CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
For nearly ten straight minutes he just held her. The very idea of a mother realizing what she’d done to her child felt like a crushing blow to Grant. It was a miracle she was still standing. It was a miracle. He held her even tighter.
He was so concerned about her wellbeing that he didn’t even notice that her nearness had caused him to have a hard on. It didn’t even register to him.
It didn’t register to Marti, either, as she began sobbing. He pulled her onto his lap and held her even tighter as she sobbed. Because she didn’t hold back the way she did every night. The way she never let go. But in Grant’s arms, she let go. She let it rip. As if she was finally unburdening herself. As if she was finally unleashing what had been choking her for four straight years.
Grant handed her his handkerchief as she sobbed. He held her tenderly as she was unable to stop herself from crying.
“How did you survive it?” he finally asked her. “How did you manage to live through something that horrific?”
“I don’t know if I have lived through it,” Marti responded. “I get by. I do what I need to do. But I don’t know if you could call it living. It’s been so hard,” she said, and her sobbing increased. “When I tried to explain it to my friends, they understood it on some level, but they couldn’t truly understand it. They needed me to get over it so they could move on too. But I couldn’t get over it. So they moved on anyway.”
“Fair weather friends,” said Grant.
“They were good friends,” said Marti. “But I made it too difficult. They couldn’t handle it.”
“Fuck them,” said Grant as he held her tighter still. “It was your child. It was your tragedy, not theirs. And they couldn’t be there for you? Fuck them,” he said again.
Marti had never had anyone to fully understand how she felt. Because Grant was right. They all seemed to dismiss it for their own sakes and sanity. For their own selves.
She continued to cry. She continued to let it all out as if she was letting it out once and for all. She sobbed more than she ever had.
But when the sobbing finally stopped, she fully expected him to release her and get away from her. Why would he want to be around a disaster like her? Her friends had years invested in her, and they bounced. Why would he stick around?
But he continued to embrace her. It felt to Marti as if it wasn’t even a question that he would stick around. And that warmed her hurting heart. They sat that way, in silence, for several more minutes.
Until Grant spoke up. “I used to be in the tech industry.”
Marti went still. Captain Jeffers told her the chief never discussed his past. He never said why he sold his company and returned to his hometown. But he was telling her? It felt like a moment. A very important moment for him just as her revelation had been for her. She didn’t say a word.
“I was flying high. Was about to take my company public. Wall Street was ready. I was ready. Things were truly looking up. I even had a woman in my life. Not a woman I loved, it was never that deep, but I at least liked her more than any of the others I’d been with.”
That sounded strange to Marti. Was he saying he’d never been in love? A man his age? Did he even believe in love? Was she falling for that kind of guy? A guy guaranteed to break her heart? She listened closely. But she quickly realized it wasn’t about that woman.
“I was on top of the world,” Grant continued. “Then it all came crashing down.”
There was a long pause. Marti wanted to look at him, to encourage him to continue, to say or do something in that silence. But she didn’t. He had to tell it in his time, and in his way. She remained silent.
“I got word that Dana, my sister, was sick. Gravely so. And that she wasn’t going to make it. She was my kid sister. She meant the world to me. Our parents were dead. She was all I had and I was all she had. She was my everything.”
He paused again. “So I put the IPO on hold, flew to Montana where she lived, went to the hospital and stayed by her side. I never left her side. But she was gone just three weeks later.”
Marti closed her eyes as tears stained her lids. Her ex-husband died young too, less than a year after they divorced. His killer? The big C: Cancer. Grant didn’t say what his sister’s poison was, and Marti wasn’t ever going to ask.
“After Dana died,” Grant continued with a hard exhale, “I tried to resume my life. I tried to move on. But I couldn’t move at all. I started having panic attacks. Nightmares about disasters. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t function. My very good tech company had a chance to become great, and I was ruining it for all those hardworking people that made it a success. So I decided to sell my interest in the company, which was sixty-four percent of the company, and I got out. I left California and moved back here, to Belgrave, to my hometown. I guess I kind of checked out too.”
Marti waited for him to continue, but he said no more. That was when she spoke up. “How are you doing now?” she asked him.
