"She works for you, Grady," Grace whispered fiercely, like I wasn't standing three feet away from her. "What is wrong with you?"
Grady stood tall and stoic next to me and folded up my chair when I didn't reach for it. My eyes glanced quickly up at him, and his skin was bone pale.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly to me.
"Are you going to ignore me?" his sister asked.
I wanted to shove one of her big combat boots right up her ass.
In the second I allowed my gaze to flicker dangerously in her direction, I saw Tucker take a few steps forward and speak quietly to the woman he loved.
That was what made all this so ... so ... utterly and completely insane.
He knew what that flick of my eyes meant.
I didn't lose my temper often, but when I did, I was like a beach ball held under the water for too long.
Whatever Tucker said, Grace nodded, and that just made the whole situation even stranger. He knew what to say to her too. He knew both of us.
The person he knew least in this whole situation was Grady.
Who'd dropped a veritable bomb on me right after the best kiss of my entire life.
"If I felt like I needed to explain myself to you, Grace, I would," Grady said, keeping his voice even. I knelt to the ground and pushed the rest of my clothes into my backpack. He did the same, and the heat from his body made something melt inside me but not the kind of melting I wanted.
I needed a wall of iron to get through this interaction unscathed. I needed my emotional reserves, something to prop me up so I didn't blow about a dozen gaskets on these crazy people and their crazy talk of love legends.
My hands started shaking again, and I saw Grady reach out to help me, then stop, pulling his hands back.
"I'll bring your sleeping bag to the office," he told me.
Shakily, I nodded. The force of his gaze on the side of my face was so strong, so intense, as tangible as if he touched me, and my wall melted further.
I wanted it.
I didn't want it.
He knew me so well, respected me so thoroughly, yet ...
Yet he'd put me into an untenable position, the kind that I was actively running from. Feeling stuck. Feeling trapped. Feeling forced.
"Oh, Grady," Grace breathed.
Her tone had my head snapping up. It was the understanding. Some unspoken comprehension that snaked chills down my spine.
One hand covered her mouth, her big eyes, the same shade as Grady's, were wide with comprehension.
"Is she ..." Her voice trailed off. "She's the ..."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Grady nod once.
Tucker dropped his head and cursed, a string of muttered words so vile that I almost called him on it. I'd never heard him say anything like that.
It was that chain of unfinished words, the fragmented sentences, those slight motions of realization from them both, the slow dawning of awareness of what this was, that made my remaining reserves disappear in a flimsy puff of air.
"What is wrong with you people?" I asked, standing slowly.
No one said anything. Grace looked like someone had knocked her over with a cast-iron skillet. Tucker wouldn't lift his head. And Grady ... Grady looked miserable.
I'd never seen an expression on his face like the one he was wearing.
Agony was stamped on every inch of that wonderful face. The one I'd worshiped just minutes earlier. The one that looked down at me like I was the most important thing in the world to him.
"I'm standing right here, and you're talking over my head like I'm a child. You don't get to force people into a relationship with some absolute nonsense and expect that they'll just toe the line." My voice gained volume like I was a holy freight train bearing down the flimsy tracks, and all three shifted uncomfortably.
Grace's hand dropped from her mouth. "Grady, you told her already?"
He glared at her. "Stay out of it, Grace. I stayed out of your relationship."
Tucker held up his hands. "Why don't we all take a deep breath, all right? This is a lot of information that we're all wading into, and I think Magnolia has every right to be frustrated."
Grace rolled her lips together. The color in her face was high. I suppose if I wanted to put myself in her shoes, the color on my face would be high too if my brother was in some magical love spell with the woman who took my boyfriend's virginity.
It was that ungracious thought, so uncharacteristic of me, that had me rankled all over again.
I crossed my arms and pinned Tucker with a stare. "Magnolia doesn't need you to fight her battles."
He conceded that with a slow nod. "I know that. Just ... trying to keep everyone calm."
Grady's hands rolled into tight fists at his side.
That probably made him insane, Tucker stepping in to try to handle me. And to think, in the office, I'd felt so swept away by it. Possessive displays of male ownership were only swoon-worthy in very particular settings, and this did nothing for me. Simply left me bubbling and boiling with frustration.
I was not his simply because he'd decreed it so. Because he felt some strange feeling when he first saw me.
I pulled the straps of my backpack over my shoulder and snatched my camping chair from where Grady had set it on the hard ground. "Y'all are crazy," I muttered. "You're crazy if you think this is normal. That because some love switch flips in your head, because you believe it's right and true and perfect, that everyone else should just fall into line. Life doesn't work that way. It's not supposed to."
"Please don't leave like this," Grady begged quietly, turning his back so that Grace and Tucker couldn't see his face, couldn't see mine. "Give me ten minutes once they leave, please, Magnolia."
He was a shield, tall and strong, and it would've been so easy to fall into that. To allow him to protect me, to allow him to make this easier on me. But I didn't do that anymore.
If something was hard, I could face it on my own.
If something was scary, I was perfectly capable of being my own shield.
