“It’s what will save me.” It was out before I could stop it.
I suddenly felt seventeen.
Terrified and alone and promising myself it would never feel that way again. That no one would ever have the power to hurt me the way she had.
I’d break the entire fucking world before it got the chance to break me.
“Yeah, and how’s Bennet?” Mack’s words twisted with distaste.
I cringed, shifted in discomfort, took a sip of the scotch. “Bennet is just the same as he’s ever been. My ticket to the top.”
“Not if he takes you down before you get there.”
I fiddled with the collar of my shirt, suddenly feeling hot. “He was there for me when I needed someone most.”
Brow pinching up tight, Mack angled his head. “Dude is shady as fuck. You and I both know it. And you know I fucking love you, man. That I’d die for you. That I’ll always have your back. Help you in whatever way I can.”
He angled in farther, his voice dripping with a growled promise, “But what I’ll never be is a dirty cop. And you know as fucking well as I do that Bennet is as dirty as they come.”
“My shit’s clean.”
It was a lie I’d been feeding myself for so long, I should have believed it. But the truth of just how shady that shit went was impossible to ignore.
He sat back in the booth. “You better make sure it stays that way.”
I tried to tamp it down, stop it from boiling up, the old hatred for owing anyone anything. But Bennet had been there for me when I’d been that pathetic, scared kid.
He fed me and had given me a job. Picked me up and dusted me off. Told me he’d always be there for me, and he’d stuck by his word.
I’d owed him. Felt loyal to him.
But as the years had passed, the side jobs he’d had me doing for him became more and more warped. Darkness concealed by the light, feigned good deeds that were nothing but a cover.
Had to wonder if that hadn’t been the reason I’d been drawn to him all along. The reason I’d ended up at his feet. The lure of wickedness hidden inside him, the same kind of wickedness that thrived inside me.
Mack shook his head and swore, looking away for a second like he’d just heard every single one of my thoughts. “You’re one of the good guys, Ian. Fucking good, no matter if you want to be or not. It’s time to start living that way. Because I know you. I fucking know you better than anyone, and it will kill me if you let the grief you refuse to feel continue to own you.”
“I’m fine.”
A hard breath of disbelief and frustration jetted from his nose. “Do you really believe all the bullshit you feed yourself?”
“What can I say? It’s a talent.” My response was hard, but Mack laughed and scrubbed a hand over his face. Asshole was grinning again.
I started to tell him to go to hell when my phone dinged. I reached for it, figuring it was Jace following up about the building.
I fucking froze when I saw who the text was from.
My ice-cold heart flashed with a bolt of heat. A frenzy pumped directly into my veins.
Unknown: Thank you for what you did today. I wish I could have truly expressed to you what it meant to me. I want you to know it meant everything.
Grace.
I sat there staring at her message, fighting that same feeling again.
“Who’s that?” Mack nudged me with his boot from under the table.
I shoved my phone into my pocket. “No one.”
“No one?” he challenged.
“That’s what I said.”
Fucker grinned. “And you’re lying. I see it written all over you.”
I sent him a glare and tried to ignore the excitement that blazed just beneath the surface of my skin, my phone burning a damned hole in my pocket.
I had a number.
An in.
And I was fucking going to take it.
Mack laughed. “Looks to me like you’re not feeling so cold, after all. Maybe I shouldn’t lose hope in my best friend just yet.”
“It’s just a fuck, Mack.”
At least, that’s what I wanted it to be. Still, I cringed when I said it, as if it were insulting her, the girl who dripped sex and indecency and then had me fumbling when she looked at me with those sad, fathomless eyes.
Truth was, if I was right about the girl, that was probably all that the text was.
A thank you.
Mack was right. I wasn’t anything but an asshole. A predator. After one thing. Because sitting there right then? I knew I was going to take it as an invitation.
Problem was, everything about it felt different. Body lighting up at the thought. Pulse doing something funny when it thrummed an extra beat.
“One day, some girl is going to make a crack in that impenetrable stone, and you’re gonna put one on her finger. Have a small herd of kids. And you’re going to be happy, Ian. Fucking happy because it’s about time you had a little of the real kind.”
“You want to be called Uncle? You’ve got Jace for that. So why don’t we drop this bullshit you’re trying to get at? You know what’s important to me. What I live for, and you know damned well that I’ll live the way I want. I won’t let anyone get in the way of that.”
And it sure as fuck wasn’t going to involve marriage and a family.
I edged up so I could get my wallet out of my pocket, dug into it, and pulled out a twenty. I tossed it onto the table. “I have to go.”
Asshole cracked a grin. “Where you headin’, Ian?”
I pushed out of the booth and shot him a finger, not turning to look back. Only thing I heard was his laughter following me to the door.
Eight
Grace
“Thomas, set the table, please.”
“Oh, man, do I have to?” he whined, stomping through the kitchen and heading directly to the cabinet. Clearly, he already knew the answer to that, especially with the look I sent him.
