Fall Guy (37 page)

I hate that I have to do what I have to do.

I hate that they can't see the situation for what it is. That they're all blaming me for doing what's expected of me, the job no one else will take. I hate that my family put me in this position.

We get into the car, Evan silent with fury, Andre silent with resignation, me silent with frustration. Evan speaks first.

"I understand that you're going to do what you think is right, Winch. But I have to, too. Drop me at my grandparents' house. I can't be around you right now."

"Believe it or not, it wound up being too much drama for even Evan Lennox."

I force myself to sigh dramatically, mostly to drown out the sound of Brenna's gasp of frustration. We're well into hour three of our Evan and Winch Relationship Dissection Marathon, and we're both grossly worn out.

"I just...I just don't believe you," she cries, her voice pitched high in preparation for a full-blown reality protest. "You guys had so many obstacles to get through, but you were getting through them. Giving up now just feels--" She brea
ks off and lets out an aggravated
moan.

"It was too much, Bren. It was too much! It never even got started, and then it would get messed up. We'd take a step forward and fifteen backward. Every amazing day would end with a crazy, stupid night. Every magical night would spin out with some weird, panic-filled day. Even I'm not this dramatic, and I can't watch him self-destruct. I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to get through my last few weeks of community service with him, and that's it.
Winchester Youngblood and I
are from two very different worlds. We won't even have to try to avoid each other."

I squeeze the tears out of my voice and focus on the college applications I'm filing neatly in color-coordinated folders. "You were against me and Winch being together, remember? You said that you had a bad feeling. That he wasn't good enough. Why aren't you ever on my side when I need you to be?" I plead, plopping down in my rolling chair.

Bren
tsks
like she's my overworked governess.
"Because once in a rare while, I'm actually wrong.
And because I know how miserable you are.
I can hear it. It's breaking my heart."

I smile at her tendency to hyperbolize when things get bad. In the background, the chime of the doorbell echoes into my room and my grandmother's voice calls my name.

"Someone's here." My heart constricts and sings one steady, happy, hopeful song:
Winch,
Winch,
Winch
.

Brenna squeals with delight. "I knew he'd come! Call me later!"

I take a second to smooth my hair before I sprint down the hall and run at ankle-breaking speeds down the stairs to...

No one.

Gramma
is holding an enormous bouquet in all buttery yellows and
golds
and creams.

"Who in the w
orld sent these, honey
? Someone who knows flowers,
that’s
for sure. Are these from
Eastmann's
? They are absolutely gorgeous! D
o you have a secret admirer, Evan
? Is it
Margurite
Holinger's
grandson? Did you hit it off after you two disappeared at the art show?"

I'm listening to my grandmother's questi
ons without really hearing them
and looking at the stark writing on the thick vellum card she left on the side table for me:
You were right.
About everything.
And I don't expect another chance. But you deserve an apology. These are the beginning. I love you.

I force t
he sugared-up
tween
hopping from foot to foot in my secret heart
to cut
her happy dance short.

I've heard Winchester Youngblood's promises before. And I know exactly why readi
ng this one breaks my heart all over again
.

He ac
tually believes he can keep his promise
.

Even if it's not possible.

"They must be from
Kieren
," I lie.
Gramma's
head
whips up and she studies me with
slitted
eyes, icy blue and deeply suspicious.

"I know you're
lying
like a rug, sweetheart." She takes out a vase and begins a complicated, studious process of arran
ging each long-stemmed, fragrant
bloom. "I don't like seeing that
gorgeous face in a frown. Spill
the beans
."

I pick up a piece of a deep green, broken leaf and twirl it between my fingers.

"Was my mother always so weak?"

It seems like I've changed the subject, but I'm only asking questions to support the Winchester Youngblood case that's gone to court in my head. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time knowing if I'm on the prosecution or the defense. Or maybe I'm the judge? Or jury?

Or executioner?

Gramma
takes a deep, flower-sweet lungf
ul of air and plumps the blossoms
in the vase.

"Yes." My grandmother is only rarely so direct.
And never so brief.

I wait for more, but when no more comes, I ask, "Did you think she'd be a terrible mother?"

"She's not," she snaps, her silvery
bob swinging around her chin as she jerks another flower with enough force to snap the stem.

She puts the discarded tul
ip to the side, the creamy petals
bright with a single stripe of orange in the center. I run my f
inger over the color, ashamed at
speaking ill of my
own
mother, and understanding
my grandmother's fierce loyalty.

Family loyalty that turns a blind eye to
all evils?
It's
part of my birthright
and one reason it was easy to be with Winch despit
e his yo-yo
ing family obligations.

"I apologize." I pluck the petals off the tulip, leaving the tall, exposed pistil naked in the center, and whack the side of the desk with the torn flower. "I know my mother tried to be better."

Gramma's
fingers still over the flowers in the vase.

"I wish that was the truth." She braces her hands on the marble tabletop, her gold rings clicking the surface. "Your mama was a lovely girl.
Lovely.
But she wanted what she wanted. And she wanted things to be easy."

