I'd gone my whole life knowing everything about Green Valley and knowing everyone in it. Knowing what my place was within that world. Even though I knew the truth of what Maxine said, I'd never really stopped to think about what it must be like for Grace. Grady, too.
They were braver than I'd probably ever been in my entire life.
Both of them, in different ways, took a giant leap of faith. There was so much in my life that I couldn’t ignore, couldn’t pretend that it didn’t exist, but there was a lot that I did have control of.
And what I did for a living, how much of my life that took up, was one of them.
"You look like you're thinking awfully hard over there, young man."
"I am," I told her. "What's the bravest thing you've ever done, Miss Barton?"
"Goodness," she harrumphed. "My brain doesn't work that fast, you can't ask me questions like that without a days’ notice to recall the last hundred years."
"If you're a hundred, I'll eat my hat." I smiled. "I know you've got something you can think of."
"Why? You need help manning up for something?"
"Maybe I do," I murmured. My dad was working on the budget, shifting numbers and going through our accounts, trying to get creative for the next couple of months until J.T. could settle down. The biggest thing that could help our budget was not having to pay someone. And I had an idea that could help my parents, and help myself, too.
"Probably having kids," she answered after a beat.
The secret hinge on my jaw unlocked, and my mouth fell open without permission from my brain.
Maxine clucked her tongue. "Only someone without kids would react that way. You don't realize just how little control you have in this world until you bring an entirely new person into it. When it's up to you, and you alone, to make sure they don't grow up to be a murderer or general drain on society, you have no idea what real pressure feels like. And I did it three times." She rapped the table. "Go ahead and tell me that's not bravery."
I smothered my smile. "It is, indeed."
"Now, what are you gearing up to do?"
"Nothing that bears talking about in public, Miss Barton," I said easily.
"Ah, sex, is it?"
"No," I whispered fiercely. She said it so damn loud that someone a table over choked on their coffee. "It's not about that."
"Well if you can't talk about it in public, what is it?"
She looked so genuinely confused that I almost laughed.
"Something else, I promise." I glanced at my watch. "And as much as I'd love to bore you with the details, I really need to head back to the office."
"Sure, sure." She tucked the rest of her muffin into the white paper bag and wedged it into the purple pouch buttoned to the front of her walker. "Tell your parents I said hello."
"Yes, ma'am."
Maxine stood, hands braced on the metal arms. Understanding smoothed out her face. “Grace doesn’t know about what J.T. did, does she? That’s why you tried to leave your lungs on the library floor.” She shook her head. “Never a good idea to keep something like that hidden. She’ll hear it from someone, son.”
“I’ll tell her,” I promised. “But it’s not an easy thing to tell.”
“No,” she agreed slowly, “no, I imagine it’s not. Her heart’s as big as Tennessee, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “Yeah, it is.”
“She hides it well. But it only takes one good look at her, and you see it stamped over her whole face.” Maxine eyed me, the kind that made me fidget in my seat after a couple of seconds. “You risk something special, if you don’t handle this right, Tucker.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond, and I watched her exit the bakery, slow, shuffling steps behind the metal frame of her walker. The strangest interactions spurred forward movement. At least for me.
It was almost as if I needed the surprise of someone I didn't know very well to put things into perspective. Grace at the fairgrounds propelling me to break up with Magnolia, Grady uprooting his life to start a passion project from scratch, Maxine Barton forcing me to look at bravery and honesty in a different way.
Honesty would come. Maxine was right, it was too big a risk to not tell her the truth. But I couldn’t do anything about it until Grace and I were together later. I wouldn’t have this conversation with her unless I could look her in the eye, explain J.T. to her. Explain my relationship with Maggie in a way that I never had before.
But for right now, I could talk to my parents.
It might not seem brave to some people, to quit a job they didn't love, but it was for me.
As I got in my truck and started back into town, I thought about calling Grace and telling her that I was going to go talk to my dad, but I knew she was helping Grady hammer out some details of his business plan before he went to the bank for a loan.
The drive went quickly, probably because I was practicing what I would say and how I would say it.
Dad, I've got an idea that can help both of us out.
No, not firm enough. This was past the idea stage. I'd been ruminating on this for years, it went far past an idea.
This happened because of me, and the way to fix this is remove me from the equation. Also, I detest this job.
I sighed. The words would come, whether they were perfectly phrased or not was a different matter.
My parents would be fine. So would the law firm. Maybe a new partner wouldn't have the same last name, but it would continue on just fine with or without me.
The parking spots in front of the building were empty when I pulled my truck in, and I jogged up the cement sidewalk, stopping to pluck a weed from one of the cracks. The bell over the door jangled as I entered, the same sound I'd heard my entire life.
"How was your meeting?" Mom asked, and I stopped short when I noticed Dad was leaning against the corner of her desk.
"Fine." I shoved my hands into my pockets and rocked on my heels. "Dad, can I talk to you for a couple of minutes?"
