Page 44 of Not Her Day to Die (Star-Crossed #2)

“ H ow did I know I would find you here?” Axel shoulders open the office door.

Grayson glances up from the stack of papers in front of him. “Because there isn’t anywhere else I would be. It’s not like I have any hobbies.”

Axel steps further into the room, kicking the door shut behind him before settling into the chair across from Grayson. “She doesn’t understand when you leave like that. She’s going to think you’re angry with her.”

“How? How could I possibly be angry with her? The only person that I am upset with is myself. Not only for Sunday, but Darius too. All that they went through. Not only this lifetime. But all of them. I was always one step behind.” Because of their mother, Grayson has never drank, but right now he is craving it.

Something, anything to take the edge off. To provide a reprieve from the pain and guilt and grief that threaten to swallow him whole.

“It isn’t your job to keep us all safe Grayson.” Axel sweeps forward, gathering the papers into his hands, flipping through them. “Isn’t it lonely up there? You keep forcing Darius and me away. Making yourself nearly untouchable. Soon enough you’ll shove Sunday away too. And then what?”

Grayson narrows his eyes. “She’s too young. I should never have allowed myself to…to… ”

“To fall in love with her? Well it’s too late now.” Axel’s lips quirk. “Looks like the restaurant is booming, even after you closed it for the last week, but we need to replace a few hires. Fucking Rick. When he called her munchkin, I suspected, but I hoped it wasn’t true.”

They had decided to shutter the doors temporarily after Sunday was taken. “What are we supposed to do now?” The question tumbles from Grayson’s lips before he can catch it.

Axel sets the papers down and levels him with a stare. “You need to pull the stick out of your ass. To stop getting in your own way. You need to show Sunday how much you care about her, how much you love her.”

“But I don’t deserve her!” Grayson jumps to his feet, the words echoing around his office. It is in the back of the restaurant. The place he always goes to get ahold of himself.

“None of us do! But all of us? All of us together? We can take care of her. Be everything she needs. And she will heal, she will make it through this. She’s tougher than you give her credit for,” Axel speaks levelly, reclining further back in the chair.

“That’s rich.” But Grayson doesn’t argue, he rakes his fingers through his hair. “What if she doesn’t want this? What if we’re all too much for her? Fuck, I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve never had a girlfriend!”

“Technically you’re in your thirties if we include all the time loops, which means Sunday is in her twenties,” Axel jests, but at Grayson’s glare, he puts his hands up in surrender.

“Jokes aside, Grayson, you need to just open your eyes. She cares about us. All of us. And she has for a very long time. Maybe not at the beginning of all of this, but along the way, Sunday has become ours.”

“How are we supposed to share her?” Grayson responds.

Axel’s lips curl up. “Did you feel jealous when you watched me fuck her?”

Grayson hadn’t meant to walk in on them. He just didn’t know where they were, but when he did, when he found Sunday naked and being pounded into the bed, Grayson hadn’t even seen Axel or cared. His entire focus was Sunday. “Just that it wasn’t me,” he admits.

“And besides, you have always cared about her, maybe not romantically. But she was Auggie’s little sister, we all did what we could to keep her safe and even then she was a little spit fire.”

“She didn’t even notice,” Grayson recalls. On more than one occasion he had stepped in to keep the evil of this town at bay. To keep her out of Mark’s and Maxwell’s sight. To steer Rayden as far away as he could.

“No, she didn’t,” Axel admits. “But it’s better that way.”

“What about Darius? Do you think he will forgive himself? You know he’s blaming himself.” Grayson had always felt bad for their youngest brother. The one with the evil dad. The one who was the sweetest and kindest of them all. The one who finished school early to keep their family afloat.

Axel shudders. “Not for a while. And in some ways, he might not ever. But Sunday will help. It’s clear the trauma only served to push them even closer.”

Grayson casts a glance out the window, the sun is setting and it casts the sky in an ominous pink glow. “I miss them. Tripp and Augustus.”

Axel gets to his feet, walking around the desk and tugging Grayson into his arms. “Me too, brother. Me too. A part of my heart will always ache from their absence, but we have each other. And we need to live, not only for our sake, but theirs too.”

“You’re right.”

Axel pulls apart, stepping back. “What about our birther? ”

“Our mother?” The question catches Grayson off guard, but he shakes his head. “She wasn’t down there. No evidence that she was with the Thornes.”

Axel snorts. “So she left us by choice.”

“You know she was a victim in this too.” But it’s an old argument and he doesn’t want to rehash it now. “She’ll return eventually.”

Axel heaves a sigh. “I’m going home, I don’t want to be away from Sunday any longer. You should come back soon too.”

Grayson tenses. “I will, but I’m going to give her time. As much as she needs to heal and recover from this.”

Axel doesn’t respond as he turns to the door, but just as he’s about to leave, he casts over his shoulder. “I really think you’re underestimating her.”

Grayson falls back into his chair and continues what he was working on.

He’ll return home, but first he needs to order inventory, get the “now hiring” ad up, check the dry stock, set up a staff meeting, figure out when to reopen the restaurant, and a million other pending items that had been thrown to the wayside.

It takes time but he slowly works through the list.

Grayson doesn’t realize how exhausted he is until his blinking slows.

I’ll just take a short nap and then I’ll head home.