by Lexi Ryan
Down the dark hall, I hear someone draw in a ragged breath and hiccup.
I wipe at my cheeks. “Who’s there?”
The lights flick on, and Olivia stares at me with red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. She rubs her bare shoulders and shakes her head. “What he said to you just now? He never fought for me like that.” Her words are so shaky they bounce off the walls. “Not once.”
She walks away, and I know I should go back out with the others, but instead I stay inside where I don’t have to be tempted by what I can’t have.
* * *
Chris
I grab another beer and drink half of it without thinking.
“Slow down,” Mason says quietly. “The answers aren’t in there.”
Sebastian locks eyes with me and lifts his chin. I nod. I’m not off the hook with him. I assured him I’d do right by Olivia—but with Grace keeping me at an arm’s length until we know for sure, I’m just not sure what right is.
“You okay, Montgomery?” Arrow asks.
I wish people would quit asking me that. I’m not fucking okay. “I’m fine,” I grit out through my teeth.
“We heard this was where the party was!”
We all turn to see Isaac and a few of his cronies from my dad’s staff entering Arrow’s backyard through the gate. I take a deep breath and my fists clench involuntarily. I can’t deal with this asshole tonight.
Arrow shifts his gaze to Isaac and company, and then to me.
“It’s okay,” I say softly. If my dad is our new coach, sending these guys away puts Arrow on the shit list from the start, and he’s already going to be at a disadvantage by missing half the season.
“Sorry to crash the party,” Isaac says to Arrow as they walk toward us. “We were sick of being stuck in the hotel.”
“It’s not a problem,” Arrow says. “Make yourself at home.”
“Is Grace here?” Isaac asks.
His buddy chuckles. “Since she can’t stay away from you, she will be soon if she isn’t already.”
My blood chills. “What?”
Isaac draws in a breath through his teeth. “Hey, Chris. Didn’t see you there.”
“Chris.” Mason comes to stand beside me. “Come on, man. Let’s go add some wood to the fire.” He reaches for my arm, and I shake him off, glaring at Isaac.
The guy on the other side of Isaac grins. He’s another one of the staff members here with my father, so I hate him by association even before he starts speaking. “Is Grace that hot chick in the pink dress who came to your room?” He lowers his voice in a false show of class. “You hit that?”
“She came to my hotel room last night. Her signals weren’t that hard to read, ya know?” Isaac grins. “Probably not the best place to talk about it.” He nods toward me and adds, “If you know what I mean.”
Grace was in Isaac’s hotel room?
I stiffen. Arrow comes to stand by my side.
“I don’t think we do know what you mean,” he says, taking a step closer to Isaac.
The hackles standing on end at the back of my neck must be visible from the entire backyard, because the other guys are filing in around me.
“Don’t take it personally,” Isaac says to me. “Easy Gee-Gee is just the kind of girl who needs more than one man to keep her satisfied. You can’t change that.” He chuckles as if this is the world’s most fantastic joke. “Though I think I must do a pretty damn good job, since she keeps coming back for more.”
“Just shut your mouth, Owens,” Mason growls.
Isaac looks around and seems to realize what he’s gotten himself into. All these guys would throw a punch to protect Grace. He holds up his hands. “She came to my room last night. Showed up uninvited. It’s not my fault.” He shrugs. “That’s all I’m saying about it.”
Arrow shifts to the balls of his feet and asks under his breath, “Can I introduce this asshole to my fist?”
I swallow hard and shake my head. Grace was at Isaac’s last night. That’s why she never came home. She didn’t stay at Bailey’s like she said. She wasn’t licking her wounds over Olivia or worried about our relationship. She was with Isaac.
Keegan steps to my side and glares at Isaac. “He’s a fucking liar.”
I want to agree with him, but my mind flashes to the redhead on her knees in the middle of that circle of guys. What kind of girl does that?
I hate myself for doubting her, but at the same time I wonder if I’m a fool for not heeding her warnings.
“Come on,” Mason says, grabbing for my arm again. “Let’s go check on that fire.”
I turn to him because he’s the only one not defending Grace. “What do you know?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know anything. She just needed a ride home last night, and I picked her up.”
“A ride home from where?”
Mason’s eyes shift to Isaac, then back to me.
Isaac smirks. “I told you already. She came to my hotel.”
I’m making myself crazy trying to figure out how we can make it work when Olivia’s having my baby, and she went to his hotel room last night? I think of my first night with Grace this summer, when I thought her name was Morgan. How easily had that lie come to her?
Maybe Grace was right. Maybe she’s not who I thought she was.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Grace
I’m hiding in Mia’s room when Bailey rushes in.
“Shit just went down outside. What are you doing in here?” She’s out of breath, as if she’s been running all over the house looking for me.
“What happened?”
“Isaac ran his mouth about you being in his room last night.” Grimacing, Bailey wraps her arms around her middle as if she’s nursing a stomachache.
“I went up to his room to ask him not to tell Chris about my past. While I was there, he tried to start something and—he’s a fucking asshole, to tell you the truth. I left before anything happened, and that’s when I called you.”
