by Megan Crane
“Then why are you?” Jasper’s gaze was hard. “Wasn’t the last week and a half enough to—”
“I don’t want to end up like Dad,” Jonah threw out there, baldly. He thought maybe they both froze, with the motion light on them and moths dive bombing it up above them. “He latched on to something he hated and he just . . . ran with it. And the next thing you know, that’s the only thing he had left in him. And I think I’m headed that way. Fast.”
Jasper looked as startled as he was. And, Jonah had never realized how much he depended on his brother to not be like him until that moment. To not hold grudges. To not brood and go dark and do all the things that Jonah did to make it through the day.
Or how terrified he was, straight down into his soul, that this would be the time Jasper decided to take a leaf out of Jonah’s book instead.
“You’re not Dad, Jonah.” Jasper’s voice was dark, but certain, and Jonah let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Jasper glared at him for a long moment, but something had changed. And his brother’s voice was gruff, but not unkind, when he continued. “You’re a dick, let’s be clear, but you’re not Dad.”
He could have laughed then. Muttered his way around it and let it all slide into a thump on the back and another subject avoided, but he didn’t. He met Jasper’s gaze instead.
“I think it’s a thin line,” Jonah said quietly. “I think it’s not as hard to cross it as we thought when we were kids. And I think I’ve been so pissed at you for leaving the company that I haven’t seen straight in two years.”
“I left the company. I couldn’t leave you if I tried.” Jasper scowled at him. “I see you every time I look in the mirror.”
“But I like the business, Jasper,” Jonah continued, not caring if his voice rose a little, if he got hot. “I like making money, because I’m good at it. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that I get to put together every day. I don’t get bored. I don’t wish I was doing something else.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to move to the farm down the road and raise llamas, or whatever the hell people do here.”
“No one asked you to move anywhere.”
“And I never asked you to tolerate my ice and spleen.” They glared at each other, and Jasper folded his arms over his chest while he did it, which made Jonah realize he had, too. “Your aw, shucks, lazy cowboy shtick lost its charm around about the sixth grade, in case you wondered.”
“You must have me mistaken with someone else,” Jasper retorted. “I’m a well-known, much-celebrated delight.”
“And I’m a CEO,” Jonah retorted. “Ice and spleen is in my job description.”
“Fine,” Jasper said.
“Fine,” Jonah agreed.
And they eyed each other for a moment, across a whole lot more than just the back parking area of a converted train depot.
“I feel like this could have been an email I could have read at my leisure,” Jasper muttered after a moment or two had passed, but the storm was gone. They were okay. Jonah could see it on his face. “I have a bar to run, if you’re finished.”
“I thought I’d buy you a beer,” Jonah said gruffly, and Jasper grinned.
“Is that . . . ?” He dropped his arms as he started walking toward Jonah. “My lazy cowboy ears must be deceiving me. Is that your version of an apology?”
“I’m not going to apologize for looking out for you,” Jonah retorted. But he relented when Jasper drew near. “But I’ll admit my methods might have been a little bit over the top.”
“Just a little.”
“I thought I’d buy you a beer to celebrate the next chapter in your life,” Jonah said, almost formally, and Jasper reached over and clapped him on the arm, because he was still the demonstrative, emotional one. Even now. Even after all of this. And Jonah was deeply, profoundly glad in a way that might have felt like joy, he thought. If he hadn’t lost Gracelyn in this mess. “And to apologize if the fact that I’m happy for you both got lost in translation.”
“I will accept that beer,” Jasper said in the same tone of voice. “And I’ll accept that apology, but Chelsea might take a while. She holds a mean grudge.”
And they were twins, after all. They didn’t have telepathy, but they’d been sharing an identical skin for more than thirty-six years. So Jonah knew, when they stood there for a moment, that things really were going to be okay between them, because Jasper never would have brought Chelsea into it again, if it wasn’t. He knew that the way he knew his own name.
He knew it, because he didn’t know what he’d do if Jasper started in about Dobermans again. He suspected it would explode this fragile little peace between them, and Jonah wasn’t as much like his brother as he should be. As he wanted to be.
Maybe Jasper knew it too, because he didn’t go there. He slung an arm over Jonah’s shoulders instead, and steered them both back inside FlintWorks.
“I’m not worried,” Jonah told him as the walked into the crowd. “She’ll come around.”
Jasper laughed. “She likes a little bit of charm, Jonah. Not really in your wheelhouse.”
“She won’t be able to help herself,” Jonah said, and smiled when Jasper raised his brows. “She finds you irresistible and I look just like you, only better.”
*
The rodeo madness was at full pitch when Gracelyn drove back into Marietta that Saturday night. In the Range Rover she was mildly surprised Jonah—or his driver—hadn’t reported as stolen.
“You don’t have to go back,” Bex had said, more than once over the course of the previous day. She’d called in sick and they’d sat out near the creek on the same rock they’d claimed as theirs when they were kids. And Gracelyn had shifted a great weight off of her that she hadn’t realized she was carrying. That she’d been carrying for more than a decade. “To him or that company or even Texas. You can just quit and go on with your life.”
