State of Grace (17 page)

The steam from her hot shower made her begin to feel slightly normal again, and inevitably, her mind wandered over to Sean. He'd told her before that he "didn't do the commitment thing," and she hadn't had a problem with it because she didn't want one. The tight fist of longing and sadness that gripped her heart was exactly why she didn't get involved with anyone.

She wasn't supposed to get involved with Sean, at least not on an emotional level. At one point in the beginning, she'd even laughed him out of her door, telling him to 'take it for what it was.'

The joke was on her.

She felt more than a little lost and confused. There was this magnetic hold he had over her, but why? Why him?

Why would she want the one person she couldn’t ever have? The one person who could never give her what she wanted?

The hot water all of a sudden felt scalding. Lost in her thoughts, she'd kept scrubbing her skin without paying attention, and she'd been on her way to rubbing herself raw.

Coffee. She needed coffee. That would make everything feel better. Almost instantly, she thought of Sean’s Mexican coffees. How he would lure her out of bed after making love to her by placing a steaming mug on the nightstand, and then moving it away each time she reached for it, only giving it to her when she’d made it out of the bedroom. 

Tears slipped out of eyes that already felt too raw. She tightly wrapped a towel around her, heading to the kitchen.

She was in the middle of preparing coffee for the grinder when a loud, very male groan came from the living room.

She felt her heart race as she wildly wondered who was in her apartment. Had she brought someone home from the night before? Guilt and shame swept through her. She wasn’t a big drinker, but she’d been so distraught last night, she’d gotten plastered. What had she done?

She tip-toed into the living room, clutching the towel tightly around her.

Only to gasp at the sight before her.

Sean lay sprawled out on her couch in his boxers. His jeans and the shirt he'd had on the night before were thrown over her armchair. Her breathing quickened, and she drew closer to him.

He had eyelashes like a girl, long and curly, and she crazily wondered how she'd never really paid attention to them before. She wanted to drop the towel and bend down and stroke her fingers across the stubble on his jaw. She wanted to press her mouth all over his chest and whisper how much she adored him. 

But she couldn’t do any of those things. She’d lost even the hope of that right the night before.

He opened his eyes. "Like what you see?"

She inhaled sharply as his eyes dark blue eyes pierced into hers. Deep and mesmerizing, like how they turned when he was around. He had no right to flirt with her—no right to expect anything from her after he’d had his mouth on that woman’s cleavage. She may have implicitly agreed to whatever it was they had done, but she did not agree to being on a rotation of ready and willing women, especially while she was standing there watching.

"What are you doing here?" she asked hoarsely.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She stood before him, fury blazing from her eyes, and he ached with the need to touch her but he clenched his fists tightly instead. His chest felt funny and tight, but he tried to push it out of his mind.

He’d stayed at the bar after she’d gone into the bathroom with the big, blond guy, just to torture himself. Her hook-up for the night walked out first from the bathroom.

As soon as the door opened, he’d been on the bastard, and he didn’t know how he stopped from smashing the bastard's face in. The other guy was bigger, but rage made Sean crazy.

Sean’s insanity subsided only marginally when the guy lifted his hands up defensively and told him nothing had happened. Not for a lack of trying on his part, he’d joked. She was hot, but she’d started puking, and he’d bounced. 

He did land a swift punch to the asshole’s midsection for leaving Grace sick and by herself in the bathroom. 

Minutes later, he’d picked the lock to the bathroom. He found her half on the floor, hair mussed and eyes disoriented. She'd looked like she was about to fall over, and he'd seen red.

He'd scooped her up, even as she halfheartedly protested, and she passed out in the backseat of the cab he’d hailed to her apartment. He knew it wasn't a good idea, but he'd decided to stay the night to make sure she was okay.

Now she was standing here, sexy as hell in nothing but a towel for God's sake, and bitching him out.

"Don't worry, Gracie. I don't want to touch you."

Her stunned eyes turned furious, but he felt like the world's worst kind of ass when he saw a flash of hurt.

"Out! You disgust me," she ground out between clenched teeth, blinking furiously to keep her tears at bay. He didn’t deserve her tears.

He got up and started throwing his clothes on.

"Happy to oblige," he drawled, strolling to her door. He turned around before he opened it, and looked at her thoughtfully. "You know what, Gracie? I may disgust you, but that’s not your problem any more. I stopped being your problem last night. Hope you enjoy the rest of your cold and lonely life."

The door slammed behind him hard, and she sank down on the couch he’d just vacated. Tears streamed freely down her face before she broke down in sobs. 

She should have known it was going to hurt like this. That it would feel like someone had taken a knife and cut her heart out. The night before, when she’d told him that they needed to be over, that it was just a fling, she’d been devastated. 

But that was nothing compared to watching him walk away from her and out of her life. 

Chapter Nine

Six weeks later

Time
had never felt so long as it had during the six weeks since he’d left her apartment, but she sought solace in routine. She woke in the mornings, got in the shower, and put on her makeup before leaving her apartment. She went through the motions at work—clinical, friendly, efficient, and avoiding the questioning glances from her co-workers at the hospital.

Days off were spent in her apartment. Curled up on her sofa with the TV on and e-reader in hand, switching between the flashes of color on the screen and the black and white in print, trying to focus on something else, anything else until exhaustion claimed her, and she passed out and slept.

In the days following his exit from her life, the darkness was her salvation. She welcomed the fatigue that stressed her eyelids and the cadence of slow, steady breath as she drifted away from the confused hurt and pain that took residence in her heart the minute Sean strode out of her apartment. 

