All Chapters of A Love Too Close : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Chapter Twenty I'm Tired Annie's POVI woke up to the soft sound of movement in the living room. For a moment, I lay still, confused. Then I remembered Grey had stayed the night. I sat up slowly, rubbing my eyes, and checked the time on my phone. 6:47 AM. Why was he up so early?I slipped out of the bed, pulled on a cardigan over my pajamas and padded quietly to my door and opened it.The living room was full of the particular pale gold light that came through Matteo's windows in the early morning, the kind of light that made everything look soft and unhurried. And there was Grey, sitting on the floor in front of the canvas with a paintbrush in his hand and his back slightly curved and his whole attention on the painting in front of him.He looked exhausted. His hair was pushed back and messy. His shirt was wrinkled in the way shirts get when you have been wearing them through the night. There were paint smudges on his hands and up his

Chapter Twenty Two Surprise Annie's POVI woke up alone. The bed was empty on his side and when I reached over without thinking the sheets were cold, the kind of cold that meant he had been gone for a while, not just a few minutes. I lay there for a moment looking at the ceiling and listening to the apartment and there was nothing to hear except the ordinary sounds of a morning, the distant traffic outside and the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and somewhere a bird doing what birds did at this hour. Nine o’ three.I sat up slowly and the ache hit me immediately, deep and specific and impossible to ignore, and my face went hot before I had even fully processed why. Last night came back in pieces the way things do when you are not quite ready to receive them all at once. His hands. His voice. The way he had looked at me in the bathroom mirror like he was seeing something he had not known he was looking for. The shower and the bedroom and the way n

Chapter Twenty Four Healing and HomeAnnie's POVI woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. My head pounded. My throat was scratchy. My entire body ached in a way that had nothing to do with the bed and everything to do with the last two days catching up with me all at once. I groaned and tried to sit up, but the room spun slightly and I thought better of moving too fast."Annie?"I turned my head too fast anyway and winced.Grey was standing in the doorway, already dressed for work in a crisp white shirt and dark slacks. But his tie was loose, and concern was written all over his face, plain and unguarded in the way his face got when he was not thinking about managing his expression."You okay?" he asked, walking over quickly.I tried to wave him off. "I'm fine. Just... tired."He sat on the edge of the bed and pressed the back of his hand to my forehead before I had time to lean away from it. His eyes narrowed immediately."You're burning up.""I'

Chapter Twenty Six Golden GateAnnie's POVThe flight was short. Barely an hour and a half. I had expected to feel nervous, trapped in a small space with Grey for that long, hyper aware of every breath he took the way I had been in the car rides and the quiet mornings. But instead it was comfortable in a way I had not expected and could not entirely explain.We talked about work. About Matteo's latest painting projects and how he had apparently already started planning what he was going to teach Grey on his next visit. Grey ordered us coffee and somewhere over the middle of the flight a bag of overpriced airplane pretzels appeared between us and we ate them and agreed they were terrible and kept eating them anyway and I laughed more in that hour and a half than I had in the entire week before it.By the time the plane began its descent the morning sun was bright and clear and I pressed my face to the small oval window and watched the city come into vi

Chapter Twenty EightAnnie's POV"Hi," I said softly.Sophia pulled back from Grey just enough to look up at him with the expression of someone who had a point to make. "You actually finished early. I genuinely cannot believe it."Grey ruffled her hair with the easy familiarity of someone who had been doing it since she was small and knew she would complain about it. "I wanted to spend time with my favorite sister.""I'm your only sister," she said, ducking away from his hand and fixing her ponytail with the practiced irritation of someone who had been having this exact exchange for years."Yes," he said. "Which is why you're always my favorite."She laughed, and I realized I'd never heard her laugh like that before light and genuine and completely unguarded. This was the real Sophia. The one who wasn't trying to protect herself. Grey looked over at me. "Annie, this is Sophia, my sister. Sophie, this is Annie, my fiancée."Sophia looked at me with the assessment still in