Page 30 of Love is Fake (Love is Everything #1)

Chapter

Fifteen

Another week goes by before anyone else finds out about Lennox and me. I asked him and Kai not to mention it to Declan as I have a feeling he’d disapprove. They both agreed, for now. But I can tell it’s bothered Lennox.

“Are you ashamed of me or something?” he asks half-joking while we’re having breakfast out on the terrace overlooking the outdoor swimming pool.

“Right, I’m ashamed of the fact that I’m dating arguably the most eligible bachelor in the tri-state area,” I snort.

Lennox goes preternaturally still.

“Dating?”

I almost choke on the gulp of coffee I’ve just taken. We agreed not to label what was going on between us and I just broke my own damn rule.

“Or…you know, whatever,” I cough the words out, waving my hand as if to say it’s just a word I used to describe a thing.

“Ahh, Izzy, is that your way of asking if we’re going steady?” Lennox’s dark eyes twinkle with amusement.

I ball up my napkin and throw it at his head. “Ass.” He deftly avoids the missile, leaning close enough to thoroughly kiss me and I relax against his lips, feeling the depth of his tenderness all the way down to my toes.

“I knew it!” The exclamation from behind me makes me jump, twisting in my seat to see who’s caught us in a lip-lock.

Miguel, the groundskeeper, stands there smiling from ear to ear as I resist the urge to bury my face in my hands. I’m not a big fan of PDA, but even less so when we’re supposed to be keeping our thing on the low.

“Hey, Miguel,” Lennox doesn’t seem to share my embarrassment. In fact, he stretches his arm behind my chair, sliding me closer towards him.

“Maria will be so happy,” he beams and it’s impossible not to smile back at him. “You both come for dinner tonight, yes?” He looks so eager I find myself nodding, ignoring Lennox’s amused expression.

“ Bien ! Now, I do not mean to interrupt, carry on,” he gestures towards us again as if he expects us to start up kissing again.

“Well, he seems…”

“He’s happy, I’m happy,” Lennox says softly, his eyes on me and I do a little internal dance at the thought I’m the one who’s made him feel like that.

“When did you guys get so close?” I ask, but Lennox’s face shutters abruptly. It’s so sudden it’s as if someone’s turned all the lights out in New York.

After a few beats, he carries on as if I haven’t spoken, the warm expression back in his eyes so quickly I wonder if I’ve imagined the coldness that was there only moments before.

“Trust me, they’re the best people. You’ll love Maria and I know she’s gonna love you.”

“How can you be so sure about that?”

Lennox just shrugs. “Because everyone does,” he says simply, having no idea how his words have made my heart swell and making me promptly forget there was anything amiss between us a minute ago.

That night, as promised, we have a double date with Miguel and Maria and it turns out to be the most fun I’ve had in a long while.

Lennox isn’t wrong about me loving Maria – she’s warm, funny and friendly and so maternal I’m surprised when I learn they haven’t had kids of their own.

Her eyes go watery as she thinks about it and I curse myself for asking such an insensitive question.

“We weren’t blessed with children of our own.” Maria’s eyes meet Miguel’s and they grasp hands on top of the table. I feel tearful just watching the affection flowing between them.

I look down to see Lennox has grabbed my hand on my thigh, squeezing it gently in comfort as he’s seen my reaction to the older couple’s exchange.

“Lennox is like our son.” Maria looks at him affectionately and I feel a lump in my throat. For someone who hardly cries, sitting at the table with Maria and Miguel is surprisingly emotional. “We looked after his father and then, after the accident, we started working for Lennox.”

“Maria,” Lennox’s voice is filled with warning and the conversation abruptly shuts down. Maria looks at him in confusion and then looks to me, realization – of what I don’t know – dawning.

“I say too much!” She shakes her head. “Miguel always says I talk too much. Who’s ready for dessert?”

There’s a sudden tension in the room that wasn’t there before, one I can’t hope to understand.

Lennox’s body is stiff as a board and his hand releases mine as he turns to Miguel and starts questioning him about his vegetable garden.

