“The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree then.”
“That’s true. He gets it from you.”
She hit his arm and laughed. “We’re all too much alike in this family. That’s why your mother was so great. She was nothing like the rest of us, balanced us out.”
“She did do that,” he agreed. “And I think if she were here, she’d understand my choices.”
“Honey, if she were here, a lot of things would be different.” She shook her head. “Your father is worried about you.”
“He has a weird way of showing it.” Cutting him off so he’d been forced to sleep in his Jeep didn’t strike him as someone who was worried.
“Maybe. But how do you think he feels? You suddenly drop out of law school for a dangerous career in fighting. He lost his wife, Walker. He doesn’t want to lose his son too.”
“Grams, you’re being overdramatic. Fighting is really not that bad—”
She scoffed. “Save your ‘it’s a sport’ speech for someone else. I saw Million Dollar Baby.”
He suppressed a smile and the urge to explain that boxing and MMA were two different things, and also to point out that it hadn’t been the fight that killed Hilary Swank’s character in that movie, but a stool left inside the ring. “Okay, it’s not entirely safe, but if Dad ever came to one of my fights, he’d see I’m good and it’s what I love to do.”
His grandmother shook her head. “You two need to talk more. Your father went to every one of your boxing matches.”
“I think you need to check your sources, Grams. Dad never went. He was never sitting in the seats I gave him tickets for. Kylie went once, but she threw up when some guy’s cauliflower ear . . .” He stopped when his grandmother’s face took on a look of disgust. “Never mind. Anyway, Dad’s never gone.”
She nodded. “He has. Every time.” The song ended and his grandmother hugged him. “Maybe the understanding you crave needs to start with you, honey. Not all of us are as brave as you are.”
***
“Thanks for letting us crash here,” Grace said to Kylie much later that evening after the party guests had gone home. She hadn’t expected the local B and B and motel to be completely booked with out-of-town guests that weekend and therefore hadn’t made a reservation. And while it was tough to spend the night down the hall from Walker and Faith, it was easier than herself and Erik squeezing into her single bed in her old room at her mother’s house.
“Just like old times.” Kylie pulled a tank top on over her head. She stared at her for a long moment before saying, “Can I ask you something?”
Uh-oh. “Of course.”
“Is there something going on between you and Walker?”
She hoped she was better at lying now than she was at fifteen. “No.”
“Really? Because I saw the way he was leaning toward you in the backyard . . .”
“Leaning?” Grace sat on her friend’s bed and picked up her old Cabbage Patch doll. She toyed with the ribbon in the doll’s hair.
“Yeah, leaning. You know, his whole body sinking in toward you. I took a body language class in film school. It’s a sign of attraction.” Kylie readjusted her pillow on the bed and sat. “And I didn’t see you move away.”
A small tap on the door saved her from answering. “Grace, Kylie, can I come in?” Faith asked on the other side of the door.
Faith. Great. Shouldn’t she be having sex with Walker right about now?
“Sure,” Kylie called through the closed door.
Faith opened the door and entered with her pillow clutched to her chest. “I heard you two talking. I was wondering if I could join you?”
“Where’s Walker?” Grace asked.
“In a spare guest room down the hall,” Faith said, clearly unimpressed.
Her heart lightened, but she resisted the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“What? Why?” Kylie asked, moving over closer to Grace in the king-sized bed.
Faith sat. “If you figure that out, be sure to tell me. I don’t get him.”
Join the club.
“He flirts with me. We have a great time together. But he refuses to have sex with me.”
This time Grace had to turn away, unable to contain the look of joy she suspected was all over her face.
“That doesn’t sound like my brother at all,” Kylie said.
“Great. Thanks.”
“Sorry. Maybe he’s just focused on his training . . . you know . . . like no-sex-before-the-big-fight kind of thing. In Hollywood, I hear actors and actresses say they refrain from sleeping together until after filming wraps up in order to keep the sexual tension high on-screen,” Kylie said.
“I seriously doubt sexual tension is something any fighter wants his opponent to feel inside the octagon,” Faith said, but she did finally smile. “Besides, I’m supposed to be the good luck charm,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“You know about that?” Grace asked, surprised.
“Know about what? What am I missing?” Kylie asked.
“The fighters have this crazy notion that sleeping with me before a fight can help their careers.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t help that it seems to be true. Every fighter has won their next fight after sex with me.” She rolled her eyes as she tucked her legs under her on the bed.
“So, they all benefit from being with you?” Kylie asked, clearly amused.
“Well, everyone except Tyson Reed.”
“What happened with Tyson?” Grace asked. Maybe she would finally learn why he and Erik hated each other.
“I cheated on Erik with him.”
Grace’s mouth fell. Her suspicions confirmed, she still had trouble believing it. Erik and Faith were once an item. Wonderful.
“Sorry, Grace, I never told you.”
“It’s fine. Whatever. It was forever ago, right?”
“Last year before you two got together. Last July I believe was when we ended things.”
July. Early July or late July? A few weeks would make a world of difference. She felt ill as she lay back against a pillow. Why wouldn’t Erik have told her? It made sense now that Tyson’s career had been in trouble when she’d first started working at the MFL.