"This is too much, Grady," I told him. I pointed behind him to where Tucker and Grace stood. "All of that, them, us, whatever you just told me, it's too much to handle, and it's all being poured on my head like ... like hot oil. And not slowly either."
His face bent in utter misery, twisted in a way that betrayed just how much this tortured him. And I believed him, I did. I believed that he thought this was true, that they all did. But still, I couldn't make peace with another person trying to fit me into some predesigned space that I didn't choose for myself. My entire life had been like that to varying degrees.
And I was officially resigning from that kind of hold over my choices anymore.
Nothing would be decided by committee. By a list that someone else wrote out for me.
"I get it," he said, so quietly, so resigned, that my heart unwillingly cracked at the sound of it. This exuberant man, who embraced challenges, who didn't shy away from big, scary things, was brought to his knees. "I'm so sorry it happened like this. I wish ... I wish I'd handled it better."
Even with my backbone straight and my resolve firm, I found myself wanting to slide my hand up the side of his face. To comfort him as he'd comforted me so many times. But I respected him, liked him too much to give him false hope at this moment. "I know you do, Grady."
It was all I could give him. Faced with all that impossible, and all that hard to understand, it was the only concession I could allow.
Because it was true. I knew he would take it all back if he could, maybe even back to our kiss in the tent, so that he could rewrite the path that had unfolded. He'd do it to shield me from this moment. He'd do it to make it easier for me to understand.
Any of those choices, I knew without a doubt that Grady would make them for me.
But he couldn't.
And that was why I found it remarkably easy, though tears welled dangerously in my eyes, to turn my back and walk to my car, away from every single one of them, wit
hout another word.
Chapter 22
Grady
I'd never experienced quiet like the one that descended between the three of us as Magnolia—looking, somehow, like a queen—walked to her car, hidden in the grove of trees, and left.
Like we all knew that the moment she was well and truly gone, we had a mountain of complete and utter awkwardness to address, and it wouldn't be fun.
Or maybe they were just waiting for me. Because I couldn't tear my eyes away from her car as it drove away, couldn't bring myself to process just exactly how fucking horrible that had gone.
For one kiss, I'd had her. And now I didn't.
"You know," I mused, "I really, really hate this family legend horseshit."
Neither of them replied. Probably because behind my back, they were holding hands, communicating wordlessly with longing, loaded glances as people head over heels in love were known to do.
"I'm so sorry, Grady," my sister said quietly. "If we'd known she was out here ..." Her voice trailed off.
I turned. "If you'd known, what?"
She blinked. "We wouldn't have come?"
"Do you know, or are you asking me?"
Tucker's jaw hardened at my tone, but in a wise life choice, he didn't intercede.
Grace, of fucking course, sensed his mood and ran a hand down his arm. Yes, please, soothe the beast who wants to defend you from your big, bad brother. The guy whose only crime was falling helplessly in love with someone he used to date.
These feelings were so unfamiliar to me. They were bitter and cold in my veins, each one building on the next until my thoughts raced in a blur.
My sister stepped closer to me, her features soft with understanding, and it made me rage inside. I didn't want understanding. I wanted to break something into a million pieces, just to release some of this pressure building up.
And somehow, she sensed that, so Grace paused, hands raised slightly in concession.
"This is super freaking weird, right?" she asked.
I laughed harshly. "Yeah, Grace, it is."
"Trust me, I know. I remember."
That was the thing, though. I didn't want to remember what it was like for her at first. She arrived in Green Valley only a couple of days before me, and in that time, she covered a lot of ground. By the time I got there, she and Tucker were circling each other warily, not quite sure what to do with the other person.
Remembering what it had been like to watch them that first day I arrived and we hiked Coopers Road Trail, I had to pinch my eyes shut. My sister, the delicate flower she was not, was hissing and spitting at Tucker like a wounded cat. Like she couldn't help her reaction.
I rubbed at my chest. Yeah, almost everyone in my family had gone through this to varying degrees, but I wanted to know if a single person had ever found the love of their life connected with so many entanglements. With so many complications.
But that wasn't Grace's fault.
She was the only person in my life who could read my mood at twenty paces. The person who I'd count on to always have my back and come out swinging for me.
I opened my eyes and gave her an apologetic look.
Immediately, a tear fell down her cheek.
"Don't cry," I groaned.
She laughed, and it was wet-sounding. "You're not usually so snippy with me."
"Yeah, well ..." I spread my arms out. "This is uncharted territory in the moods of Grady."
Grace sighed, giving a quick glance over her shoulder at Tucker. He smiled at her but hung back, giving us some privacy. I tried to gauge his face because this was probably strange as hell for him too, but his features were inscrutable.
If I were in his position, I wouldn't know what to say either.
So ... you fell in love with my first girlfriend. Want any tips?
Kill me now.
"This is so ..." She shook her head when words failed her.
"Yeah."
Fill in the blank. Weird. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Weird. And that was just for the parts of this related to Tucker. All the other facets of what just happened could create an entirely new list.
Frustrating. Heartbreaking. Discouraging. Depressing.