“I don’t want to be that person anymore,” Gracelyn had replied, with her feet in the almost too cold water and her eyes on the endless, rolling plain she couldn’t believe she’d convinced herself was ugly. Empty. It was neither. It was like Jonah—it took a little patience, and little perseverance, maybe. And then it was impossible not to see its beauty everywhere she looked. “You think that when you cut things off, you’re setting yourself free. But you’re not. You’re just running.”
“Depends how you do it,” Bex had said. She’d become a teacher while Gracelyn was gone, fiercely determined to teach the kids who lived where they did that they didn’t have to feel stuck the way Bex and Gracelyn always had. That there was a whole big world out there, just waiting for them. That anything they could imagine, they could do. That living here should be a choice, not a life sentence. That everything should. “Some things need a little judicious pruning, now and then.”
“Maybe so,” Gracelyn had agreed, knowing Bex was talking about some of their relatives who still couldn’t be helped or reached or saved. But those were choices too, weren’t they? “But I’m tired of running away from the things I love. All it ever does is break your heart.”
Grandma Betty had seen her off that afternoon. She’d clucked when Gracelyn had gone all teary and pulled her into a hard, long hug the way she had when Gracelyn had woken up with nightmares as a little girl.
“Next time you visit,” she’d said, her mouth muffled against the side of Gracelyn’s head, where she pressed a kiss, “I’ll give you your presents. You can consider that a bribe to return, because it is one.”
“Presents?” Gracelyn had echoed. “What presents?”
“It was your birthday and it was Christmas every year, whether you were here or not,” Grandma Betty had said in that way of hers, as solid as the great oak tree in the front yard and as seemingly imperturbable. “We saved them for you.”
“What if I’d never come back?” she’d whispered. She’d pulled away, stricken. “What if I never . . . ?”
Her grandmother had only smiled. She’d reached out to tuck the hair
Gracelyn had left down out of its usual ponytail back behind her ears, the way she’d done almost every single day of Gracelyn’s childhood.
“I knew you’d come back, love. I hoped it would be sooner, but I knew.”
“I told you I wouldn’t,” Gracelyn had reminded her, not sure if she’d been explaining or apologizing. Maybe both. “I was so sure.”
“You were eighteen and spitting mad,” her grandmother had replied. Her face was far more weathered now, creased and thin, but she still looked at Gracelyn with all that fierce, full love. “And I loved you enough to let you go. There’s only one way on earth to make sure the person you love returns to you, Gracelyn. And that’s let them come to it on their own, in their own time, if they can.”
Maybe that was why she’d come back to Marietta to find Jonah. Though she realized, once she’d avoided the blocked off Main Street and parked the Range Rover, that she didn’t expect him to be there. He was probably back in Dallas by now—he’d probably left for Texas moments after she’d commandeered his vehicle—and if he was, that meant he’d already gotten the letter of resignation she’d emailed him from her grandmother’s kitchen table yesterday.
It was well and truly over, this thing between them. She told herself she accepted that and this time, she meant it.
But then she pushed open the door to the suite that she knew would be even more packed with ghosts than usual. And saw the lights were all on, as if someone was still staying there. Her stomach flipped over and her heart kicked up a gear as she walked down the little hall, deeper into the suite.
Jonah’s laptop was open on the living room table, if dark, as if he’d just walked out. His bedroom door was ajar, which meant she didn’t have to invade his privacy—who cared that she’d spent so much time in there earlier this week, things were different now—to see that his luggage was there as well, piled on the luggage rack near the far wall.
Jonah was still here.
For a moment, Gracelyn stood there, frozen into place, while her head spun and her stomach twisted all around itself, because she couldn’t decide what that meant. Why would he still be here? Why wouldn’t he have left as quickly as he could after that scene with Jasper, with her? Could it mean—
But reality thumped down on her, hard, and she remembered who she was dealing with.
He wasn’t who he was by accident. He was Jonah Flint, renowned for his tenacity and his focus. Jonah, who never wavered, which was why he was so successful and so devastating. Jonah, who got exactly what he wanted, eventually, because he never, ever gave up.
She heard the sound of music, as if from a concert when she knew there was no concert hall in Marietta, and the cheering of a crowd to match. And she remembered, then. The big dance in the street, where Jasper no doubt still planned to propose to Chelsea. That had to be where Jonah was, probably planning one last move to call the engagement off before it began.
He’d do fine without her, she was certain—if he’d even noticed she was gone. He was Jonah Flint. He didn’t need her.
But he couldn’t survive without Jasper.
She’d seen his face at FlintWorks that night. She’d seen how lost he’d been. It had broken her heart even further; ground the shattered pieces down into dust.
Which meant that because she loved him—it was like a fever, she’d told Bex, swift and all-consuming and devastating besides, but that didn’t make it any less true—she had to stop him before he ruined his relationship with his brother forever.
She could do that much for him, before she let him go.
And by the time she made it back down to the street, she was running.
Chapter Eight
‡
Main Street was like a pageant, out there beneath the stars.