He glanced at my mom and patted her hand. "Actually, son, I was hoping to ask you the same question."
"Do you want to go in your office?" I asked him.
"No need." He gestured behind me. "Why don't you flip the sign to closed though. I think we could do with some privacy."
My mom smiled encouragingly, but my stomach bottomed out with nerves as I did what he'd asked.
"Your mother and I sat down with our financial planner last night, and we came up with a solution."
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about too," I told them.
"We never wanted you to have to worry about your future," my mom said. "That's why your father always worked so hard, and his daddy did the same."
I rubbed the side of my face and felt a small twinge of guilt. "I know. You both worked hard, Mom."
"Oh," she clucked her tongue, "I just answer phones and keep your schedules."
My dad shook his head. "You run this whole place, Glenda, don't downplay it."
"Your financial planner," I prompted. Something inside me coiled up uncomfortably, but it's not like I could blurt my news and run.
Dad looked at Mom, who smiled, then nodded. When he turned his face to me, I knew exactly what he was going to say. His face looked lighter. The exhaustion that always seemed like a permanent fixture was all but gone.
"I'm retiring, Tucker." He blew out a relieved breath. "The practice is yours."
The words came instantly. "I, I don't want the practice to be mine."
His face creased in confusion, and I felt sweat dot my forehead at my unfiltered response.
My mom laughed. "Oh, goodness, we could've broken that to him better. He's not leaving today, Tucker."
My dad peered at me carefully before he spoke again. "Son, it was always the plan to have the practice be yours. I know it's a handful of years early, but … your mom and I will be just fine. We may downsize to a condo, but that's nothing we need to decide now."
"I told you, I don't want to move t
o Maryville," my mom said gently. "He's gonna have kids someday, and I won't be living in a different town as my grandkids."
"Lord, Glenda, the boy's single again, and you're worried about the kids he's gonna have someday? I think we've shocked him enough."
"I still don't want to move to Maryville. Robert can find us a nice two-bedroom house somewhere here in town. As long as it has space for a garden, I'll be just fine."
I rubbed a hand over my chest as they bickered, completely ignorant of the landslide that just covered me in dust and rocks and dirt. I felt it coating my tongue and my throat. Dried-out bones in the desert had nothing on my mouth.
"Tucker, son, are you okay?" he stood and placed a hand on my shoulder. "I didn't think you'd be this surprised. You're always telling me how tired I look."
I nodded. "I am."
He tightened his grip and it helped steady me, bring the room into focus. Any words I'd practiced were gone, with a weak puff of air they toppled, like a house built from straw.
"You'll do just fine without me."
I met his gaze and held it. How did they not see how miserable I was? It took everything in me not to scream at the top of my lungs, see if it moved them in the slightest. The pressure of it pressed down on my lungs, so much weight behind that scream that I felt like I could rattle the foundations of the building.
Someone knocked on the glass panes of the door, and my mom pasted on her polite, customer service smile. "Your eleven o'clock is here, honey."
"Right." My dad clapped me on the shoulder and went to open the door. "Come on in, you're a bit early, but I'm ready for you."
The couple smiled as they walked in, and I recognized their faces from church. They were trying to adopt a baby, wanted my dad's help looking over all the paperwork.
I took a deep breath.
Everyone had their own weight to carry, I thought, as they followed my dad into his office. And everyone had different ways of coping with it, ways to gain a deep lungful of fresh air amidst the rubble.
I thought I was about to pull myself out of mine, but all I'd done was get buried even deeper beneath it.
Grace.
She was my lungful of cold, bracing air. The place where I could breathe freely, and choose my steps forward without over-thinking.
"Mom, I'll be back later, okay? I need to … run home for something."
"You sure you're all right, honey?" she asked, giving my face a careful study.
"Yeah. I'll be just fine."
My hands were shaking as I left, making that one choice to not stay in the office any longer a pathetic substitution for what I'd really wanted to do.
Everything in my life was being planned out for me. And for the most part, it had been for years.
The practice being transferred solely to my name, without consulting me.
My parents deciding where they were going to live, based on the assumption that I'd be here for the rest of my life.
What if Grace and I didn't want to live in Green Valley forever?
That was our choice, should we decide we were ready to talk about it.
I felt wildly out of control, enough that I worried for a brief moment about whether I should be driving or not.
But bigger than my worry was the desire to be by Grace. I grabbed my phone before I shoved the keys in the ignition.
Chapter 25
Grace
Tucker: Are you at your place?
Me: Nope. Just finished a hike with Grady. He's doing the loop again bc he's weird, I'm heading home for a shower. Why?
Tucker: Meet me at my house? My shower works too.
Me: … I can do that. You okay?
Tucker: I will be.
I read the text again, my forehead creasing in worry. As I made a U-turn in the empty, winding road to drive in the direction of his house, I wondered what could have happened. When he left for work earlier that morning, his mood had been fine. We departed at the same time, and Tucker had pressed me against the side of my car for a kiss so deep, so hot, that my head spun for a solid ten minutes.