Those were the kinds of words I normally banished from my vocabulary, which Grace knew. If any piece of life could be described in those terms, then I'd change that part of my life. Why sit in it? Why choose to spend your days feeling anything like that?
It chaffed against everything that made me me, to purposely step into a space where I might feel any or all those things.
Grace must have sensed that too because she took a cautious step forward and wrapped her arms around my middle. Her hug was welcome because this was just one of those situations when talking it to death wouldn't make it go away.
It wouldn't make it easier, even if Magnolia gave me the time of day after this.
I wrapped my arms around my sister and set my chin on the top of her messy blond hair. A curl lifted on the wind and tickled my nose.
"What'd you do to your hair? Stick your car key in a light socket this morning?"
"Screw you," she muttered into my chest.
Normally, I would've laughed, but that muscle seemed to be weak at the current moment.
"Magnolia, huh?" she asked quietly, keeping herself tucked against me.
I eased her away from me. No avoiding eye contact on this one. I'd screwed up my first foray into that possible relationship, and I didn't want to do the same to my second attempt.
"Wanna walk?"
She nodded.
I lifted my chin in Tucker's direction. "He okay waiting over here?"
"If I ask him to, yeah." Grace nudged me with her shoulder. "Plus, he knows I'll tell him everything you said as soon as we get in the truck."
My smile was small, but it was a smile. And even that felt like a victory in light of how hollowed out I felt inside.
"We'll be right back," she told him.
He nodded. "Take your time."
What a strange feeling to give him a lift of my chin and still fight against the urge to get his blessing. His permission that this was okay.
Now wasn't the time for that particular conversation, and from the looks of it, both Tucker and I knew it.
Grace and I didn't wander far because that wasn't the point of this little jaunt. It was giving us space to breathe, time to look for words to a strange situation, and give my sister—if I knew her at all—a chance to rein in her wild emotions at her twin brother loving this person who used to be her biggest stumbling block to being with Tucker.
Her deep exhale was how I knew she was ready to hear it. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"
I hopped over a log and waited for her to do the same. The only sound for a minute was the rush of the creek and the leaves rustling on the branches. The wind had a bite to it, but it felt good against my slightly feverish face.
It took me by surprise but finding the words came easily. About her interview, what she was wearing, and what a fool I made of myself. That strange unerring sense of certainty that I felt looking at Magnolia's face had Grace nodding slightly because she understood perfectly.
"I remember," she murmured. "I remember when I looked at him and all I could think was, mine. That man belongs with me."
Right. She'd had that thought when Tucker was still with Magnolia. But that went unsaid. Because we both knew it.
It wasn't like I held it against her. They never crossed any lines, not until Tucker broke things off with Magnolia. And I knew Magnolia didn't hold that against them either. There was no betrayal, but there was a hard truth to face.
If Magnolia forgave me, the four of us would be inextricably intertwined.
"I get why you didn't tell me," she admitted.
It felt like a good time to slow down because we didn't really have a destination in mind. So, I stopped and leaned against a tree trunk. Knobs from the wood dug in my back, and I didn't really care.
"I felt like"—I shrugge
d—"like she needed to be the first one to know. It felt important."
Grace smoothed a hair over the top of her ponytail. "I get that too."
"She's already dealt with whispers and gossip and judgment her whole life," I said, peering intently at the water. "Her dad didn't make things easier on her, but ... Man, it's hard to admit this after how bad he came down on Tucker after they broke up, but I understand now why he did. After getting to know her. Learning about her family through her."
Grace blew out a breath. "He almost ruined Tucker's law firm, Grady."
"I'm not defending what he did," I told her. "I said I can understand why he did it. There's a difference."
She nodded. "There's a lot for us to work through with this, isn't there?"
"Maybe not."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she said we're crazy for thinking this is okay and marched off? I may have lost her before I even really had the chance to have her, Grace." My voice cracked at the end, and her eyes welled up. "I've never ... I've never even dreamed that it was possible to feel like this about someone. She's nothing I was looking for, and she is every-fucking-good-thing I could ever want. And I just lost her."
She gripped my arm. "You don't know that. You don't! Give her time. Just ... let her breathe a little, okay?"
"Yeah." I rubbed my forehead. I felt like I could sleep for a week.
"My brother doesn't give up, okay? This sucks, and it's hard, but if she's the one, Grady, then you two will move past this."
I pinned her with a look. "And if we do? You'd be okay with Christmases and birthdays and family vacations with you and Tucker and me and Magnolia?"
"Yes," she answered immediately. "Because if she makes you as happy as Tucker makes me? Then it's not even a question in my mind, Grady. I know what this love feels like when you come out on the other side. We can get through all the awkward conversations in the world. I'd do them a hundred times if I knew you'd have this kind of happiness waiting for you."
I dropped my head back on the tree and exhaled heavily. In theory, I knew Grace would have my back. She always had in the past. But something shifted when you found the love of your life. Even the strongest relationship outside of it was moved into a secondary position. Hearing her say it out loud, though, something unlocked, just enough that I could breathe a little easier.
Steal My Magnolia (Love at First Sight Book 3) Page 18