Eight Second Angel: The Ballad of Lily Grace (Lonesome Point, Texas Book 7)

by Jessie Evans

  He sighed. “It’s a job.”

  “An illegal job?”

  “Yes.” He ran a hand through his nearly dry hair as he sank into the chair next to hers. “I’ve got enough money saved to pay off Reilly’s farm, but I wanted to leave her money to hire help for a few years. After this job is over, I’ll have enough. Drake is going to transfer the money to my account on Saturday night as soon as I get back.”

  “As soon as you get back from what?” she pushed, a frown creasing her forehead. “What are you driving for them? Drugs? Guns?”

  “Guns across the border,” he said, elbows propped on his knees and his gaze fixed on the fire pit. “Drugs on the way back. They put the coke inside frozen sharks so the dogs aren’t supposed to be able to smell it. They’ve got a system in place. They just need someone who isn’t familiar to the border patrol to drive the van.”

  Lily shook her head, shocked. “You’re serious. And you don’t see anything wrong with that? Especially considering your own history?”

  “If people are going to kill other people they’ll find a gun somewhere,” Canyon said, bitterly. “Same with getting fucked up. If a junkie wants a fix, he’ll get it. I’m not forcing a crack pipe into anyone’s hand, I’m just giving people what they want.”

  “Bullshit,” she snapped. “That’s not what you really believe. That’s not who you are.”

  Canyon’s gaze lifted to meet hers, anger flashing in his eyes. “You don’t know who I am, Grace.”

  “I do know,” she insisted, refusing to back down. “And I know if I were in Reilly’s place I wouldn’t want dirty money. I’d rather lose my farm.”

  “She’s never going to know,” he said. “All she’ll know is that when they read my will she is the sole beneficiary. That’s it.”

  “And how will that make everything right?” she asked, leaning closer. “She’ll have money, but she’ll have lost her last link to Aaron. She’ll have no one to help her remember. If you really care about Reilly, then give her the money and keep going. There’s no reason to—”

  “Fine, I don’t care about her,” he snapped, surging to his feet, stalking away before pacing suddenly back. “I don’t care about anything except not having to live with myself anymore. I’m a selfish bastard and I don’t give a shit what you want or what Reilly wants or what anyone wants. Okay?”

  Lily stood, meeting his anger with her own. “Then what about your son? Have you thought about what Aaron would want? If he were still alive, would that little boy want you to torture yourself for years and then end it all?”

  His jaw clenched. “Don’t talk about Aaron.”

  “I will talk about Aaron because I know for a fact that he wouldn’t want this. He’s at peace. He feels nothing but love for you and he wouldn’t want his daddy to throw his precious life away.”

  “You don’t know anything about my son.”

  “I do know because I—”

  “I’m going for a drive.” He turned to leave, but she leapt forward, taking hold of his elbow.

  “You are not,” she said, clinging tight when he tried to wrench his arm free. “We’re not finished and I won’t let you run away from me.”

  “You can’t stop me, Grace.” He turned, shouting the words into her face. “When will you get that through your thick head?”

  “When you get it through your thick head that you’re being an idiot,” she shouted back. “You big stupid idiot.”

  He snorted. “Well, you’re a nagging little brat.”

  “And you’re a stubborn cuss who’s cutting his dick off to spite his balls.”

  Canyon’s grunt of surprise slowly became the ghost of a smile. “Cutting my dick off to spite my balls.” He nodded, his arm relaxing beneath her fingers. “That may be the smartest thing you’ve said all day.”

  “I’ve said tons of smart things today,” she said. “You just have a listening problem.”

  “Well, I’m listening now and I don’t want to fight anymore.” His free arm wrapped around her waist. “I want to pick up where we left off after your swimming lesson. I have promises to keep and I like to keep my promises. Can we call a truce?”

  “Fine,” she said, her body responding to his closeness though she was still frustrated with him and sad for him and wondering how he’d gotten so deep under her skin in two days. “Truce. But I’m not finished with you, Canyon Meriwether.”

  “I should hope not, Grace…” His hand drifted down to cup her bottom through her swimsuit cover up. “What’s your middle name?”

  “Grace,” she said, grateful to be able to tell the truth. “My first name is Lily.”

  “Lily Grace,” he said, bending his head closer to hers. “Very pretty, like the lady it belongs to.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me?” she asked, lips tingling with anticipation of his kiss.

  “I don’t know. Is it working?”

  “Take me to the tent,” she whispered, sliding her arms around his shoulders. “And make me forget how infuriating you are.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He lifted her into his arms, urging her legs around his waist.

  Moments later, he zipped them into the tent, laid her down on the sleeping bag, and undressed her with a reverence that made her body burn and her heart ache.

  Sometimes being human was hell, but sometimes it was pure heaven. Maybe if she could remind Canyon enough of heaven, he would let her convince him that he didn’t belong in hell anymore. He belonged in the arms of someone who loved him.

  She only wished it could be her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Canyon

  For the rest of the week, Canyon went to bed with Grace in his arms every night and woke up with her head tucked beneath his chin every morning. They didn’t talk about his plans or Grace’s breakdown in the woods or what was going to happen Saturday morning. Their truce held, growing stronger with every passing day.