But because it was Thomas, he was going to argue anyway.
Gramma chuckled and shook her head. “Boys. They like to do everything the hard way.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“Not the hard way, Grams, the right way,” he corrected, hiking up onto his tiptoes to pull down the plates.
“Right way, huh? And how do you figure?” she asked, moving around the kitchen and finishing our dinner, poking at the potatoes with a fork to make sure they were soft. All the while, I was busy washing Sophie Marie’s face and hands since she’d decided to have a mud pie as an appetizer.
She’d shoveled about three fistfuls into her mouth before I’d made it across the backyard to stop her.
Mallory was spinning around in the middle of the kitchen, singing Taylor Swift at the top of her lungs as she danced and held a spatula to her mouth, the child already thinking she was a superstar.
We were all basically knocking into each other, getting in each other’s way.
A muddle of confusion.
I called it harmony.
Funny, how I’d gladly trade that rambling kitchen with a cook and a maid for the warmth of my grandmother’s.
The smell of a roast rising up from the faded white stove, flecks of paint missing, the counterspace close to nonexistent, and the floors a worn linoleum that had long since turned brown.
There was no place better.
No place safer.
No place that made me remember who I was and exactly who I wanted to be than when I was standing there in the perfectly orchestrated chaos.
Thomas rolled his eyes. “If we were doing it the right way, we’d be using paper plates. I mean, who even sits at a table and eats dinner together anymore, anyway? And I’m not even allowed to have my tablet.”
“The horror,” I told him, sending him a warning glance.
You’d better watch it, young man.
I knew he was just trying to figure out his place. Adjusting to the change. Dealing with the fear he tried to keep hidden, which worried
me most of all.
“It’s family time, Tom Tom!” Mallory shouted, breaking song, before she was right back at it again, the little thing singing about shaking it off as she shook her little bottom, wearing a pink satin nightgown and my grandmother’s slippers with old style curlers in her hair.
Apparently, she’d had a little Gramma time this afternoon.
The kid was taking and giving good advice, that was for sure.
I was trying hard to keep it myself.
Hold it.
To pretend as if everything was normal. As if my beautiful stranger hadn’t come into the salon today and ripped the rug right out from under me.
Sophie squirmed, jogging me out of the daze. “I down. I eat now. I eat now.”
I was holding my toddler facing out, the squirming wild monkey wiggling in my arms. I finished washing the sand from her mouth and grabbed a hand towel to dry her face and hands. “We are going to eat right now. Don’t you smell that delicious dinner your gramma is making you?”
“Yeah, delicious because you’re not making it.” Thomas sent me a grin as he swaggered passed.
“Hey, that isn’t very nice.”
“What? It’s the truth. Right, Grams?” He turned to her, looking for confirmation.
She chuckled one of her light laughs, body swaying at the stove. “We all have our strengths, child. Unfortunately for your mother, cooking is not one of hers.”
From over her shoulder, she sent me an affectionate wink.
“Hey, why is everyone ganging up on me?”
“Shake it off, Momma!” Mallory sang, jumping around. “Besides, you make the best mac and cheese in the whole world.”
“See,” I shouted in something akin to victory, eyes going wide as I gave my grandmother an I-told-you-so look.
“She is your child who’s living in a fantasy world,” Grandma said with a shrug, grinning wide and making Thomas howl with laughter.
“Fine, only people getting any of my mac and cheese around here is my Mal Pal, isn’t that right?”
She jumped in front of me, those ridiculous pink curlers flopping around, one sliding right out. “That’s right. None for you two boohoos.”
“I down!” Sophie Marie shouted again, and I set her on her feet. She went running through the kitchen, scooping up her plush princess doll that she carried everywhere.
It was definitely going to need to take a tumble in the washer after she went to sleep, but I so didn’t need the meltdown that would come with taking it from her then.
My grandmother had taught me some battles were worth fighting. That was not one of them.
Plates clacked as Thomas set them on the round table in the kitchen nook. He went to the drawer and pulled out silverware. He waved it in my face. “Happy?”
“Very,” I shot right back.
“Can I have my tablet, then?”
“Nice try, buddy.”
“The TV? We could all watch a show together.” That perked him up, brows riding high as if his manipulation was irresistible.
“Nope. You know the rules. No electronics at the dinner table. We can have one meal a day where we all have an actual conversation, can’t we?”
Thomas’s shoulders sagged. He might as well have gotten the news that he was grounded for a month. “Why do I have to have the most uncool mom on the planet? No one else has to do it.”
I tapped his nose. “Maybe I just love you more.”
Okay, who said I couldn’t wield my own manipulation?
He rolled his eyes, but there was affection behind it, the kid trying to fight the smile that pulled to his mouth.
Such a tough guy.
Good thing I knew better.