Even though she’d told him whatever they had wouldn’t work, even though the memory of his lips on the bartender gut her every time it flashed in her mind, a small flame of hope that he would call, text, or come by flickered until it died out after the first few weeks. 

After that, she didn’t even have that small sense of peace that came with sleep. He came to her in her dreams—vividly, sometimes replaying scenes where he’d made love to her or when they’d just sat in comfortable silence, him working on his laptop while she read a book. Occasionally, they were children again, fighting after she’d discovered he’d stuck gum in her hair or when she’d let out a small container of carefully collected fire ants into his sleeping bag during one of his overnight stays. The worst was when he’d come to her in her sleep and tenderly bully her into submission, telling her that he wasn’t going to listen to her, he wasn’t going to stay away anymore, and urgently kissing away her protest until it ended in climax. 

Those nights were the worst, when she’d wake up with wet tears seeping from her eyes, and the knowledge that it was just a fanciful dream. He wasn’t in her reality anymore.

She worked harder to escape, working double shifts at the hospital and picking up as many extra ones as she could. She subsisted on coffee and energy bars to get herself through the endlessly brutal pace of seeing patients, running tests, and paperwork. 

“You can’t do this forever, you know.” The voice came from the doorway of the staff break room.

Her head snapped up from the magazine article she’d been unsuccessfully trying to read, and she met the soft, assessing gaze of her sister-in-law.

She swallowed a stream of hot coffee from the paper cup she’d set down just a few minutes earlier, wishing it was something of the alcoholic variety. 

“You’re not supposed to be here, Soph,” she said tonelessly, looking back down at the magazine in her hands.

Sophie maneuvered her way through the round tables in the room before settling into a chair at the table where she sat. She pursed her lips and set her bag on the tabletop. “Leah let me in. She’s worried about you, too.”

At a loss for what to say, she kept silent. She hadn’t seen her brother or his wife since that night at the bar. They’d both called and tried to come by, but how was she supposed to face them after what she’d done? After ruining a lifelong friendship between two men who were closer than blood brothers?

“Grace, are you upset with me?” Sophie asked. Even though her tone was soft, there was a hint of steel behind her sister-in-law’s words.

She raised glistening eyes and tried to speak through the sudden lump in her throat. “No,” she whispered.

“Are you upset with your brother?”

She shook her head.

“So why the disappearing act? We were going out of our minds with worry, and I’ve never seen Lucas like this. Even your mom has barely heard from you.” 

She expelled a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to say,” she replied truthfully.

“Let’s start with why you’re avoiding us. Then we can move onto Sean.”

At the mere mention of his name, she visibly flinched, but she tried to rally on. She might never see Sean again, and the very thought of it stole the breath from her being, but she couldn’t avoid her family forever. 

“I’m so so unbelievably sorry I hurt him. I knew it was wrong from the beginning. Something happened at the wedding, and then I just couldn’t stay away.  I—he—” her voice broke, and she swiped furiously at the tears streaming silently down her cheeks. She tried to draw in deep breaths, the only sound that permeated through the heavy, thick silence until Sophie spoke quietly. 

“Just what did you do that was so wrong, Grace?”

She shut her eyes against the humiliation and shame that swamped her, and her head fell into her hands. “I hurt my brother. I knew it would be bad if he ever found out and I did it anyway. I ruined their friendship.”

“That’s the reason you’re avoiding us?” Sophie’s question wasn’t as much an inquiry as a statement.

“Yes,” she whispered, head still bent in her hands, hating herself for the weak tremor traveling through her voice.

“Do you love Sean?”

The storm of emotion that waged within her stilled for a moment as she raised her eyes to a steady stare. Sophie sat, perfectly poised without a hair out of place and an unwavering glint in her eyes.

“What?”

“Grace, you are a smart, intelligent—no, actually brilliant woman. Your brother babies you, but I’m not going to. You heard my question. Answer.”

“No,” she denied, shaking her head from side to side. Nervously, she tucked a stray tendril that escaped her ponytail behind her ear.

She was met with an amused arch of a perfectly shaped brow.

“Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed. It was a lie, but all she could do was hope she spoke and thought it often enough that it became the truth.

Sophie grabbed her coffee, taking a sip before grimacing. “I can’t believe they feed you guys this swill,” she muttered as she set the cup down. Grace pushed her bottle of water towards her. She smiled gratefully and swigged from the water.

“Grace,” she started slowly, “why do you feel you have to lie about it?”

Feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, she jumped when the alarm on her phone buzzed, signaling that her break would end soon. “I only have five minutes left,” she said desperately. “And I’m not lying.” She pushed her chair back and stood up, moving the magazine back to the rack and gathering up her things.

“You know the easiest way to tell when someone is lying to you?” Sophie asked conversationally.

Shit. Sophie’s work as an attorney meant she could call bullshit on the best of the best. A strangled sound escaped her throat as her Sophie continued on without waiting for her to answer.

“It’s when you ask someone a question and their head moves in the opposite direction of what they’re saying. It’s almost like the body denying the words that come out of the mouth.”

She swallowed nervously.

“When I asked you if you loved Sean, you said ‘no,’ but first you nodded the tiniest bit, and you dropped eye contact with me before the word left your mouth.”

Grace stopped trying to busy herself and stilled, closing her eyes. The disappointment she felt for hurting her brother paled in comparison to the emptiness that pulsed where her heart used to be. Talking about Sean and loving him had ripped an emotional gash that physically hurt. When she opened her eyes again, Sophie was standing in front of her.