And her brain was telling her that his little blow-up today was the best thing that could’ve happened to them. It was time to go back to LA—alone—and get on with her life.
She’d just have to ignore her pathetic heart, which practically wept at the thought of never seeing Nick again.
Gage opened his mouth to say something else, but snapped it shut when a shriek split the air, the sound so shrill Grace winced and had to cover her ears.
“Jesus,” Grace said when the noise died down into quiet whimpers, sobs, and nearly incoherent prayers. “What the hell is that?”
Gage shook his head. “No clue. Maybe someone’s skinning a senator’s daughter for the woman suit he’s making in his basement?”
“I told you never to mention that movie to me again,” Grace said with a shudder.
“It puts the lotion on or it gets the hose—”
Grace slapped her palms back over her ears. “Stop it!”
He chuckled and said something she couldn’t hear—because, covered ears—but then his expression turned serious as he glanced at someone over Grace’s shoulder.
She took her hands off her ears and whirled around to find Lucille standing in front of her, wearing only one high-heel shoe, a mini-skirt that looked to be on backwards, and a half-buttoned, leopard-print silk blouse.
Lucille smoothed a hand over her head—which was sporting the worst case of bedhead Grace had ever seen—and gave Gage a wide, nervous smile. “Hey, there, uh, doc,” she sputtered, obviously trying to look like she hadn’t just stumbled out of a natural disaster. “Can I get you to come help me for a quick sec?”
Gage immediately switched from tipsy wedding guest to doctor in less time than it took Grace to drag her eyes away from the great expanse of cleavage Lucille was flashing. “Are you alright?” he asked, already looking her over, eyes cold, assessing her for injuries.
“Oh, yeah, sure, I’m fine. It’s, uh, not me who needs help.”
“Wait here,” he told Grace as he hurried to follow Lucille, who’d started tottering at a pretty impressive clip on her one ridiculously high heel toward the bathroom on the opposite side of the reception hall.
It’d been a shitty, shitty day. Grace was tired and heartbroken. There was no way she was missing out on whatever was going on in that bathroom. Misery loved company, right?
So into the unisex bathroom they went, Lucille, followed by Gage, with Grace right on his heels. And what they saw there made Grace completely question the whole misery-loves-company thing.
Brad lay on the bathroom floor, completely naked, but for a wad of paper towels he was holding over his groin. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he was sucking in great gulps of air in between uttering what sounded like stuttering, broken prayers.
Gage stumbled to a stop, causing Grace to run into his back. “Jesus, Grace,” he muttered, “I told you to wait out there for me.”
Grace bit down on her bottom lip. “I was curious,” she whispered, horrified.
Gage shoved a hand through his hair and shifted back into doctor mode. “Alright, what’s going on here?”
Brad glanced at Lucille, wide-eyed and panicked. She gave him an encouraging nod and said, “Go ahead and show him, honey. It’ll be OK.”
Honey? Grace thought. When had that happened? But then Brad lifted the paper towels off his groin and Grace had to stifle a shriek at the sight that assailed her poor, unsuspecting eyes.
“Holy Mother of God,” she said, barely resisting the urge to trace the sign of the cross over her chest. “What is that?”
Gage cocked his head to one side and after a moment said, “Huh. That’s a penile fracture. You don’t see one of those every day. Caused by blunt-force trauma. How did that happen?”
Brad started sobbing again, so Lucille answered for him. “Well, we were, you know, having an intimate moment. He was there on the counter and I was, you know, on top of him,” she said, twirling a strand of hair around her index finger, “and then we heard sort of a popping sound. I got off him, and that’s when he rolled off the counter onto the floor.”
Gage winced. Brad sobbed louder.
“Misalignment, huh?” Gage asked. “Came down on him wrong?”
Lucille straightened and raised a brow at him. “I can assure you I came down on him just right. But, yes, he slipped out and might’ve, uh, gotten bent under me at an odd angle.”
