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Grace was speechless. I don't think she believed me until I walked over to my suitcase and pulled out a box. This time, I dropped to one knee and handled my proposal a little more gracefully, but no more sincere than the first time. We might have been a little late to dinner after her enthusiastic acceptance.
Kayla noticed Grace's ring right away. It was she who mentioned rather slyly that Georgia didn't have a residency requirement nor a waiting period for marriage. I laughed, but Grace looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
"It’s the only way we could live together," she reminded me. I’d asked her to move in with me about a month after I told her all of my secrets. But despite the fact that we spent almost all of our nights together, she didn’t want her father’s disapproval and disappointment to ruin the decision to live together. For that matter, it made me a little nervous, too. Everett treated me like a son, and I’m sure he knew just how close Grace and I were, but Grace didn’t want to make things awkward for any of us.
“Besides,” she said, “I plan weddings and parties all the time. I just want to be married to you.”
As she said, it hadn’t taken much convincing. But now I was worried about her family’s reaction.
"Let's wait until the family dinner on Sunday to tell them. He's less likely to kill me in front of my mother since she'll coming this time."
Grace reached up to kiss me. "Don't worry. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with Faith and Adam, or if he’ll even be there. But regardless, there'll be other news."
"Oh, what's that?" I couldn’t imagine what would be more dramatic than our news.
"Laurel's coming home."
Thank you for reading Against the Rules! I hope you enjoyed Grace and Jax’s story. Ready for another Hart sister? Here’s a sneak preview to Laurel's story in AGAINST THE SCRIPT, coming later in 2018!
Laurel
Damn it! Why did I wear these shoes today? I tried to walk faster, but the delicate straps wrapped around my ankle were clearly only for style, not support.
Note to self: this isn't California anymore, toots. Instead of blending in, you stand out like a whore in church!
Of course, if I showed up at my father’s church, that was bound to be the opinion anyway. It was one of the reasons why I left a little over two years ago.
Growing up, I had wanted to stand out. I was tired of being in the shadows of my family. I loved them, but I felt like I could never be seen as myself, whoever that was.
Oh, your dad’s the pastor, right? He has such a gift with words.
Are you as good with animals as your mom is?
Wow! I loved Faith’s appetizer she brought to the last church supper. Do you think you could get me the recipe?
Grace throws the most amazing parties! Must be great when it’s your birthday, right?
Angela is just so kind and good with kids. Do you know she’s the only person who could get my son to stop crying when he needed stitches?
So, what is it you do?
Things have a funny way of working out. Now I wasn’t only not in the shadows, I was out in the full sun—complete exposure—and it had only gotten me burned.
A chameleon—that’s what I wanted to be. Needed to be, at least for a while. So how in the world did wearing a pale green dress with a gold belt and the three-inch strappy gold heels blend in? They didn’t. At least, not the three-inch above the knee length, nor the layers of jewelry that covered up my skin that was left exposed by the low neckline of the dress. It was quite modest by southern California standards. And I probably could have gotten away with it in my hometown of Passion, Virginia if it was a weekday during working hours, or better, an evening hitting the new fancy restaurants that had been established since I left.
But no. I was walking down a sidewalk on an early Saturday afternoon where the dress for the day was mostly jeans and other casual wear. Because despite its name, this was largely a hardworking, former industrial town, not a city that ran with a need-to-be-seen attitude.
Back to the shoes. When I woke up in my hotel this morning, nervousness overcame rationality. The impulsiveness that landed me in this situation reared its head. So, it was an act of desperation, admittedly with some vanity mixed in, that prompted me to select this outfit. Simply put, I knew I looked good in it. It made me feel better. Confident.
It was shallow, I knew. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and I needed all the confidence I could muster. Besides, they were the perfect match to the pale green dress with the gold belt. I truly loved these shoes, but they were not conducive to much walking, much less a near jog, down a sidewalk.
A few people walked along the same sidewalk as me, mostly minding their own business, but there were a few whose eyes widened—in appreciation or possibly in recognition—and did a doubletake, or whose eyebrows scrunched in confusion as if they were trying to figure out if they’d seen me somewhere before. But there were not nearly enough passersby for me to get lost among them. I snuck a quick peek over my shoulder.
Crap on a cracker! Not only had I not lost my pursuer, he was just a few paces behind and closing in, with a same kind of look a dog gets when a piece of steak lands in front of them.
Should I scream? Make a scene? And say what? That some man was walking on the sidewalk behind you? Maybe he just wants your autograph. If he was going to hurt you, he wouldn’t be doing out in public…would he?
I did my best to pick up my pace, but the same heel that I thought made my legs look longer managed to wedge itself into the space between the concrete blocks of the sidewalk. I guess it was my lucky day because there was a trash can right next to me that allowed me to catch myself before I fell. Well, a trashcan and its overflowing trash, that is. And even luckier, I had cushioned my fall with the remains of someone's nacho snack. I stared in disgust at the orangy goo that now covered my hands.
