“Strippers, booze, and blow.”

Holy shit.

What the fuck was I doing?

I felt my jaw drop open, knew I probably looked horribly appalled, and yet, I couldn’t get that expression off of my face.

“I’ve shocked you.” His jaw was tight, his emotions locked behind what might as well have been an iron wall. He was the one with the poker face now.

I’d grown up around politics. I wasn’t naive; maybe a bit sheltered, but not naive. There was nothing about his tale I hadn’t heard before. I still wasn’t prepared.

“No. Yes. I—”

“What?” He fired the question at me in a tone made for the courtroom and I flinched under his scrutiny.

“I don’t know.”

I was vehemently antidrug. Like, wouldn’t even consider smoking pot. It wasn’t even something my father had drilled into me, it was just my own personal dislike for it. I’d had friends in high school who did drugs and I hated being around them when they were high, never understood the risks they took for the pleasure they got from it. Everything for me was carefully weighed in terms of risk and reward. If I was going to utterly fuck up my future, then you’d better believe the payout would be amazing.

Nothing had ever come close.

“You could have been disbarred for the drugs.”

His mouth turned grim. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

It wasn’t any of my business, but because I’d liked kissing him, because some part of me wanted to do it more, I demanded the rest. Thanks to that kiss, we were no longer at the beginning of this. The second our bodies had found each other, we’d fast-forwarded somewhere to the middle, and now I was trying to catch up.

We’d had a panel of attorneys come and talk to us about mental health and substance abuse issues in one of our first-year seminars and the numbers they’d given us were staggering.

Lawyers were almost four times more likely to suffer from depression than non-lawyers. State bar associations were concerned with the growing number of suicides within their ranks. Around 20 percent of lawyers suffered from alcoholism and substance abuse. I knew it was one of the dark sides of the profession, hell, I’d seen it more times than I could count among my father’s political allies.

It was still difficult to understand.

He didn’t speak; I wondered if he wasn’t going to answer me, if I’d asked for more than he was willing to give. And then he spoke, and gave me more than I’d ever expected.

“I was hired by a small but prestigious firm right out of law school. It was the kind of place where you could make a killing if you were willing to work your ass off. I was. I caught a couple of big cases, had a few large settlements go my way, and suddenly I was making more money in a year than my parents had made in their entire lives.”

His gaze clouded. “I was young, and I was stupid, and everything happened so quickly, and I made some shitty decisions. I worked hard, but on the weekends I partied hard. I don’t even remember the first time I did a line, just that it soon became more of a habit and less of a weekend thing.

“In the beginning, I told myself it was no big deal. Just me blowing off steam. Work hard, play harder, and all of that bullshit. And then little by little, inch by inch, it began seeping over into all aspects of my life, and what I thought I’d had under control began to control me.”

I’d gone to an elite prep school and I was all too familiar with casual drug use. He described a world I’d been exposed to for years. Power and money had a way of making people think the rules didn’t apply to them. That they could be invincible.

It really wasn’t that different from the way I’d grown up with my father. Power was his drug of choice and his addiction obliterated his family.

“The more money I made,” Gray continued, “the more it began taking over my life. My partners intervened before it ruined my work, but it was close. Too fucking close.” He looked away from me, staring down at his hands, his body strung tight. “You don’t need to hear how ugly it was. Trust me. I wish I could forget it all. Wish I could take it back.

“I went to rehab,” he continued. “I’m clean now. Hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done. I haven’t touched coke in a year.”

I swallowed. “And the drinking?”

“I don’t drink. I’ve been sober for a year now.”

His eyes goaded me, pushing me to ask for the rest. It was like he was daring me to leave, to sever the connection between us.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Every single intelligent, sensible part of me screamed that this was a whole lot of baggage I didn’t need in my life. And still, something held me in place.

Gray’s hand stroked mine, his thumb tracing circles on my skin.

His gaze met mine, and I forgot where I was, and all the reasons I shouldn’t feel anything for him. He was a train wreck, and I’d never been the kind of girl who wanted to fix a man or found baggage sexy. The world was full of screwed up guys; I didn’t need to go looking for one. But even though I hadn’t gone looking for trouble, apparently trouble had found me.

And I let it hold me close when I probably should have pushed it away.

“And the rest?” I couldn’t actually say the word, strippers.

“Just wrecked my marriage.”

And just like that, my stomach clenched.

He’d been married.

Gray

The second I told her the truth about all of it, as soon as those words left my mouth, I hated myself. I shouldn’t have told her. I didn’t know why I did. Her lips had me spilling all of my secrets with more skill than a seasoned interrogator.

I’d meant to warn her off; I just hadn’t been prepared for how well it would work. Or how shitty I’d feel when she looked at me like I’d disappointed her.

“You were married?” Her voice squeaked out the words, her cheeks red.

“Divorced now. It’s been almost two years. It was bad before, but once we separated, it was like I was on a mission to self-destruct.”

Blair opened her mouth and closed it, as if she had a question she wanted to ask, but couldn’t get up the balls to do it. Maybe she was trying to be polite. Maybe I’d horrified her into silence.

I just kept talking, giving her more than she’d asked for, more than I’d intended to give. That was the dangerous thing about Blair. She didn’t even have to try and she pulled everything out, unraveling you thread by thread.

“We were only married for two years before it all fell apart. We were a bad fit from the start, but my problems didn’t help. She left me and maybe there was a chance, if I’d cleaned myself up, that we could have gotten back together. But I kept partying, more and more. There were girls. It all just became one big ride I couldn’t pull myself off of. In the end, she found another guy, a better guy with a stable job, who made her happy.

“One day my partners demanded I go into rehab. Fucking up my marriage wasn’t enough to give me a wake-up call. But my career? My wife was my mistress and my job was my wife. So yeah, at the threat of losing all I built, I cleaned myself up. Too little, too late.

“My personal life fucked me professionally. When things started blowing up in Chicago, I needed an out. My ex-wife’s father is a well-known federal court judge. They were out for blood, and it became clear that my odds of finding a good job in the Chicago legal community were coming to an end.”

Blair didn’t speak, just kept staring at me with a searching gaze. I didn’t know if she was attempting to unearth my secrets or sketch my character, but either way, I’d just given her everything. I doubted I’d come out looking good.

Was that what I’d intended all along? I didn’t even know anymore. This girl had my head so fucked I didn’t know which way was up.

An uneasy silence settled between us, as if we’d both shared more than we’d wanted to, and we choked on the intimacy we’d created.