“I promise I’ll never be curious again,” Grace muttered fervently.
“Can you fix him, doc?” Lucille asked.
Gage shook his head. “No. That’s a surgical fix, and I don’t have privileges at any hospitals around here. Grace, can you call 911, please? We’ll need an ambulance.”
“Couldn’t we just drive him to the hospital?” Grace asked.
“We could,” Gage answered, “but I don’t want to.”
Well, it was kind of hard to argue with that logic.
Half an hour later, Brad was loaded into an ambulance and on his way to a local hospital. Lucille stayed at his side the whole time. Her devotion would have been touching…if she hadn’t broken his penis and all.
Gage threw an arm around Grace’s shoulders as they made their way back through the hotel’s lobby. “Well, that was fun.”
She snorted. “If by ‘fun’ you mean terrifying and possibly permanently scarring. Then, sure, it was fun.”
“Hey, we had a fucking horrific day. The woman who is maybe, possibly…something to me ran away without a word, my cousin punched me in the face, and the only flight home I could get us isn’t until tomorrow and it has a three-hour layover in Detroit. And your whole thing with Nick was a shit-show of epic proportions. That penile fracture was a gift from Karma herself. We deserved that penile fracture. We earned that penile fracture today, Grace.”
“He’s going to be alright, isn’t he?” Grace asked, biting her lip. “I won’t feel right laughing at him unless I know he’s going to be alright. Because that would be bad karma for me.”
“He’ll be fine. It’s a relatively easy fix with typically good surgical outcomes.”
Oh, well, in that case…
Grace’s quiet chuckles mixed with Gage’s deeper ones. Before long, Grace was giggling and gasping for breath while leaning on Gage for support.
She knew she only giggled like this in times of high stress. It was the kind of giggling that kept her from crying. But it wouldn’t work forever. It was like trying to plug a hole in a dam with a piece of wadded-up chewing gum.
Eventually the dam would break and the flood would come.
Gage must have known what was about to happen because his laughter stalled out completely. Without a word, he tugged her into his arms and wrapped her up in a tight hug. Unfortunately, that little bit of kindness and understanding was all it took to break her.
“It’ll be okay,” he told her over and over again as her laughter melted into sobs.
Chapter Thirty-six
Nick read Sadie’s letter seventeen times. Seventeen times. It wasn’t that the letter was so complicated it required seventeen reads. But every now and then, as Nick was learning, it took a while for the human brain to comprehend even the simplest of messages.
Especially when the messages told him he’d been a complete dumbass who now owed the mother of all apologies to the woman he loved.
Grace had been telling the truth. She didn’t have anything to do with Sadie calling off the wedding and running away. Sadie had acted like the stupid kid she was all on her own. Even if Grace hadn’t called her a cab and helped her escape without being seen, someone else would have. And Nick now knew he wouldn’t have been able to talk Sadie off the ledge. The wedding had been doomed and nothing he could’ve said would’ve fixed anything.
Hearing you explain how you know who “the one” is was a wake-up call for me, Nicky. I thought all I ever wanted was a family, but now I want what you and Grace have. Michael is wonderful and perfect and I love him, but he’s not the one. He deserves someone be
tter than me. And deep down, I know I deserve better, too, but I’m just too messed up to go after it right now. I have to find myself before I can find the one who is meant for me.
So, technically, he supposed, if anyone could be blamed for Sadie’s epic case of cold feet, it was Nick, which just made everything worse. Especially since instead of telling Grace he loved her, he’d accused her of purposefully sabotaging his sister’s life and marriage.
If he could kick his own ass, he would. He was going to have to do some pretty epic groveling to get Grace to forgive him this time. Pretty words and flowers and orgasms weren’t going to cut it. At this point, he wasn’t even sure jewelry, the top tier of I’m-sorry-I-was-a-dumbass gifts, would fix what he’d fucked up. Maybe he could—
A tentative knock on the door separating his room from Grace’s snapped him out of his mental calculations.
