“Turn it off. I’m dead fucking serious, Grace.”
The atmosphere is tense. “Oh.”
My stomach sinks. He really is serious. I thought we were having fun teasing each other.
“I’m sorry,” I say. My heart stings. Apparently, Bram’s women and his parties are private. He wants to keep them that way.
Flushing, I walk around the bed to hand him the remote. I see his figure on the screen, walking up the steps. He squats down in front of the DVD player and starts hitting buttons. He presses pause just as another figure comes into view.
I stare at the frozen black-and-white form.
It’s James.
Bram ejects the DVD. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Goddamnit, Grace.”
Mouth slack, I stare at him. “Bram?”
He turns to look at me. My world has just ended. It looks the same. But inside, everything is smashing apart.
His eyes are like two storms burning a hole through to my heart. “You had it all along,” I say.
There’s a moment of frozen silence. “Yes. I did.”
My heart is lead. “I don’t understand.”
“After three weeks in my care, you should.”
I shake my head. My heart is pounding so hard I feel faint. “What’s all this doublespeak, Bram? I should understand? Are you crazy?”
His mouth twitches. “Sit down.”
Suddenly I feel desperate to escape. “No.”
His eyes sear into mine. “I said, sit the fuck down.” He points to the end of the bed. It scares me to see his hand shaking.
Bram. The strongest man I’ve ever known. The man who’s afraid of nothing.
“What?” I say. “Why?”
His voice is deathly quiet. “Because this isn’t going to be easy. Sit down.”
I want to shake my head, but for some reason, I nod instead. Two years of curiosity and frustration and grief well up in my eyes. Even if it kills me, I have to see the last minute of James’s life. I have to know who Bram really is.
“Have you seen it?” I ask.
“Yes.” He looks torn up inside. His eyes are wild and haunted.
I sit on the end of the bed. My chest is so filled with fear I can hardly breathe.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
He sits a foot away from me. We’re both naked.
I’m about to ruin everything. We’ll never go back to who we were. We can’t. No love survives something like this.
The thought makes me desperately sick.
I put my hands over my face. I want him to stop, to snap the disc in half and crawl into bed next to me, but I can’t speak. I can’t stop what’s going to happen.
I feel numb as I drop my hands and stare at the screen. Numbness is a defense. I know that. A way to ward off trauma and endure the worst of life.
I’ve been here before. It’s a familiar feeling. Almost comforting.
Bram presses the button on the remote. I sit perfectly still, feeling every shallow breath and desperate heartbeat. This is rock bottom. The worst I can feel. Nothing could be worse. And still I’m living.
On the television screen, Bram walks up the steps. He doesn’t look like the man I know. There’s stress in his face, even in this blurry image. He looks over his shoulder.
I want to warn him, to stop what’s coming. If I make him listen, or scream loud enough, I can go back and change the past.
He goes inside the house and shuts the door. Nothing else happens. I glance at him. He’s staring at the screen, his face tight and colorless.
A second later, another car screams onto the lower left side of the screen. A figure gets out. I gasp and put my hands to my mouth. My toes curl.
James.
He clomps up the steps with a walk I’ve never seen before. He exudes attitude and anger. My James, I think, even as another thought crowds it out. He’s a stranger. After two years, I don’t know who he is anymore.
He pounds on the front door. Though the video is silent, I hear the insistent banging in my head. His mouth snarls open and he shouts something.
He must have been scared. That’s the only explanation. He had a temper, yes, and he yelled when he was angry, but no more than anyone else. People snap. That doesn’t mean they deserve to die.
The door opens and Bram appears. I tear at my bottom lip with my teeth. “Bram, no,” I say, even though I don’t mean it. I’m watching through until the end. I’ll let him destroy everything I care about, for the second time in my life.
James grabs Bram by the collar and shoves him against the wall. He’s shorter and lighter than Bram, but he’s running on adrenaline. Nothing else could explain his coiled fists or snarled mouth. He looks crazy.
I almost don’t believe what I’m seeing. This is Bram’s version of the story. It was never mine.
In my head, James was justifiably pissed off. All he wanted was an apology. He felt it was his duty to tell Bram that he’d kill somebody if he didn’t drive more carefully.
Bram backs away, hands out. He looks calm, even conciliatory. I gasp as James comes after him. Like a martial artist, Bram ducks out of the way and James slams into the wall. He whirls around, his face twisted with rage.
That’s when he goes for the door and tries to get in the house. Bram blocks him with his big, strong body. Only seconds have passed, but my loyalties are slipping. I need to root for James. He’s innocent. He must be.
Something will happen to change everything. The world has to make sense again.
James starts jabbing. His fists flail and he can’t land a punch. He tries to force his way in again. My blood freezes as Bram pulls out a gun.
“No,” I whisper.
James freezes in place. This is where he controls himself and backs off. He’s going to turn back into the man I trusted. Just before Bram murders him, brutally and with no feeling.