“Isaac implied you went to his room to hook up. Another staff member saw you there last night and it just . . . it looks bad.”
I swallow hard. “Chris thinks I slept with Isaac?”
“For what it’s worth, all the guys think Isaac’s a piece of shit.”
I feel numb as I walk to the bed and sink into it. Chris believes Isaac? He believes him because of who I used to be. Who I am?
“Chris is looking for you. What do you want me to do?” Bailey asks.
Go back in time and tell me not to go to that party. Enroll at Champagne Towers and be my friend when I needed one the most. Teach me that I’m worth more than a blowjob, that I’m worth liking for more than an excellent set of fourteen-year-old tits.
“I’ll talk to him,” I say. “It’s time for me to face this.”
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
I can only shake my head, squeeze my eyes shut, and hope this is all a bad dream. I sit on the bed, my eyes closed, waiting. I hear the front door and then the click of the bedroom door before I have the courage to lift my head and open my eyes.
Chris is standing in front of me, anguish written on his face. My stomach churns and twists like someone is trying to wring a stain from a wet rag.
He believes what Isaac said. I can see it all over his face, in the way he’s looking at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks. “Why make me find out from him? Why make me find out in front of everyone? And now all my teammates are talking about it. Everyone fucking knows that you showed up at Isaac’s room last night like . . .” He shakes his head and laughs bitterly.
“Like Easy Gee-Gee?” I wrap my arms around my chest and squeeze tight, as if these arms could protect the heart he’s had in his hands from the beginning. Bile rises in my throat, hot and thick, and I have to take a fistful of Mia’s bedspread to keep myself grounded.
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” He shakes his head, takes a step forward, and then stops and shoves his h
ands into his pockets. I blink and pinch my bare arm, focusing on the sharp pain from my nails so I don’t have to think about the dull ache consuming my entire core. “Do you know the first thing I thought about when I found out Olivia might be pregnant? I thought about you. I thought about how I was terrified I was going to lose you, and I needed to figure out a way to make it work. But what did you do? You went to him.”
I try for a deep breath, but it doesn’t help. Tears fill my eyes, and the pain in my core seeps into my limbs until every inch of me aches. Five years ago, Chris broke my heart, but today he broke all of me. Somehow, I walk to the door and open it without collapsing. Somehow, I lift my chin and meet his gaze, facing all the hurt and betrayal I see there. “I’d like you to leave now.”
He puts his hand over mine and his eyes search my face, and I’m not sure what he’s looking for, but I don’t think he finds it because he drops his hand and cuts off the contact. “I loved you.”
I don’t even know where to start with the series of gut punches he delivered. Loved. He loved me? Loved. Past tense. Gone before I knew it was there. Because maybe he could love Grace, but not even a man as sweet and understanding as Chris could love a slut like Gee-Gee.
He walks through the door and stops on the other side of the threshold, his back to me. “What am I supposed to do, Grace? Tell me how I’m supposed to make this mess okay, because I can’t figure it out.”
“Just let me go,” I whisper, and he hangs his head. “You have to now. Because, you see, this is about what I did when I was fourteen. You said it didn’t change anything, but you were lying to us both. If it hadn’t been for that night and the mistakes I made then, you might have asked me what happened last night.” His shoulders stiffen, but I push forward. “But instead of giving me a chance to tell you that nothing happened, that I didn’t sleep with him, that I threw him off me when he tried to put his hand up my skirt, you believed an asshole who thought it was his right to put his hands on me just because I was in his room.”
He turns, but I shut the door before I can see his face and sink against it, my head in my hands, body shaking. I close my eyes tight and listen to the sound of his feet on the stairs.
I roll to the side, curling into a ball as I cry.
I don’t realize Bailey’s come back into the room until she wraps her arms around me, stroking my hair, whispering in my ear. “You have to breathe, Grace. I know it hurts, but you have to breathe.”
I open my mouth and fill my lungs and wonder how I’m still in one piece, still whole when I’ve been broken right through the middle. “Why did he have to make me believe in the fairytale?” I whisper. “Why did he have to make me believe a girl like me could have a happy ending?” I don’t even recognize the sound of my voice. It’s tortured. The cry of a wounded animal.
“He just needs time,” Bailey says, dragging me back to reality, which is the last place I want to be. She smooths my hair. “Just give him time.”
I shake my head and take another breath. Time won’t change who I am or what I’ve done, and it won’t change that when I needed him to have faith in me, he believed the worst.
* * *
Chris
For three seconds, I stare at the closed door. I don’t knock or breathe or hope. I just stare, horrified at what I’ve done.
“I thought better of you,” Bailey says. She pushes past me and into the room, closing the door behind her, but not before I see Grace on the floor in tears.
My feet take me down the stairs and into the backyard before my mind can catch up. “Owens,” I say as I come up behind him.
“Hey, Chr—”
He doesn’t get to finish because I punch him in the face. My fist lands just right, and blood pours from his nose. It’s damn satisfying.
“Fuck, man.” He lunges toward me just as Mason steps between us. Mason grabs Isaac, pulling his arms back so he can’t swing at me. “Jealous much?” Isaac asks, blood dripping onto the patio.