My grandmoth
er looks at me,
her light eyes swirling with hurt I can't fully understand. "You can't have it both ways. If she was going to marry your daddy, it was going to be work. I told her that. And, the thing is, your mama wasn't cut out for work."

Her sigh starts deep in her chest and inverts her shoulders. "I'm not passing judgment. Your granddaddy and I were prepared to set her up for a life of leisure and ease. We knew our child well and wanted her to be happy, have a happy life. She would have done well with a nice young man from a good family.
One of our choosing.
But...she was stubborn. And it just broke her world apart when th
ings with your father didn’t work the way she anticipated
."

I've already had my wrist slapped for speaking against my mother, and I understand. My grandmother loves her fiercely, which is probably part of the reason my mother has always gotten away with such awful behavior; her own mother is always on hand to sweep her problems up, and her daughter
has always known
how to stand on her own two feet.

"So, you think it's better to be with someone who makes sense? Not necessarily someone you love, but know is from a different world?"

The coolness seeps out of her eyes and she goes back to work making the already gorgeous flow
ers into something harmonious, true art
.

"I think your mother should have married someone who made sense. I think your parents
couldn't overcome all the
difficulties true love seems to come booby-trapped with.
But the two of us?"
She winks at me. "Well, we're cut from a different cloth altogether."

I inch closer, until the smell of fresh flowers mingles with the heady, rich scent of my grandmother's perfume. "Did you want to marry someone who didn't make sense?"

"Good Lord, what kind of question is that?"
Gramma
exclaims, her mouth quirked in a half-smile. "Your fool of a granddaddy
still
doesn't make sense, and that should be obvious to a
smart girl like you."

She lifts her eyes from the petals, and they shine with a young dreaminess. "He was so far on the wrong side of the tracks, no one even warned us away from each other.
A romance between me, the daughter of one of the oldest, richest families in Savannah, and Lee Early?
Even the thought was a joke, and that's how he wooed me. No one from my life or his could wrap their head around the idea of the two of us together, so we went unnoticed practically under their noses."

"But...I don't understand? Granddaddy is famous. The Early name is famous. Everyone knows him. Everyone is afraid of him!"

My grandfather is every inch a perfect Southern gentleman and respected businessman, and I remember back to the night of the party with
Jace
. All Winch had to do was say my g
randfather's name, and
Jace
disappeared
without a word of argument
.

"Well
now
they do, love."
Gramma's
smile is every shade of triumphant. "But it's fifty years since we met and started building our life together. The world is a different place now
,
and we're completely different people. Back then, I had a hard time convincing him he'd have any future other than the one he thought fate handed him.
Now?"
Her chuckle shakes the most delicate flowers. "Now that man would forget he was ever humble, young, gorgeous-as-all-get-out Lee Early, factory worker and part-time sharecropper with nothing but his charm and work ethic to get him where he needed to be. That's why I'm around. When he gets low, I retell the story of how he got where he is. And
when he gets too full of himself, I
remind him what a huge debt he owes his patient, brilliant wife for his success."

The truth of my gr
andparents' story is so beautiful
and
romantic,
it almost blots out the backbone-lacking tale of my parents' marital failure.

"What did your family say? What did Granddaddy's family say?"

For the first time, my grandmother's smile falters. She shakes her head and squares her shoulders, but I don't miss the glint of tears she does a really good job of hiding.

"When you're young and strong-willed, you have to know that you'll wind up upsetting the people who love you. My parents were mad as hornets, of course, and his predicted the failure of our marriage and our future unhappiness every time we saw them until we came to our senses and stopped seeing them." She plucks stray leaves that don't meet her exacting bouquet standards. "But I loved your grandfather. Loved him with my whole heart, and we decided that
the love we felt
was going to have to be enough. Whoever couldn't accept it would have to move aside. I can't
lie
to you, love. It hurt. Sometimes I questioned if the hurt was worth it. But in m
y heart?" She puts one hand on
her silk blouse
, just above her heart
. "I knew. I knew I made the right decision."

"It must have been hard." My words are pressed small.

"Nothing as good as what we have comes easy."
She squeezes my shoulder and kisses my forehead, then presses the vase of flowers into my hands.

I take them up the stairs and reread his too-short note a thousand times. I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. I call Brenna and tell her all about my grandparents and the flowers and, of course, she tells me to call
him
, but I can't yet.

I think about what my grandmother said as I squirm in my kilt in world history at St. Anne's the next day. I think about it when I fill out my college applications, and I think about it while I take long, hot showers and cry against the cool white tiles, sometimes for reasons I can't put a finger on.

I miss him in a million ways every day. Part of me is grateful we only got a single night together, and part of me is so damn full of regret that I didn't grab and yank and claw for more when I had the chance.

I miss talking to him. I miss the sweet, slow smile that was so hard to pry out. I miss his honesty, his caring, his tough, in-control, always-loving ways. I know I have it bad when seeing
Gramma's
chicken and rooster salt-and-pepper shakers makes me get a big lump in my throat
because any happy
couple, even little ceramic condiment-holding ones, make
me weepy
.