Bram turns to go back inside. James yells something. A second later, he tries to wrench the gun from Bram’s hand. Bram spins around. I jump as James falls.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
I close my eyes. Every image I’ve just seen whirls through the blackness in my mind. In the space of half a second, they replay over and over and over again.
I clutch my stomach with aching fingers. Nothing makes sense. Not James, not Bram, not my life. None of this.
When I open my eyes again, Bram is looking at me. The video is paused on James’s still form.
I can’t speak. I can’t swallow or breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“What was he saying?” I whisper.
“I don’t know, that he wouldn’t be treated this way. I don’t really remember.”
“But…if you’d shown this…we wouldn’t have gone to trial. All the time you spent, all the money...I don’t get it.”
“Don’t you, Grace?”
I shake my head. Tears stream down my face and drip from my jaw.
“It’s been our secret for two years,” he says. “It will stay secret.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean this.”
He starts the video again. All I see is James’s body lying still, and Bram on his phone. I know from cell records that he called 911.
He pauses the video and looks at me. “Do you understand now?”
My voice is thick with tears. A sob of frustration bursts from my throat. “Understand? What am I supposed to understand?”
Like a horrible joke, I’m not getting the punch line. He’ll have to explain what’s so tragically obvious.
He raises the remote and rewinds the video thirty-three seconds. “No, Bram,” I say, standing up. “I can’t.”
“You can. Watch the left side of the screen.”
“Why?”
“The car. Watch it.”
I swallow down a flood of tears and watch. He’s already ripped my life and my illusions apart. He can’t destroy them anymore.
&nbs
p; As the disc plays, my eyes shift between James and the car. The instant his body falls to the porch, the passenger door opens. A girl jumps out and runs away.
I shake my head. I didn’t see that.
“Play it again,” I tell Bram.
He does. He pauses the disc just after the girl runs offscreen.
When I look at him, his eyes are full of pain and something that almost looks like love. “So now you know,” he says. “I kept that video secret to protect you.”
I’m so confused, it’s like he’s speaking another language. “Me?”
“If people knew you were in the car, that you saw what happened and lied about it –”
“I saw what happened?” I cry. “What are you talking about?”
He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me. “The video! You just saw it, Grace! Goddamnit –”
“You’re wrong.”
“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you, Bram, I wasn’t there. That girl’s not me.”
Bram
We stare at each other. The only sound are the tiny sobs in her throat. Neither of us blinks.
“Listen to me,” I say. “No one will know. It’s our secret.”
“It wasn’t me.” Her voice is clipped and hard.
She has to be lying. I have no fucking doubt. The girl in the video is her.
She has the same hair, the same body, and though she only glances toward the camera for a second, the same face. It’s Grace, goddamnit. No one but a twin looks that much like someone else.
And here I thought she might be starting to love me.
It’s the same fucking story I’ve heard countless times before. Allegiance to James, and to herself, comes first.
I get up and stand in front of her. She looks tiny below me, her tear-streaked face tipped up.
She looks me straight in the eye. I must say I’m impressed. Bad liars and those just starting out aren’t good at eye contact. Grace is a fucking expert.
“If it’s not you, who is it then?”
A tear trickles down her pale-skinned breast and onto her nipple. Bullshit as I am, I hunger to suck it off.
“Destiny,” she chokes out.
“Oh, so you know this alleged lookalike.”
I blow out a breath. I’m just waiting for the tale-spinning to start. And the second it does, I won’t be able to contain my fury.
Grace gulps down a tearful swallow. She shivers in front of me like a girl in shock.
“I don’t know her,” she says. “James knew her from high school. She was his first girlfriend.”
The first stirrings of doubt niggle my gut. “Last name?”
“I’m not sure. Um…Lovis, I think.”
I take Grace’s tear-soaked jaw between my thumb and forefinger, making her already full lips look bee stung. “If you’re lying to me, this won’t go well.”
Her eyes drop. Hands tangling in her naked lap, her voice goes quiet. “She broke up with him as soon as they graduated. I used to worry that he never got over it, that I was a substitute. She was fun and outgoing and dressed in sexy clothes. He fucked her. I could never understand why if he fucked her, he wouldn’t fuck me.”
“Did you know they were in touch again?”
“No. A couple of months before she sent him a text, but he said it was just to say Merry Christmas. He promised he hadn’t seen her in years.”
I should be glad. I should be happy to shatter her illusions about James, but I’m not. It ruins my fucking heart to tell her.
“I saw her in the car,” I say. “She had her feet on the dashboard.”
“Her bare feet?”
“Yes.”
Grace’s brow crumples and her eyes cloud over. She’s imagining another girl in her boyfriend’s car, her feet up like she owned Grace’s life.
She shakes her head. “He was driving that way for her,” she says. “He was showing off, trying to impress her…” Her voice trails off.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I say. And I am. I’m so sorry I feel sick for her. I wish she could give me her pain.
After a minute of dead silence, her eyes flicker up. This time, she looks strong and determined. “What else, Bram? Tell me. I want to know everything.”
I squat down and take her hands in mine. My pretty, vulnerable, naked girl. I care too much to ever keep the truth from her.
