Page 22 of His Saving Grace

She pulled onto the road, making sure to keep focused. Her fingers ached from where she gripped the wheel so tightly. She consciously loosened her grip and forced her shoulders to relax, because they were currently sitting up around her ears.

“Because I rebuilt her myself. She was a gift from my dad when I turned fourteen. It took a full two years, and plenty of blood, sweat, and tears, but I did it. She’s mine.”

It took a moment for Grace to realize he was answering her question about him not letting anyone else drive the truck. He reached out and ran his hand along the dashboard in what looked an awful lot like a caress.

Her brain immediately conjured images of him brushing his fingers along her skin in the same way. Tingles trickled down her spine, heat banded low in her belly. She battled the urge to squirm.

What would it feel like to be pressed against all of his hardness? Her blood heated and her skin flushed, but whether in anticipation or mortification, she didn’t know. She hoped for the latter, but wasn’t fooled.

She rolled down the window, delighting in the soft, cool breeze that drifted inside. Maybe it would help cool off her libido.

Mason sat up suddenly, his eyes fixed on the intersection in front of them. “Turn right here.”

“Okay.” She flicked on the blinker. She didn’t think this was the way back to the ranch, but she wasn’t familiar with the area, so maybe it was a shortcut.

Mason made her take a couple of other turns until they finally came to what looked like a darkened park. She pulled into the gravel parking lot.

He flung open the door and stumbled from the truck. He would have fallen flat on his face had he not grabbed the holy-shit-handle on the door.

Grace popped open her own door and raced around to help him. She stepped up to his side, and he leaned on her. He weighed a ton, and she staggered, but managed to keep the two of them on their feet.

“Where are we, Mason?”

He started walking forward. “This way.”

They stumbled their way across the parking lot. The scattering of lights around them showed the lot gave way to grass. Like a grassy field of some sort. She squinted into the darkness, and could make out random shapes. They were all roughly the same size and seemed to be laid out in an orderly fashion.

With a start, she realized they were in a cemetery. At night.

No, this wasn’t creepy at all.

“Umm, Mason.” Her voice was loud in the silence. It somehow felt disrespectful, so she lowered it to a whisper. “What are we doing here?”

He ignored the question and pulled his phone out of his pocket. A couple of quick movements and the flashlight app flared to life. Combined with the light from the almost full moon, it made it so they could at least see a bit in front of them. Regardless, Mason seemed to know exactly where they were headed.

Grace kept her focus on the ground and not on the headstones they passed. Normally, she would be interested in them, as she got the feeling some of them were quite old. But now, in the dark, it was better not to look.

Mason broke away from her hold. She looked up, blinked, and then came to a stop.

A light post on each corner of a little wrought-iron fence cast an eerie glow on the gravestones, in what she assumed was a family plot. Mason stumbled forward and fumbled with the gate. It swung open with a little groan. The eerie kind.

He shuffled into the plot, his gaze trained on the large headstone at the far end. She followed him in, unease trickling through her. He stopped a few feet away from the grave and stared at it. Hard.

There were a couple of bouquets of colorful flowers scattered at the base of the white marble monument. She moved in beside him, but he didn’t acknowledge her. His gaze remained glued on the headstone. Something about the set of his shoulders, the raggedness of his breath, made her throat ache. She tore her gaze away from him and looked at the headstone. With a start, she realized it belonged to the family patriarch. Calvin Callahan. Mason’s dad. He’d died last fall.

He reached out to run his hand along the marble, but changed his mind at the last second, and dropped his hand back to his side. “Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?” The ragged questions sounded like they were torn out of him. The pain and anger in his voice made the unrelenting ache in her throat throb in sympathy.

They stood in tense silence for what seemed like an age, but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. The tension in the air grew, expanded, until it was crackling against her skin. She opened her mouth, although she had no idea what to say. She just knew she needed to do something to break the tension.

Before she could utter a syllable, Mason exploded.

“You bastard!” The shout echoed through the darkness. He launched forward, kicking one of the flower arrangements. The plastic vase went flying, the blossoms exploding in a riot of color against the black night. It bounced off the fence with a crunch and fell to the ground.

“I’m sorry, all right.” He hollered the apology to the sky, turning in a circle, almost as if he was searching for something. “You and your stubborn pride, and we wasted fifteen fucking years. And then you died, and I never got a chance to tell you how sorry I was.”

He dropped to his knees, threw his head back, and bellowed. The sound echoed in the empty space and then bounced off the surrounding trees and back toward them. When he was done, he dropped his head forward, resting his chin on his chest. “I’m sorry.” The words were quiet, filled with grief. “I’m sorry.” And then he began to sob.

She rushed forward, her own eyes filling with sympathetic tears. At the soul level, she understood that kind of pain, the regret of not getting a chance to say goodbye. She dropped to her knees beside him and pulled him into her arms. No matter the risks, she refused to let him suffer alone.