  They spent their mornings hiking and kayaking up and down the river and afternoons working on Grace’s technique until she was swimming like she’d been born in the water. On Thursday, they rented fishing poles from the visitor center and spent the day filling their cooler full of fish and the evening gorging themselves on trout grilled over the fire pit.

  On Friday, they went back to the swimming hole where they’d spent their first morning, bringing a picnic so they could stay all day. It was a beautiful clear morning that warmed into a sleepy, early summer day, but for the first time since their fight Monday night, the air between them was thick with tension.

  They were both keenly aware that it was their last full day. Tomorrow, he would put Grace on a bus and tomorrow night he would make his overnight run across the border.

  And then on Sunday…

  He sighed, turning his head to look at Grace. She lay drying on her towel next to him, her lightly browned skin still damp from their swim. She had her eyes closed, but he would bet a few grand that she knew he was looking at her.

  They had a connection, unlike anything he’d experienced before, even with Reilly. He was in love with Grace, so in love he knew she would have succeeded in her mission to change his mind if it weren’t for one thing.

  “What is it?” she asked, proving she could practically read his thoughts. “You’re thinking so loud I can hear it.”

  “You can’t hear a person think,” he murmured, rolling over onto his side to face her.

  “I can with you,” she said, turning her head and slitting one eye. “What’s on your mind, cowboy?”

  “Nothing,” he lied, laying his palm on her stomach, feeling the faint beat of her pulse beneath her navel.

  If only she weren’t dying. If only she could stay with him and he could stay with her and they could keep making each other believe again. Then he would be able to find the strength to come back to the land of the living because Grace needed him. He hadn’t realized how much he longed to be needed until she reached for him and held him like he was the only thing she needed to get t
hrough the night.

  She’d convinced him that death wasn’t the best way to prove how sorry he was for letting his son down. The best thing he could do for Aaron was to be strong, to stick around to make the world a safer place for other boys who were trying to grow up to be good and kind in a world that did its best to teach them to be cruel.

  But he couldn’t do it without her. He couldn’t stick around just to watch her die. It would be too much darkness too soon after he’d dared his first glance back toward the light.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about a story my grandmother told me,” Grace said, laying her hand on top of his, gently running her fingers through the crisp hairs near his wrist. “When I was little.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m in the mood for a story. As long as it doesn’t have any spiders in it. After waking up with that critter on my forehead this morning, I can’t go there yet. It’s too soon.”

  “No, no spiders in it.” Her eyes drifted closed once more. “It’s an old story she learned from her grandmother, who came over from Ireland during the potato famine. It was about a giant who fell in love with a fairy. He was so gone on her he spent every day watching her fly from flower to flower, turning winter into spring.”

  “Sounds like an ill-fated romance,” Canyon said wryly. “Like that dog that fell in love with an elephant and did nothing but hump the poor beast’s leg all day.”

  “Not necessarily ill-fated in that way,” she said with a smile. “Fairies are magic. They can shape shift. So if the fairy had loved the giant, she could have grown as big as a tree and they could have run away to his mountain together.”

  She sighed. “But the fairy was in love with the king of the dead and had already made a vow to stay true to him until the day she died. She broke the news to the giant as gently as she could because she knew he was a sweet, big thing. He pretended not to be devastated, but by the time he returned to his mountain, he was sure he would die of a broken heart.”

  “Poor guy.” Canyon’s fingers curled lightly into Grace’s stomach. He concentrated on how soft her skin felt, trying to ignore the lump forming in his throat.

  “He was a sad case,” Grace agreed. “He cried for a hundred days and a hundred nights until the lands below him were flooded and all the flowers had died. Knowing they had to act before the giant’s tears killed everything living below him, the fairies sent a war party to take his life. They hated to do it, but it was the only way to keep his sadness from destroying the world.”

  Grace’s tongue slipped out to dampen her lips. “But the flower fairy couldn’t bear to think of him dying because of her. So she flew up to his mountain ahead of the war party and sang him a magic lullaby that would turn him to stone for a thousand years. She knew that, by the time he woke, she would have passed into the land of the dead. Some fairies live forever, but not the ones who tend the flowers. Eventually, the frost takes hold in them and they can’t rise up to help make springtime anymore. She hoped that knowing she was gone would help the giant let go of his grief and learn to love someone else.”

  “But what if she was wrong?” Canyon said, the lump in his throat so large there was no ignoring it. “What if the giant still loved her, even after a thousand years? Even after she was gone.”

  Grace opened her eyes, staring up at the blue sky. “I asked Gran the same thing, but she said she didn’t know because the story didn’t have an end yet. There’s a mountain in Ireland named after the fairy with a giant-shaped stone on top. No one knows when he was put to sleep, but Gran swore no one would be surprised if they woke one morning to see that the rock had turned back into a giant and walked away.”

  “Or started crying again and flooded the town.”

  Grace turned to him, eyes shining. “When did you become such a romantic?”

  He took a breath that caught in his chest. “Sometime between seeing a girl standing on the edge of a roof and waking up with her head under my chin this morning.” He sighed, knowing he couldn’t let her go without telling her the truth. “I love you, Grace.”