While I hiked, I knew he was meeting with Maxine to let her know how we wanted to run the kissing booth. It was possible that she rejected our plan, but I couldn't imagine it.
Coming through downtown, I had to slow for a group of students while they crossed the road with armfuls of fliers about the festival, fluorescent blue with black letters, that would eventually find their way into storefront windows, into mailboxes, and onto street corner poles.
Main Street was gearing up for the festivities as well, banners being strung across the street, white and blue, the strangely cheery logo of the chicken without a head everywhere I looked. Poor Clarence. All he did was try to live his life, until one day, some hungry farmer wanted fried chicken. Next thing he knew, he met the sharp edge of a terribly aimed ax.
For the next eighteen months, as Maxine had gleefully explained to me, Clarence was fed through the opening at the top of his severed head—no eyes, no beak, just a body and neck and worldwide notoriety for the rest of eternity. Or Green Valley notoriety, at least.
The fact that I could smile about it now was proof that this place was getting to me. The only thing I wished, now that I was past the business-lined streets and sidewalks, was that they looked at me and smiled in recognition. That I’d get a few friendly waves.
Find someone that I could meet for a beer too.
After a few weeks, the way their lives unfolded in this strange little place didn't seem so insane to me anymore. None of it did.
The motorcycles roaring through town, black leather cuts proclaiming them members of the Wraiths.
The way everyone knew everyone's business and had zero compunction discussing it in public.
The flow to how they spoke and lived their lives, a viewpoint that was so completely different to the way I'd been raised and the life that I'd lived before.
At first, the pictures I was taking of them were like a study of something that I didn’t really understand. Now, I could look at them and feel the warm pang of recognition, a pattern that brought comfort, even if I hadn’t quite found my place within the world I was documenting.
But I would. Tucker and I would, too.
Once we cleared a few small hurdles, we’d be able to walk down the street with our hands clasped. We could eat in Green Valley, not drive to Maryville or Knoxville every time we wanted to go out for dinner.
There was no way he didn’t want that just as badly as I did.
I turned into his driveway and took the gentle curve toward the house, where he was climbing out the truck, unfolding his great, big body to his full height.
The look on his face was something that might have intimidated me a few weeks ago, when I still didn't understand how deeply I loved him. His entire being relaxed when I smiled at him. His shoulders loosened, and the crease between his eyebrows smoothed. The tight line of his mouth softened.
Before Tucker, I never felt the need to be needed by someone, and certainly not to this level. Where my mere presence would have such a tangible effect on him.
And I loved it.
I loved how he wrapped me in his arms before my feet could hardly touch the ground, how his mouth found mine with unerring accuracy.
"I needed this," he murmured against my lips, pulling them with his own and resting his forehead against mine.
"What happened?" I dug my fingers into his thick, soft hair and tugged until I could see him.
The strength in his hands around my hips was its own life force. As big as he was standing in front of me. On instinct, my back arched into a graceful curve, like he was bending me to his will.
There was an edge, something sharp and hot, that I'd never felt from him before.
But he didn't answer.
Tucker stared at my mouth, thumbs pressing into my flesh, making me swallow the tension building in my throat.
"Maxine ruin your good mood?" I asked.
He gave me a flash of a cr
ooked grin, just enough that I felt my heart ease at the sight of it. "You know what, Sexy Girl, I don't really feel much like talking anymore."
His hands slid down, firm and sure, until he wrenched my hips tight against his. I inhaled sharply at how quickly he wanted me. One kiss and he was ready. One kiss and I was ready too.
"I'm gross from my hike."
"You're not gross," he protested, nibbling along my jaw.
"Liar." My hands tugged at his dress shirt, clean and crisp, yanking it from his belt. His skin was hot under my hands.
"You smell like grass and dirt and mountains." He rubbed his nose underneath my ear and took a good, deep breath.
"I smell like sweat," I said on a laugh. "Can't I shower first?"
Tucker pulled back, his cheekbones flushed pink and his eyes dark in his face. His hands came up to spear into the hair piled on top of my head. "You smell like everything I want," he growled, tilting my head back before he took my mouth again.
I clutched at his back and gave him everything with my kiss.
I want you.
I need you.
I love you.
Tucker's razor-sharp level of desire sliced at the delicate barrier of my skin and split me open, unleashing something bright and powerful and life-giving, and I met his fervor with my own. If he was the match to the fire, I was the air sweeping through, stoking it higher, until it was a completely new, dangerous thing.
His hands left my hair and dug with tight fists into the front of my shirt. "Trust me?" he asked.
"Always."
Whatever he wanted from me, from this, I was ready to offer it up with open palms.
Slowly, and with a tight, vibrating leash on his control, Tucker turned us so that I had no choice but to walk backward toward his truck. Parked in the garage and out of the bright sun, it took a second for my eyes to adjust.
"We going on a ride?"
Batter of Wits: An Enemies to Lovers Small Town Romance (Donner Bakery Book 5) Page 21