Everyone is watching—my friends, my team. I feel like I’m on fire and the only way to put it out is to swing. “You’re a piece of shit. You were a piece of shit when you took a drunk girl into your basement to pass around, and you’re a piece of shit now.”
“Get out of here.” Mason shoves Isaac toward the gate.
Arrow steps around them to open it. “I’m afraid you guys are going to have to find another party.”
Isaac flips him off and stumbles away, holding his bloody nose with his other hand. “Fucking assholes think you rule the world. Just wait until Colt gets a hold of your team.”
Only when Arrow swings the gate closed behind him with a clang do I realize my hands are shaking, and the fist I threw into Isaac’s nose is screaming in pain.
“He works for your new coach,” Mason says. “Regardless of how you feel about your father, that’s not gonna fly.”
“Good to see you do something with passion,” a deep voice says from the door. My dad steps out onto the patio, Arrow’s dad by his side. “It’s a relief, honestly. I wasn’t sure you felt that strongly about anything.”
I flex my aching fist. “Your boy’s an asshole.”
“Cosign,” Mason says with a nod, and Arrow and Keegan nod, too.
Sebastian shudders and tilts his head to each side as if stretching out his neck. “I wanted to punch him myself when he was sitting down here calling her Easy Gee-Gee.”
Pain knifes up my arm, and I wince. “I need some ice.”
“Shit.” Keegan’s eyes go wide as he takes in my swelling hand. “Did you break your throwing hand?”
I open my eyes and meet his horrified gaze. “It was worth it.”
* * *
My father pulls me into Mr. Woodison’s office and paces, his hands on his hips. “Mr. Woodison’s a big donor to the university, and he’s had me in here trying to talk me into making the move to BHU. He almost had me convinced before your little temper tantrum out there. Is this what it’s going to be like if I take this job? You’re going to act up like a little boy desperate for attention?”
I’m too hot and too raw, and I can only sneer at him. “I don’t want your attention.”
“That’s the second fight you’ve been in since I arrived, and I know that’s not your style. You want to try again, with some honesty this time?”
Oh, fuck this bastard. “Honesty? You’re an asshole.” In our limited exchanges over the years, I’ve bit my tongue and kept myself from saying those words, but I don’t regret saying them now. Not at all. Now I’m grateful that I get the opportunity to say it to his face. “When I was a little boy, I worked so hard because I wanted to make Mom proud, but also because I knew you were out there, and I wanted to make damn sure I wasn’t a disappointment. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a ten-year-old boy who just wants to make his absent father proud? To believe that if I’d been better—stronger, faster, smarter, cooler—maybe you would have come home?
“Then by the time I started high school, I started getting angry with you. I’d imagine someday you’d come and try to have a relationship with me, and I’d get to tell you to fuck off.
“But even then I hoped that when you saw me and what I’d made of myself, you’d be proud of me. Impressed.” I shake my head. “I had it all wrong. I don’t care whether or not you’re proud of me. It doesn’t matter. Because I’m disappointed in you.”
He stares at me, his face blank, and whether he’s waiting for me to say more or trying to figure out an appropriate response, I don’t know.
“I don’t want your attention, and I don’t want your approval. And I sure as fuck don’t want you coaching my team.” I clench my hands and step back to resist the violence still simmering in my blood. “You’ve never given two shits about what I want, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Don’t take the job. I don’t ask anything from you, but I’m asking this. Turn them down and go back to Texas.”
I’m shaking as I push out of the office and head upstairs to find Grace. I�
�ve fucked up and I don’t deserve a chance to apologize, but I’m hoping she’ll give me one anyway.
Mia’s room is empty, and I can’t find Grace anywhere in the house.
I head out the front door. Bailey’s in the driveway talking to Mason.
“Where is Grace?”
Bailey turns her glare on me, and if looks could kill, I’d be roadkill right now. “Don’t. Just don’t. Give her space and take care of your own problems.”
Mason flashes me an apologetic wince and shrugs. I guess everyone knows how much I fucked up. “Let’s go home, man. It’s been a long fucking day.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grace
Wednesday morning, I drag myself out of bed and force myself to shower and dress. Bailey’s made coffee and is sitting at the kitchen table. I pour myself a cup and take the seat next to her, wondering if the coffee’s warmth might fill this emptiness inside me.
“How are you holding up?” she asks.
“It doesn’t even hurt anymore,” I say. “It’s just . . .” I look away, not sure how to describe what I’m not feeling. “It’s like he shattered everything inside me and then it all evaporated.”
When I meet her gaze, she acknowledges me with a soft smile. “It comes back in waves. Sometimes they’re bigger and sometimes they’re smaller, but they’ll take you off guard.”
I pull my mug against my chest, grateful for her constant understanding. “Did Mason hurt you?”
She shakes her head. “No, but I’m afraid I hurt him. I loved him, but I was in love with Mia’s brother, Nic.” Her smile grows shaky and she swallows. “And then Nic died. After, it felt like I couldn’t breathe, and then it felt like I wasn’t alive at all. I don’t know which was worse. I’m just saying, grief comes in waves. Just try not to get pulled under.”