“He had his hand on her knee.”
Lips pressed together, she nods. “Okay. Anything else?”
“While he was driving like a lunatic, she was hanging all over him. I saw them in my rearview mirror. She leaned over and put her arms around his neck. He almost crashed into somebody when he took his eyes off the road to kiss her.”
She winces. A fresh tear trickles from the corner of her eye.
“She was at the funeral, you know,” she says with a short, bitter laugh. “With her boyfriend.”
“She had a boyfriend,” I say. “I guess that’s why she ran.”
Grace’s eyes flash. “She wept through the entire service. She was so loud and vocal about it. I couldn’t even cry. It was like…she’d stolen all my tears.”
“Who invited her?”
Her voice shakes with disbelief. “My father. He invited all of James’s friends. It was the first time I’d ever seen her. So many people commented on how alike we were. I didn’t think so at all. Her eyes are blue and she has freckles, and...” She swallows. She looks too miserable to go on.
“I’m sorry, Grace. I’m sorry I thought she was you.”
She shrugs. “You’re not the only one. My father did, too.”
“Your father?”
“At the funeral, he came up and put his hand on my shoulder and called me Destiny. I hated it. But you know what’s even worse? She started going to our church after that. She’s been there every Sunday since, sitting in the front row, clapping and singing, buddying up to Isaac…”
I squeeze Grace’s hands. “Maybe that’s how she deals with her guilt.”
Her eyes are wide and confused. “She knew about the trial, Bram. My father wrote a sermon about it, about how the truth always wins. She was there listening, nodding her head! She knew what the truth was, but she never said a word to anybody. She just wanted to protect herself!”
“Yes, she did. It isn’t right.”
Grace presses my hands to her racing heart. “You could have gone to jail! You had to endure that entire trial. It cost you a fortune!”
“No, no, no,” I say. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Her eyes are shattered with regret. “I wish…Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not the trial that bothers me,” I say. “It’s thinking that you were like Destiny.”
“What do you mean?”
“That you’d lie for your own gain. That you’d know what happened that night and try to hurt me anyway.” I stroke away her tears and kiss her hot, damp cheeks. “I should have known. That’s not my good girl. I should have realized that.”
She sits silently before sucking in a breath. “Why didn’t you show this video to anyone? If my lawyer had known, he wouldn’t have taken the case! It never would have happened.”
My chest feels heavy. Fuck. All I ever wanted was to protect her. “You’d been through so much because of me. I didn’t want to ruin your life. I’d ruined it already.”
“You didn’t ruin my life,” she says, her eyes fiery. “He did. James did.”
I kiss her and try to infuse my strength into her. “It’s over now. It’s okay. We did the best we could.”
She breaks down. “I’m sorry. I’m just so, so sorry.”
She cries in my arms, sobbing until she’s wrung out. I help her stand up and give her some water. After she’s had half a glass, I bring her to the shower. I wash her hair and her whole body, and rinse her clean under the handheld wand. When we’re both toweled off, I lead her to bed by the hand.
We get under the sheets, and I hold her. She as tiny and
bewildered as a broken fawn.
Her breath is soft against my ear as she speaks. “He’s not the man I thought he was, Bram. He’s a total stranger.”
“I know.”
“I always thought James was the one person who loved me. I thought I was everything to him. I wasn’t.”
“He was an immature kid,” I say. “He only cared about himself.”
“Is this what you meant when you said those things about him, that he was a chameleon?”
“Yes.” It isn’t what I meant, but I can’t tell her that now. Her heart is broken enough.
We talk until very late. Her expression is open and trusting as she absorbs everything I say. I’m not just her god in bed, I’m the man she listens to. I understand every fragile part of her. And tonight, she knows it.
She strokes her hand along my jaw as if she’s trying to memorize me. “You know what I just figured out?” she says. “The reason he didn’t fuck me was because he didn’t want me. He wanted Destiny instead.”
“Grace –”
“No, it’s okay. He didn’t want me. It’s the truth.”
She tries to look brave and strong, but her voice cracks. Fuck. The bastard used and cheated on her. He wasn’t even a man.
Men are honest. They make tough decisions. They do what’s hard. If he’d had any balls, he’d have told her the truth and set her free.
Instead, he took the last two years of her life to the grave with him. She may forgive him for it, but I never will.
I trace her browbone with my finger. “You saved the most beautiful part of yourself for me. It’s a precious gift, and it’s mine now.”
She bites the little scar on her lip in that innocent way she has. I bet she’s not even conscious of it. “I’m glad it’s yours,” she says. “You deserve it.”
I pull her close to me and hold her again. After a while she looks at me, her eyes as big and dark as the sky outside the window. “I’m lost, Bram. I…I don’t know how to love James anymore.”
I fold her into my arms so tight, she feels like part of my heart. “You don’t have to, Grace. You can love me.”
Grace
Bram holds me all night. We talk, and sleep, and wake up to talk again. He fucks me with me on top, and standing up with his elbows looped under my knees.
Breaking Grace Page 23