  She swallowed, her throat working. “I love you, too. Would you stay if I could stay?”

  He cupped her cheek. “I don’t answer questions like that.”

  “Like what?” she asked. “Hard questions?”

  “Impossible questions. No matter what I answer, it doesn’t change anything. Either way, you feel bad, and I’m not going to put that on you.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek. “I can’t stay, but I can tell you the truth before I go,” she said, echoing his own thoughts from a moment before.

  “What truth is that?” he asked.

  She took his hand in hers, guiding it away from her face. “My name isn’t Grace Heller. It’s Lily Grace Lawson and I was murdered sixteen years ago.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “Grace, please—”

  “Just listen,” she said. “Then you can tell me I’m crazy, but let me get it out first.”

  “All right,” he said, sad to see her slip back into her delusions, especially when they had so little time left.

  “I spent that time in a place between this world and the next,” she continued, “too worried about the husband and children I’d left behind to move on. I felt like I’d left too much unfinished. So when a woman offered me the chance to come back to earth to help a soul in need, I said yes. I wanted to save a life if I could, to be of use. And the woman told me I wouldn’t remember anything about who I’d been before.”

  She fell silent for a moment, holding his gaze, hers so clear and steady he had no doubt she believed that she was telling the truth.

  “But I do remember,” she whispered. “I remember who I was and everything I lost. I remember my husband and how much I loved him. That’s how I know.”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  “That this is real,” she said, voice catching. “That we could be something special. I’ve felt it twice. That means you can find it again. If you try.”

  “I don’t want to feel it again. I don’t want it with anyone but you,” he said, anger and grief warring inside of him. “If you’re my guardian angel, then whoever sent you here should let you stay. Because I’m going to need you for a lot longer than a week.”

  Like the rest of my life, he thought.

  “That’s not the way it works,” she said with a twist of her lips. “And I’m clearly no angel or I wouldn’t have let you fall in love with me.”

  “You didn’t let anything happen, Grace.” He sat up, propping his elbows on his bent knees and driving his hands through his hair. “This isn’t real. You’re not a guardian angel sent to save me. And I shouldn’t take you to the bus station tomorrow, I should take you somewhere to get help.”

  She laughed, making him turn to see her lying on her back, shaking her head back and forth. “Pigheaded. You’re so damned pigheaded.”

  He sighed. “I’m not pigheaded, I just—”

  “You’ll see that I’m right someday,” she said, not a trace of doubt in her tone. “You’ll die and wake up in the land in-between and you’ll want to apologize to me. So you might as well do it now while you’ve got the chance.”

  He smiled in spite of himself. “Fine. I’m sorry, Lily Grace, for not believing your perfectly sane stories about the afterlife and guardian angels.”

  “I never said I was a guardian angel,” she said, sitting up beside him. “You put those words in my mouth.”

  “I’d rather put my tongue in your mouth,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist.

  “Not until we’re back at the tent,” she said, flipping his hair away from his forehead. “You know once we start kissing we don’t like to stop.”

  “No, we don’t,” he agreed. Then added seriously, “Am I a bad man for taking advantage of a delusional person?”

  “You’re not taking advantage of me,” she said, her gaze softening. “And I think deep down you know it. You know I’m not crazy, you’re just too stubborn to admit it.�
��

  He didn’t respond, but as they dove back into the water for another swim, he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. Or about how quickly she’d learned to swim, how mature she was for someone so young, and how grief-stricken she’d been after seeing the men she claimed had been her boys.

  And what about the name she’d given him? Did that woman really exist?

  By the time they headed back to the campsite, he’d decided it was worth a search on his phone while Grace was showering to see what he could learn about Lily Grace Lawson.

  It was crazy. But no crazier than the other decisions he’d been making lately, he thought grimly as they arrived at their campsite to find a van parked beside his truck and Rudy sitting on their picnic bench cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife.

  “What’s up?” Canyon asked, fighting the urge to guide Grace behind him to shield her from Rudy’s stare. He didn’t want the other man to know how much it got to him when he leered her way.

  “Change of plans,” Rudy said, working on his filthy thumbnail. “Drake knows one of the border guards on duty tonight. He’s promised to send you straight through as long as you get in and out before three a.m. when his shift is over. If you leave right now, you ought to be able to make it. The van’s loaded and ready to go.”

  Canyon frowned. “I can’t go tonight.”

  Rudy’s brows lifted. “Yes, you can, son. This is your chance to get this done with no stress, no mess. It would be stupid to wait.”

  “Then call me stupid,” he said. “I can’t go tonight. Grace and I have plans I can’t break.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Rudy looked up, gesturing toward Grace with his pocketknife. “You’re going to put twenty large on the line because you don’t want to piss off your bitch?”

  “Get out,” Canyon ground out, pointing a finger toward the van, his decision made. “Get in your van and forget you ever knew my name. I’m not interested in working with you.”

  Rudy jumped off the table. “No, son. It doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to say no anymore. We don’t have time to find another driver. Now get your ass in the van and get on the road.”