d told me, after he’d let me in and placed his darkest secrets in the palms of my hands like that, he’d honestly never looked more beautiful—real, and flawed, and breathtakingly beautiful in the broken way he looked at me.

He squeezed his fingers around mine, tightly hanging on. Our eyes were locked together, a deep and irrevocable understanding passing between us. A recognition and acceptance of what we hid from the rest of the world. It connected us, our familiarity with the kind of darkness most people couldn’t comprehend.

“Jaymes saved me from a lifetime wasted in jail and a future I could’ve never gotten back,” he said after a while. “I’ll never be able to repay him for that.”

I nodded, understanding him completely. It all made sense now. And while I couldn’t believe that Jaymes,douchebagJaymes, had done something that amazing, that heroic and selfless, it finally all made sense now: Why Greyson was so loyal to him. Why he felt indebted to him. Why he wasn’t willing to take something from him when he had essentially handed him back his life that day.

After what felt like a lifetime, I finally found my voice. “For the record, I don’t think you’re anything like him—like your father. And I know it sounds insane, but—I don’t blame you, for what you did…

“I can’t tell you how many times I expected to walk into our apartment and find my mom on the floor, OD’d and unbreathing…Or how many times I must’ve thought about how it would probably make everything easier.”On her. On me.

He squeezed my hand again, pulling it into his lap, his thumb skimming over my knuckles.

“But then it actually happened,” I said, the words broken and quiet. Tears fell down my cheeks, and I wiped them away. I forced myself to finish even though I could hardly find my breaths. “But the worst part,” I swallowed past the knot in my throat, a sob begging to break free,the worst fucking part,“is that I was right.”

Forty-two Before