Apparently, you didn’t mess with the matchmaker’s girlfriend.
“Anyway, I really wish I could figure your brother out. I mean, true or not, if there’s a chance screwing me could help him win that fight, you’d think he’d be all over it . . . me,” she said, twisting her blond hair back off of her face.
Kylie shrugged. “Sorry. I have no idea what his problem is and quite honestly, talking about whether or not my brother’s getting laid is grossing me out.” She disappeared into her bathroom connected to her bedroom and started brushing her teeth.
Faith turned to look at her. “Gracie, you two are close. Do you have any idea what’s going on with him?”
She had an idea, but who knew for sure. She stood and placed the doll back on Kylie’s bed. “Sorry, Faith. Let me know if you figure him out,” she said before leaving the room.
Down the hall, she spotted Erik in the study, bent down low over his laptop. It was going to be another lonely night for Grace.
***
He had to start focusing on his training and only his training, Walker thought as he tossed and turned in the spare bedroom down the hall from his sister’s room. He could hear all three women talking. He suspected the praise wasn’t high coming from that room. He tossed the bedsheets back and lay staring at the ceiling. He knew he’d annoyed Faith by insisting once again they end the night with a kiss only, but he couldn’t bring himself to have sex with her. Not with Gracie down the hall, not with Gracie on his mind, and damn it, not with Gracie working her way into his heart. He had to end this thing with Faith, that he knew for sure.
Half an hour later, he was still wide awake, so he did the same thing he’d done as a teenager when he couldn’t sleep. He headed downstairs to the baseme
nt.
***
Unable to sleep, lying next to Erik, whose snoring could wake the dead, Grace slowly and quietly got out of bed and made her way downstairs. As she retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge, she noticed a light coming from under the kitchen door leading to the basement. The only thing she remembered being down there was Walker’s workout equipment and several old couches, a TV, and a mini-fridge. When they were teenagers, he’d never let her and Kylie hang out down there with him and his friends, until Kylie had started to date one of them in high school. Then it had become a make-out spot.
She’d always felt awkward down there with the group. Walker always had a pretty girl to entertain, and Kylie had dated Mike for three years of high school. Grace dated a few guys, but no one that really fit in with Walker and his friends, so Friday nights she was always the odd one out.
Go back upstairs. Nothing good could come of going down there.
Against her better judgment, she opened the door quietly and headed downstairs.
Walker stood in front of his heavy bag in a pair a tight training shorts, raining combinations of punches, kicks, and elbows. He wore earbuds, and the sound of heavy metal reached her at the base of the stairs. Unnoticed, she stood there watching him.
The fast, violent attack of knees and elbows, feet and fists, was explosive and relentless. The muscles in his shoulders and back bulged and contracted as he moved around in front of the bag on the balls of his feet.
She stood there silently for a long time, until finally, exhausted, his hands fell and his shoulders dropped. He rotated his shoulders and jumped on the spot, keeping his muscles warm as he turned. He looked surprised to see her standing there.
She gave a small smile and held her hand up in a wave.
Pulling the earbuds from his ears, he shut off the music. “What are you doing up?” He glanced at the time on his watch.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said with a shrug, not moving from the base of the stairs.
“Come here.” He nodded her forward.
“Oh, I should probably go back upstairs . . . let you get back to it.”
“Get over here,” he repeated, removing his training gloves.
She swallowed hard as she approached.
He reached for a new set of gloves and held one open.
She slid one hand in, then the other, looking nervously at the heavy bag.
Walker stood behind her and holding her arms, he raised her fists, bent her elbows. “Lift your shoulders,” he instructed.
She did.
“Breathe out with each jab.” He guided her right fist toward the bag.
Breathe out with each jab? At that moment, she was lucky if she could remember to breathe period. She hit the bag several times. It barely moved.
“Try harder,” he said, moving his hands away from hers and placing them on her hips instead. “Turn your body into the punch.” He guided her hips as she swung toward the bag again, harder this time. “Good. Again.”
She threw two more.
“Again.” His thumbs were tracing the muscles on either side of her spine as his fingers spread across her hips.
Her mind went numb while every fiber of her body came alive. “Walker . . .” she started.
“Don’t speak. Just take it out on the bag.”
Take it out on the bag. Take out twelve years of sexual frustration on the bag? Take out the confusion and torment she’d been experiencing since Walker had come back into her life on the bag? The bag couldn’t handle it. Still, she did as he instructed, her tiny fists inside the oversized gloves raining jabs, one after the other on the heavy bag, until she could no longer feel his hands on her hips or his breath on her neck or the magnetic pull she felt every time she was near him.
Her arms tired quickly and she was breathing hard when she let her hands drop a moment later, her forearms burning and her knuckles throbbing despite the padding on the gloves.
His hands had left her somewhere in that moment, and she turned to face him.
“Feel better?”
She nodded, reaching to pull off the gloves.