The rest of the evening passes without incident, but the echo of whatever Lennox didn’t want discussed sits like a fifth person at the table and he more or less ignores me for the remainder.

It’s only once we leave their cottage and start the walk back to the main house that I call him out.

“You wanna tell me what that was all about?” I ask, keeping pace with him as he strides purposefully towards the main house.

“It was nothing.” He doesn’t meet my eyes, but if he thinks I’m going to be fobbed off so easily, then he’s got another thing coming.

“Well things got pretty damn awkward pretty damn quickly over ‘nothing’,” I tell him, coming to a stop.

Lennox takes a few more steps before he realizes I have no intention of catching up to him.

“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.” I hold my hands up. “But don’t gaslight me and say what I just saw in there didn’t happen. You turned into a completely different person all of a sudden and Maria looked like she’s just eaten a whole tray of humble pie.”

Lennox looks up at the sky as if he might find an answer there, or like he’s hoping an alien spacecraft might appear and save him from having this conversation.

“You really don’t miss anything, do you?” he grumbles under his breath. “And you’re not afraid to call me out on my shit.” He says it as if it pisses him off but he’s not unhappy about it. I wonder if that’s why he likes having me around – because no one else dares to call him out when necessary.

I shrug, not really knowing how to answer him. “I don’t want to fight with you, Nox,” I say eventually, hands on my hips. “But I don’t appreciate being frozen out either.”

He scoffs as if to say I’m being dramatic. “I didn’t freeze you out.”

Yeah, right.

“From the minute Maria mentioned your father, you all but ignored me. You could’ve cut the tension in that room with a damn knife! I’m not asking you to tell me what Lennox Gray Senior has to do with any of this, but…don’t lie to me!”

I bite my lip, because I didn’t mean to start an argument with him, not when things have been so good between us.

“It isn’t Gray Senior Maria was talking about.

It’s my father, my real father,” Lennox says eventually, sighing as he leans against a tree.

It’s hard to make out his expression in the darkness, but from the droop of his shoulders I would hazard a guess that whatever the story is he’s about to tell, it’s not one that has a happy ending.

“When I was seventeen, during one of the damn shouting matches between my mom and Gray Senior, he let it slip how he raised ‘that little bastard’ even though the kid wasn’t his.”

I cover my mouth with my hand. What a way to find out your life has been a lie.

“Nox, I’m so sorry.” I cross the distance between us, any residual anger I felt dissipating immediately, wrapping my arms around his waist and leaning my head against his chest. He doesn’t hesitate before holding me and we stand like that for a few moments before he starts talking again.

“We never got along,” he admits. “Senior has always been tight with Laurie, my little sister, but nothing I did was ever good enough for him. As I got older I just stopped trying.” I feel Lennox shake his head at the memory and I hold him a little tighter, hearing the pain in his voice.

“You asked if it was always ice hockey for me – the truth was I made up my mind to do whatever Gray Senior didn’t want me to do.

He wanted me to play college football, so I knew I sure as shit wasn’t gonna do that.

He thought ice hockey was just a pointless hobby.

So, naturally, that’s where I focused all my energy. ”

“Naturally,” I murmur, smiling at the stubbornness of this man who has become so important to me.

“Once I heard Gray wasn’t my real father, it was like I’ve been given permission to step away from a family I never really felt was mine.”

My heart actually hurts at Lennox’s admission. I always thought he had the perfect life growing up, a life I was jealous of. It turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I went looking for my biological father. My mom wouldn’t help – she didn’t want anything to do with me finding him.

She’s always been under Gray Senior’s thumb, probably because he was the one who paid for everything.

She was so worried about making him angry, everything else came second, even her own kids.

” Lennox doesn’t sound sad about it, more like he’s just stating a fact and I’m not sure what’s more heartbreaking.

“You asked why I don’t go back home, that’s why. ”

I lift my head from his chest looking up to see him looking down at me, his expression unreadable.

