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Chapter 25
Fly away blonde hairs from Gracie's messy ponytail brush my chin every time the tall white fan does another lap around the room. I'm watching the steady rise and fall of her chest as she lays beside me, head tucked where my neck and shoulder meet, bare leg tangled with mine. Her arm stretches across my torso and then she’s asleep, so exhausted from this week to bother attempting to stay awake. She’s breathing much calmer now, not so ragged and forced. I'm grateful. I was beginning to think that I would have to take her back to the hospital for her own health this time.
The movie playing in front of us has been long forgotten. The fan makes a loud humming noise that makes it near impossible to hear a word that's being said anyway. My eyes haven't moved from Gracie for about an hour now. Her eyelids are puffy and swollen, her button nose resembles Rudolphs, and her fingers haven't released their python-like grip on my bicep since I made her crawl into bed with me. She looks like a beautiful disaster. But for some ungodly reason, she's my beautiful disaster.
I'm worried about her. Anne is sick. Not in the easy sense of the word either, if there was one. But really sick. Sick enough that I know Oakley won't be leaving her side again but will insist Gracie stay home, and sick enough that Gracie will tell him to shove it up his ass. But Oakley will have already known that, and I'll be the one driving Gracie to the hospital every damn day just to make sure she gets there okay.
Anne is their everything. She always has been. They love her with a ferocity that used to intimate me beyond belief. It was too confusing to understand as a kid who grew up taking care of himself before he knew how to and with no parents who actually gave enough of shit to teach him.
It wasn’t until the fifth time I was invited over for one of Anne’s phenomenal home cooked meals that I began to feel the warmth behind their "hello's," the concern behind every frown, and the happiness it brought Anne to serve her kids like it was her sole purpose in life. Hell, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. But I admire it more than I am confused or intimated, and I suppose that's how I know Gracie will survive this.
Their intense, unrequited love stretches far beyond this cruel, selfish world. It's so deeply ingrained in that family, beaten into them with soft words and warm hugs, homemade chicken noodle soup on cold days and random phone calls twice a week just to catch up. A love like theirs doesn't just die with someone. It stays forever, lingering in the nipping wind and chirping with the birds.
A long, shuttered breath fans across my chest when Gracie's grip on me tightens, turning the skin of my bicep white under her fingertips. My brow arches and I watch with a growing smile as she pulls herself closer, turning me into her own personal body pillow.
If only Braden could see me now. He'd laugh in my face and call me a pussy for letting myself get wrapped up in the hurricane that is Gracie Hutton and for letting myself fall for her. I wouldn't want to agree with him; I've always hated allowing people to see my weak spots. But he'd be right and I hate lying even more. It's still such an odd concept to me—caring for someone so intensely that your stomach bounces around, picking fights and throwing rough punches at the rest of your organs whenever you so much as lay eyes on them. I would do anything for Gracie, even lock myself in a glass box full of Anaconda's if it made her lips so much as twitch upward. That fact scares the shit out of me.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
I swallow past the boulder in my throat and peer down at a now semi-conscious Gracie. Her eyelashes flutter as she struggles to keep her eyes open and lets out a squeaky yawn.
"Go back to sleep, Gray," I mumble and rub the dip in her back. She shakes her head in response and lazily drags her leg along mine.
"What were you thinking about?"
"You," I answer honestly. There's no point in lying. She'd call me out on it instantly.
"Me?" Her eyes close again, and warm lips meet the underside of my jaw. "Good or bad?"
I can hear the sleep coating her soft whispers and nod once, letting my own eyelids slide shut. I find myself focusing on the steady rise and fall of her chest against my side and barely manage to mumble a response before falling asleep beside her. "Good, baby. Always good."
My eyes open with an unforgiving burn as the phone on my nightstand vibrates. There's still no light attempting to peek through my curtains, so I must not have been asleep very long. I tighten my jaw and swipe the fucker away from the hard surface. I grunt, relieved as the room is swallowed in silence again.
"What?" I hiss into the speaker, voice heavy with exhaustion. I can barely make out Gracie's silhouette in the dark, but from the fact she hasn’t moved, the call must not have woken her.
"Have you told her yet?" Jessica's nagging, high-pitched voice makes me kiss my teeth. I carefully slide from the bed and open the door just enough for my broad torso to push through the doorway. I shut it with a soft click.
I should have looked at the damn caller ID.
"You're kidding, right?" I head barefoot to the kitchen and slip on the light before tossing myself into a dining chair with a soft thud.
"Do I sound like I'm kidding?" Jessica retorts, annoyance thick in her words.
"No, but you do sound fucking nuts. I'm not telling her something like that right now. Her mom is in the goddamn hospital, Jessica." I spit her name through the phone with the hope that she'll hang up out of anger. She doesn’t.
I can almost hear her eyes roll when she sighs dramatically into her phone. Jessica has always been overly dramatic. It's driven me fucking nuts since the moment Gracie introduced her to everyone a two years ago.
I was sitting at one of the large, teal booths at Lucy's, my ears burning from listening to Oakley drone on and on about the cost of new skates—as if he hadn't just signed a three million dollar starter contract with the Seattle Seals– when the two girls walked in. One seventeen and the other twenty, they were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and reeked of naivety. Gracie thought she had found the best friend she hadn't had growing up–an older sister of sorts– and even I was happy for her. But what none of us were expecting was for the older girl Gracie was so proud to have befriended to turn out to be a venomous serpent disguised as a five-foot-nothing, sapphire-eyed girl with a habit of touching things that don't belong to her.
I've always known that sticking my dick in crazy was a bad idea. Still, twenty-two-year old, drunk Tyler didn't give a shit about consequences that night, and now sober Tyler has to deal with those mistakes. As awful as they may be.
"She'll be fine."
My pulse picks up and thumps against my throat. I shut my eyes and my teeth make an unnerving sound when they grind together. "We both know that you don't want her to be fine. You want her to leave me so I'll come running to you and it won't happen. So in the worst way possible, Jessica, fuck off."
I don't give her a chance to reply before I hang up and toss my phone on the table, moving a hand up to yank my hair out of sheer frustration before I stiffen. I hear ragged, shuddered breaths coming from the entrance to the kitchen and I turn to see Gracie leaning on her left foot. My black comforter is wrapped around her figure and she has unshed tears in her eyes. She looks at me with a slightly jutted bottom lip and a crease above her brows. If betrayal had an expression, she would be wearing it right now.
Fuck.