He was at the door and yanked it open so fast Grace’s hand was still poised to knock when they came face to face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, which made him want to kick his own ass even more than he had before. And that was saying a lot, because he was really pissed off at himself.
Nick expelled a huge breath before blurting, “God, Grace, I was such a fucking idiot. I have no idea what I was even thinking. I know you didn’t have anything to do with why Sadie left. I’m so, so sorry.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know I didn’t have anything to do with why Sadie left? Is it because you realized I would never do anything to intentionally hurt Sadie and Michael—or because Sadie told you so in her letter?”
He had a feeling she didn’t want to hear him say both, even though it was true. But judging by the look on her face, he wasn’t even sure there was a right answer to her question. Honesty would have to do, he supposed. “I would’ve known that, had I not been so scared for Sadie, and pissed off that I’d failed at trying to take care of her again. I do know that you’d never do anything like that. It just…took me a little while to clear my head and see that.”
Grace stared at him so hard for a moment that he wondered if she was trying to bore a hole through his skull with nothing but the power of her eyes. But eventually, she nodded and said, “It’s okay. I understand, and I forgive you.”
If he hadn’t been so fucking relieved to hear those words, he might’ve noticed how flat her voice sounded, or how cold her eyes looked. There was nothing at all Grace-like in how she looked or sounded in that moment. But relief overruled his common sense and he let out all his pent-up tension in the form of a huge sigh as he reached for her. “Grace, you won’t regret it. In fact, I need to tell you what I was trying to tell you earlier, before everything happened. The truth is that I lov—”
Grace held up a hand to interrupt him and took a huge step back, out of his reach.
All the relief Nick had felt only a moment ago died a hard, swift death. Suddenly the space between them felt like the fucking Continental Divide. Nick’s entire body went cold. “What’s wrong?” he asked, not at all sure he really wanted her answer.
“Look,” she began, her eyes lifting, but not meeting his, “today was a really good reminder of what we are. This whole thing has just happened so fast. If we keep this up, if you move to LA, we’re really no better than Sadie and Michael. We just don’t know each other well enough for that.”
He wanted to keep a cool head this time, to not go off the deep end and say things he shouldn’t. That’s what had got him in the mess, after all. But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “That’s such bullshit. We’re not anything like Sadie and Michael. We’re grown-ups, first of all. You’re not at all confused about who you are, and neither am I. And I know you, Grace. We might not have known each other for a long time, but I know you.”
That brought a little heat to her eyes. Just not the good kind, sadly. “No, you don’t,” she said. “If you did know me, you would’ve known that I didn’t intentionally ruin Sadie and Michael’s wedding.”
His chin hit his chest. “So you don’t really forgive me. That’s okay. I understand. We can fix this. I just—”
“No. I do forgive you. I need to thank you, actually.”
Never had the words thank you sounded so terrifying. “Why would you thank me?”
She shrugged her shoulders in a careless gesture that was at odds with her tight expression. “We’ve been caught up in all the…physical stuff. The chemistry between us. We haven’t been using our heads. Today you reminded me that I need to be logical, rational about our relationship.”
Which was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. There was nothing logical or rational about emotions and relationships. They were messy and complicated and irrational. Truly rational people would never let themselves fall in love. “And what would a logical, rational person do about our relationship?”
A little furrow appeared between her brows. “A logical, rational person would stick to our original agreement. I said I’d be with you for one week. Our one week is up. It’s time to go back to our real lives now.”
Nick grabbed her shoulders firmly enough to keep her from moving further away from him—because fuck the Continental Divide—but gently enough not to hurt or scare her. “My real life is you, Grace. I love you. I don’t give a fuck if we’ve only known each other a week, and I don’t give a fuck about logical and rational. I love you.”