“You don’t have to tell me the rest if you’re not ready.” I squeeze my arms around him a little tighter, bringing our bodies even closer together, telling him with my touch that I support him with everything I am.

“That’s just it, Izzy. It’s the damnedest thing; you make me want to tell you every goddam secret I’ve ever had.

” He shakes his head as if he doesn’t understand it himself.

But I do, it’s the same feeling I get around him.

I stay silent, not trusting my voice and giving Lennox the space to say whatever he needs to.

“It took me a helluva long time to find my real father – when you don’t even have a name to start off with, it turns out tracking someone down is a full-time job!

” Lennox huffs a laugh without humor and I think about how little the Grays deserve a son like him.

“I found him during my last year of college; I had offers from a few different NHL teams, but when the Pelicans wanted to recruit me and it turned out my biological father was in New York, it felt kind of like it was meant to be, you know?” I feel him shake his head.

“I know it sounds fucking stupid, but that’s how it felt at the time. ”

“It doesn’t sound stupid,” I lift my head to look at him. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.” It sounds like a man who was desperate to find a family he’s never felt he had. That’s not idiotic, it’s heartbreaking. “What was his name?” I ask, quietly.

“Jonas. His name was Jonas. He was a landscaper, worked on the Gray property and fell for my mom. I think a part of him was in love with her until the day he died…Anyway, he was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks and although he tried to persuade mom to run away with him, she liked the finer things in life too much to give it all up for a man earning minimum wage.” The disappointment in his voice is palpable.

“Gray Senior paid him off, told him never to come back. Jonas didn’t even know he had a kid until I contacted him.

He said if he’d known…” Lennox’s voice is thick with emotion.

“If he’d known he would have come looking for me. ”

I decide I really freakin’ hate the parents Lennox grew up with for denying him the chance to know his father, for taking something so fundamental away from him.

“When he left Alabama, he used the pay-off money to set up his landscaping business, he hired Miguel and they became like brothers. Miguel was the one who helped him to get sober, the one who kept him on the straight and narrow, at least as much as he could. But he couldn’t protect him from my asshole of a stepfather. ”

“What do you mean?” I ask, but I’m afraid I already know.

“When Gray Senior heard I found my dad, my real dad, I guess he was worried about how it would look to the world once word got out. I was already doing interviews, getting news coverage and he must’ve thought there was a risk I’d blurt out on national television the family secret the untouchable Gray family has kept for 25 years!

” His beautiful mouth twists with bitterness.

“He called Jonas and threatened him, and I guess it tipped him over the edge, according to Miguel, he hit the bottle pretty hard and – well… you know the rest. He was dead before the ambulance even got there. I haven’t spoken to Gray Senior or my mom since then and I have no fucking intention to. ”

“I’m so, so sorry, Nox.” I hold onto him tighter because my words feel so insufficient. I want to take away all his pain, but I can’t. My heart actually hurts for him and tears I never cry are threatening to make their way down my cheeks.

“I know, baby. I know.” Lennox rubs my back, kissing my hair, soothing me as if I’m the one who needs comforting.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.” I can’t imagine what that must be like. Mine is the most important person in my life, although Lennox is climbing the ranks disconcertingly quickly.

“Me too,” he says quietly, and we just stand there, holding each other in silence, gathering strength from each other.

Lennox breaks the quiet first, lifting my chin up so that my eyes meet his. The emotions I see swirling in their depths make me catch my breath. “There are only three people in the world who know the whole of that story. Kai, Maria and Miguel. And now there’s you.”

“I would never say anything -,” I start, hoping he doesn’t really think I’d share anything we spoke about, NDA or not.

“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupts, shaking his head, frustrated with me or himself, I’m not certain. “I guess, I’m just trying to say you’re important to me, Isabella.”

“You’re important to me, too,” I tell him and, again, my words are nowhere near enough to let him know how I really feel. There are words for it, I’m just not ready to say them to him, or even to myself. Not yet.

Still, as he kisses me, it feels as if we’re both saying all the things we can’t yet speak out loud.