Like a great, joyful parade, except no one was moving. They were swaying to the music. They were laughing, talking, eating. Gracelyn heard scraps of conversation as she wound her way through the clusters of people. A runaway horse at the rodeo earlier. Winners and losers of the different events. Salacious gossip about people Gracelyn didn’t know, while the singer currently performing at the far end of the street sang a song about broken hearts and old pick up trucks that seemed to pierce right through her ribs as she walked, like a running cramp.
She couldn’t find Jonah anywhere.
The crowd was huge and happy. As the singer flowed from one song into the next they cheered and danced, and Gracelyn had a fierce moment of pure jealousy when she saw a couple near her, their attention focused so fully on each other she thought they must hardly know where they were. As if it didn’t matter if everyone else on Main Street saw them. As if everything between them was real.
That cramp between her ribs intensified.
The country singer ended his set and told the crowd he’d be back in five. There was another great cheer, and a surge of movement, as if half the people there decided this was a perfect moment to get another drink, grab something else to eat, or find the restroom. Gracelyn twisted out of the way of the stampede, which gave her a perfect view of the stage.
And the man who strode out onto it with a huge grin stamped over his face.
Jasper.
It was happening.
Gracelyn scanned the crowd in a panic, looking for another darkly blonde, ridiculously beautiful man, but he was nowhere to be seen. Her pulse rocketed through her veins, and she thought the adrenaline might send her leaping straight on to the stage—but of course, that would make it worse. That would make her even more of a Doberman.
And then Jasper started talking.
“A year ago,” he said, his rich drawl rolling down the street, making the crowd shift around and gaze up at him, “I managed to get a pretty schoolteacher to dance with me thanks to the power of the microphone up here on this stage. I’m hoping that with a great opening act like Jake Kohl—” the crowd burst into cheers, though it wasn’t clear if they were cheering Jasper or the country star—“I can embarrass Chelsea Crawford Collier, better and eternally known as Triple C, just a little bit more this time around.”
Someone pushed Chelsea onto the stage. Gracelyn thought she looked radiant and mortified at once—though once Jasper’s gaze locked onto hers, she didn’t seem to see anything else.
And that was when Gracelyn saw Jonah. He had his back to her, his face to the stage, and Gracelyn didn’t wait to see if he’d do something. She threw herself through the last of the crowd that separated them, her heart pounding like a drum.
Up on the stage, Jasper took Chelsea’s hand in his. He made some joke or other that Gracelyn hardly heard, but had the crowd tossing suggestions at him, each more ribald than the last.
And as Gracelyn pushed around the last of the people in her path, Jasper sank to one knee, right up there on the stage, in front of the whole of Marietta.
“Chelsea,” he said in that voice of his that was so much like Jonah’s that it made Gracelyn ache all over, like the Flint brothers were a virus she’d never quite conquer, “I love you. Will you marry me? Make an honest man out of me? Allow me to pollute the historic Crawford family bloodline with my upstart Texan ways—and hopefully, if we’re lucky someday, with a baby or two?”
The crowd went wild.
And Gracelyn threw herself forward and grabbed Jonah by the arm, before he did the same.
“You can’t do it,” she said fiercely over the sounds of the crowd around them. “You have to leave them alone. It doesn’t matter if you think this is the worst idea in the history of the world, that he’s making a terrible mistake. He’s your brother and you love him, and that’s what matters, Jonah. That’s what you have to protect.”
His hands came up and steadied her, holding on to her upper arms, and his gaze was too dark too read.
“None of this is worth anything, if you lose the people you love,” she told him, and it took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t just breathing heavily, as if she’d run for miles, but that tears were trickling down her face.
&nb
sp; “I agree,” Jonah gritted out, like he was in pain.
“Yes,” Chelsea said into the microphone then, a huge smile in her voice, and Gracelyn bit her lip. “I’ll marry you, Jasper. You lunatic.”
“See?” Gracelyn said hurriedly, as Jonah only looked at her with that shadowed expression on his face she couldn’t read. “It happened. It’s done. Now we can just leave them to it, go back home, and pretend it never happened. Can’t we?”
“Answer me two questions.” He sounded the way he had the day she’d met him, so cold and formidable and out of reach it made her tremble. His hands tightened slightly against her arms. She told herself not to let that mean anything, because it didn’t. Of course it didn’t. “Why did you quit? And why are you crying?”
And Gracelyn knew that a smart woman wouldn’t answer him honestly. A smart woman would think about her survival. She’d protect herself. Insulate herself from any further risk. Or scorn. Any conflict or unpleasantness that remained.
But she’d been doing that for a decade, and what had it gotten her?
She was alone. She’d broken her grandmother’s heart and could only hope she had enough time left to make up for it. She’d hurt Bex, and the rest of her family, and for what? To isolate herself way off in Texas? To learn how to put making money above everything else?
Gracelyn liked living with a healthy bank account a whole lot more than she’d liked living without one. But surely, there was balance. Surely, she didn’t have to choose between all or nothing, between being ground down by her family or total exile. Surely, there was another way.
But she couldn’t imagine she was likely to find it if she kept running. If she kept hiding herself away from the important things. If she didn’t face what she felt head on for once. She’d been wrong about so many things in her life. But she’d never figure out how to be right about something if she didn’t keep trying. And that started here.