She shut her eyes and wrapped her arms around her stomach as if his words had hurt her. “I don’t want to hear that. This is all too much, Nick. The thing with Sadie and Michael, you living on the other end of the country, the fact that we’ve had two terrible, ugly fights in the course of only a few days…I just can’t do it. You said yourself when this thing started that you didn’t do complicated. Well, we complicate each other, Nick.” She shook her head sadly. “I’m going home. By myself.”
Well, this is not at all how he expected his first-ever I love you declaration to play out. “Grace, I don’t think it’s all as complicated as we’ve made it seem. The thing with Sadie and Michael is over. It doesn’t have anything to do with us. I already told you I’m more than happy to move to be closer to you. There’s nothing tying me to Chicago anymore. I won’t rush you into anything more. After I move, we’ll date like normal people. And as for our fights…well, those were my fault. I’ve never done this before. I’ll surely fuck things up every now and then. But if you’re willing to try, I know we can make it work.”
Her head came up and she finally looked him right in the eye, and he knew before she said it that they were over. She was done with him. He’d finally managed to screw things up with her irreparably.
“I’m not willing to try,” she said, her voice sounding horrible and firm and nothing at all like her normal voice. “We’re just…too different.”
Because you’re poor, dumb trailer trash and she’s a lawyer. She’s too good for you.
Nick forced himself to shake the negative thoughts off. Fuck those old insecurities! Shit like that wasn’t going to help his cause. It never had.
He couldn’t stop himself from yanking her into his arms. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “If you need some space, I’ll give it to you. But don’t make it forever.”
He kissed her, hard and desperate. For a second, he thought she was going to kiss him back, but she didn’t. So he just pressed his cheek against hers and held on for dear life.
Her breathing hitched, and as a single, lonely tear rolled down her cheek, he thought—hoped—he had her. He thought she was going to change her mind and give him the second—or third—chance he didn’t really deserve but wanted more than his next breath.
But his hope was ground to dust under her stiletto as she pushed shakily out of his arms, leaned up to kiss his cheek, and said, “Goodbye, Nick.”
Nick rubbed his chest absently as he watched her walk away, wondering if this was what Michael was feeling right now. Because if it was, he owed the kid a giant apology for every nasty thing he’d thought and said about him over the course
of the week. No one deserved to feel like this.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Since all her girlfriends were in LA and not answering their damn phones, poor Gage got stuck with the responsibility of plying Grace with alcohol and ice cream to get her over her breakup.
After two hours or so of listening to her sob and moan, he decided her ice cream intake was slowing down her alcohol intake. She needed the ice cream, but she really needed the alcohol. So, in all his infinite wisdom, Gage suggested mixing the vodka directly into her tub of Cherry Garcia. And thus, the Smirnoff Smoothie was born.
Sadly, the genius of the idea just made her sob harder, because the first person she’d wanted to call and talk to about the Smirnoff Smoothie was Nick.
Nick totally would’ve appreciated the genius of the Smirnoff Smoothie.
But the next day, as Grace eyed the hollowed-out tub of ice cream and four empty bottles of vodka—she was pretty sure Gage had contributed mightily to the downfall of the vodka, but sadly, the ice cream was all her—she started doubting the Smirnoff Smoothie as a viable breakup cure-all.
“You look something a cat puked up,” Gage told her as he started an IV in her arm to replenish her fluids.
Grace lifted her head and squinted at him out of one eye—she’d learned pretty quickly that opening both eyes fully felt like someone was jamming a cattle prod into her eye socket—while she contemplated giving him the finger. Ultimately deciding that would require too much effort, she instead asked him, “Why don’t you look like death on a stick? You drank every bit as much as I did. And where the hell did you even get an IV?”
“I drank more than you did. I started drinking a full day before you and never really stopped. But I also weigh more and ate more real food than you did last night—ice cream doesn’t count. And I’ve always held my liquor better than you. The IV came from the medical supply store down the street. I picked it up after our last vodka run. I figured you’d be needing it.”
You Complicate Me Page 18