Gramma laughed, transferring the roast to a platter, talking over her shoulder as she did. “Don’t let her fool you, Thomas. Your mother used to try to pull the same stunt on me when she was growin’ up. She always had an excuse why that television should be blaring during dinner. Nearly drove your Grandpa Smitty straight to the loony bin.”
Thomas’s mouth dropped open. “Mom got to watch TV during dinner? That’s so not fair.”
“Not even close. But you have to give her credit. She tried just as hard as you.” She knocked him with her hip. “Might as well give it up, kid. Because I loved your mother more, too . . . just like she loves you.”
It was all affection.
Devotion spinning all around us.
Thomas so comfortable that he did, in fact, give it up. He helped Mallory climb into her chair while I wrangled Sophie into her high chair. Gramma heaped a ton of food onto each of their plates, roast and potatoes and carrots.
“Grams has mad cooking skills, that’s for sure,” Thomas said, shoving his fork into his mouth and talking around his food. I didn’t even have the heart to tell him not to talk with food in his mouth.
He’d had enough of that polishing to last him a lifetime.
Our meals had never been shared like this before.
The comfort of it only found here.
Where a true sort of family resided.
Where just being together meant more than anything else.
My gaze roamed around the table.
My grandmother who’d raised me with my grandpa before he’d passed eleven years before.
My children.
Thomas and Mallory and Sophie.
Love shining so bright.
Thomas chatted with my gramma as if he were the man of the house, which she continually told him he was, and Mallory laughed uproariously at just about everything, while Sophie babbled a little song while she flung half her food into her hair and onto the floor.
Hope filled me full.
Joy so bright.
Heart beating wild with the possibility of it all.
* * *
I’d been sitting in my room for the last two hours, trying to settle the riot inside me that writhed and heaved.
The kids had long since been bathed and tucked into bed. A continuation of our story had been made, a new twist in the Ruby Prince and Priceless Princesses, two new pages drawn into our sketchbook.
A dragon and his lair.
I guessed maybe it had been fed by the text message that had been waiting from Reed after we’d gotten finished with dinner.
Reed: You’re running out of time to make the right choice. Do you think I don’t know you were at that gala? Sniffing around? You’re treading into dangerous waters, Grace. It’d be a shame if you drowned.
Terror had raced my veins when I’d read the words. It hadn’t even been a veiled threat, his blatant hostility growing greater and greater with every day that passed, my worry amplifying in direct correlation to his warnings.
I knew the only thing holding him back from coming completely unglued was the flimsy evidence I had against him, which probably amounted to nothing, but somehow had worked at keeping him at bay.
The problem was, I was beginning to feel that assurance slipping. Reed’s demands had gone from pleas for me to return to threats of what would happen if I didn’t.
As if I’d ever trust his feigned affections. Not ever again. I’d already seen the monster hidden underneath.
I’d met Reed in college. Our love had been sweet, if not a little boring. Maybe I should have given more credit to that, but I’d been so young that I hadn’t even had time to read the warning signs before he had a ring on my finger and had moved me from my dorm and into his house.
Looking back, I could see that it’d been nothing but a strategic move. A game piece.
It hadn’t been long before I was just another pawn he kept under his thumb.
I refused to succumb to it.
Antsy, I glanced around my childhood room.
It hadn’t been touched since I’d left when I’d headed to college.
High school pictures were still tacked to the walls and played partner to posters of my teen idols. My twin bed was still made up in the same quilt my grandmother had made for me after I’d picked out the c
olors for the patchwork pieces when I was thirteen.
The room was filled with small white furniture—a dresser and a desk and a nightstand that had a pink lamp sitting on top of it that matched the quilt.
From where I was propped against the headboard, I looked around, running my hands up my arms, fighting both the fear and anger at Reed and the buzz that still lingered from what had happened earlier this afternoon at the salon.
A quiet hum that drove the possibility of sleep from my mind.
More intense where it glowed beneath the bracelet around my wrist.
What I needed to do was sink down into my bed and put a pillow over my head.
Block it all out.
Maybe I was just delirious, still angry, my spirit rejecting everything Reed had implied, everything he stood for, the chains I was anxious to be free of.
Maybe it was that flicker.
The idea of more.
I glanced at my phone.
Just as fast, I jerked my attention away and questioned whether I’d lost my sanity.
Apparently so because just as fast I picked up my phone from the nightstand.
Quickly, I typed out a message to the number I’d gone and memorized like it was a theorem on my next high school calculus test.
Seemed fitting considering I felt as if I was officially back to that age.
A young girl who wanted something more. To experience what it felt like to be alive. Exhilarated and excited. To be touched and loved and adored.
Me: Thank you for what you did today. I wish I could have truly expressed to you what it meant to me. I want you to know it meant everything.
Somehow, none of those worries seemed to matter when I pushed send with a rush of butterflies taking flight from my skin.
Fluttering and flapping and the threat of an eager grin crawling across my lips.
His name and number had been nothing but a slip of temptation in my hand.
All of Me: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel Page 9