“I don’t,” he said, stopping her. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward him. “It doesn’t matter how hard I hit or how fast or how often. I don’t feel better. It didn’t work when Mom died and all I wanted to do was punch my frustrations out, my anger away, my sadness gone . . . and it’s not working now.”
Her breath caught in her throat as he rested his forehead against hers. “Don’t move in with him, Gracie.”
She released the air she’d been holding, feeling her entire body sag. “Walker, don’t do this.”
“What about me? Us?”
She shook her head. “There is no us. There never was. There was me falling all over myself, like a fool desperate to get your attention, and you never noticing. There was me watching you date girl after girl and wishing I was any one of them, and you never even glancing my way. I don’t know what you think was going on between us these past few weeks, Walker, but it’s too late for an ‘us.’”
“I never knew how you felt, Gracie. How can it be too late when I never knew? I think the clock should have started that night on your couch when you were honest with me about your feelings for the first time.”
So this was her fault? She moved away from him. “Oh come on, Walker. We both know you never would have given me the time of day back then.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you were too busy dating the latest cheerleader driving her daddy’s convertible to ever notice the dorky, tall, skinny girl in the hand-me-down clothes.”
He put his hands on his hips and studied the floor at his feet.
He couldn’t even deny it. “That’s what I thought.”
“Fine. Maybe I was an idiot kid chasing tail back then, but that’s certainly not who I am now.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Really?”
“You know I’m not attracted to Faith.”
She scoffed. “I’m attracted to Faith, Walker. Get real. Any guy with a pulse is attracted to Faith.”
“Not me,” he insisted, advancing toward her.
She backed up, but her butt hit the wall behind her.
“All I see is you, Gracie. Just you. When I’m awake, you’re on my mind. When I’m sleeping, it’s you I dream about. And knowing I can’t be with you is driving me crazy.”
“So that’s what it’s about? The chase?” That was the last thing she needed. To be another notch on Walker Adams’s belt. Left brokenhearted and torn up when he moved on.
He gripped her shoulders and bent to look into her eyes. “No. It’s about you. It’s about how much I want to be with you. It drives me insane seeing you with Erik. I feel sick every time I see him touch you or kiss you . . . Break it off with him, Gracie; give me a chance to prove to you we can be as great together as you once thought. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before, but maybe that’s a good thing. I’m older now. I won’t fuck it up like I would have back then.”
She sighed. Walker Adams pleading with her to give him a chance was surreal. “Walker, you just finally started doing what you love. You’re still figuring things out.”
He let go of her and straightened. “And Erik’s got things figured out. He’s got his shit together. That means more to you now.”
“It’s not like that.” Was it? Was part of Erik’s appeal the fact that he was successful and safe? It certainly didn’t hurt. And why was that such a bad thing anyway?
“Isn’t it?”
“Look, I love Erik . . .” she started, her voice weak.
“Bullshit!” He tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. “You can make every excuse you want to for not giving us a chance, but don’t you dare say you love him when you look at me the way you do.”
Tears threatened the back of her eyes, and she swallowed the lump in her throat. She brushed his hand away from her face. “I can’t do this, Walker. I’m not prepared to give everything up to take
a chance on the one guy who could break my heart,” she said, moving away from him. Without another glance, she rushed up the stairs and away from everything she’d always wanted before her strength disappeared and she no longer could.
***
Gracie stared at her untouched breakfast, refusing to meet Walker’s gaze across the table the next morning. Outside on the pool deck, Erik paced on his cell phone, and she wished he would hurry up and come back inside so she wouldn’t be alone any longer with Walker and the suffocating tension in the air between them.
“Why aren’t you both eating?” Gram Adams said, setting a plate of bacon on the table in front of Walker. She glanced between the two of them and her eyes narrowed. “Ah, I get it.”
Gracie shook her head. “Oh no, Grams . . .”
“Actually yes, Grams,” Walker said, his steely gaze mixed with a silent pleading she’d never seen in his dark eyes before.
“You’re not fooling anyone, dear,” Grams said, touching her shoulder. “Not even that man out there who acts like he’s not paying attention.”
Great. She swallowed hard. Then she was just going to have to try harder. Walker was no longer an option. He could claim what he wanted, but she knew that the moment she gave in and allowed herself to fall in love with him all over again, he would get bored and move on.
“Morning!” Faith’s voice rang out as she entered the kitchen, still wearing one of Walker’s high school football jerseys.
Grams rolled her eyes. “Coffee?”
“Decaf?” Faith asked.
“Only the real stuff,” Grams said.
“Orange juice is fine,” Faith said, pulling out a seat next to Walker and kissing him before sitting.
Grace looked away quickly. Obviously Faith wasn’t angry about Walker’s shutdown anymore. She glanced outside. Come on, Erik. She hated being alone with the two of them, and she knew they wouldn’t see Kylie make an appearance before noon. Come on, Erik, get off the phone.
“So, I was doing some research last night on Lovelock,” Faith started, tucking her leg under her on her chair and reaching for the scrambled eggs.
Research? There wasn’t much to learn about the small town of 2,400 residents.
“And I read about the most romantic tradition,” she said.
Breaking Her Rules Page 17