He smiled a weak, insincere smile. “Not great. Still struggling.”
“Why would you take a stressful job like police chief,” Marti asked him, “if you knew you were still struggling?”
“For the distraction.”
“Has it worked?”
Grant nodded. “Yes. It didn’t make me a good policeman, but at least it gave me something to do every day.”
“Are you saying you’ve never been a police officer before you became chief?”
“None of my predecessors were cops either. That’s not how it works in Belgrave. Here, the police chief is appointed by the mayor and is more the administrator of the department. We do hands on, too, don’t get me wrong, because whatever happens at the BPD the chief is ultimately the responsible party.”
“You get all the blame.”
Grant nodded. “We get all the blame. But no, none of the chiefs in Belgrave’s history have ever been rank-and-file cops. And all of my predecessors, like myself, were appointed from the business sector.”
“Perhaps that’s the problem,” said Marti.
Grant thought about it. “Perhaps so. But I agreed to accept the appointment because I knew I had to do something. It kept me going. Which was all I was asking for.”
“That’s a very low ask.”
Grant knew it too, but that was why he said nothing more.
And they continued to sit in silence. It didn’t take long, after that, for Grant to realize he had a hard on and for Marti to feel it beneath her. But they remained where they were. It was as if they both liked the feeling and didn’t want it to end.
Until knocks were heard on the room door.
“That’s room service,” she said.
“I’ll get it,” he said, helped her off of his lap, and he went to the door to retrieve the wheeled cart filled with three covered trays.
“Lots of food for your little self,” he said as he closed the door and wheeled it in.
She laughed. “I like to sample. I probably won’t even touch ninety percent of it.”
“I’ll take the leftovers,” Grant said as he pulled the cart over to the sofa. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“You haven’t?” Now she seemed concerned about him, which pleased him. “Why not? I at least took the time out to walk down the street and get me some lunch.”
“That’s the thing: I was pulled by every uppity muck in this town. I didn’t have time to do anything but listen to their worries about what two mass shootings in one week would look like to the public.”
“Then eat it all if you care to,” she said as she stood up, although she was certain he was the kind of man that wouldn’t do that to her. That he was going to leave her more than she could ever eat.
Why was she so certain about that, she couldn’t say. But she was certain.
“While you eat, I’m going to go and take a shower. I never eat until I shower,” she added.
Grant was already eating. “Sounds like a personal problem to me,” he said, and they both laughed. And Marti went and took her shower. It felt as if they had unburdened their loads, and felt lighter.
Grant felt like a million bucks. He felt happy. And it wasn’t just the food either, although it tasted fantastic to him. It was the easiness of their relationship, if he could even call it a relationship. But it all felt so natural to him.
But when he thought about the pain she had to have endured, his happiness was tempered with concern for her. Because he above all else cared about her. He didn’t know why. He had only just met her. And it wasn’t her story. He’d heard sad stories all his life from other females, horribly sad stories, but none of them moved him nearly as much as her story had.
But when he finished stuffing his face and still leaving her nearly half of everything (it was just that much food), he had to pee. She had to shower before she ate. He always had to pee after he ate. And it wasn’t some I can hold it until later pee, either. He had to go and go now!
He eased the door open and peeped into the bathroom to make sure she was covered by the shower door or curtain. When he saw that a heavy white shower curtain covered the shower stall she was bathing in, he inwardly sighed relief and tiptoed to the toilet. He peed for a long time.
But when he finished, shook off the residual pee that always took its time to come out, then he forgot his incognito presence in that bathroom and flushed the toilet.
As soon as Marti heard a loud sound in the bathroom, she quickly flung open the shower curtain just as Grant was turning in her direction. He still had his penis out and his hand was still holding it.
Her eyes immediately moved down to that penis and she couldn’t help but notice the thickness. His eyes were immediately drawn to her superfine brown bombshell of a body, and her nakedness he couldn’t unsee. And they both were frozen in time, as if in suspended animation.
But Grant knew something that he could no longer suppress. He had to have her. He just had to.
Still staring at her, he kicked off his shoes, dropped his pants and briefs and stepped out of them, and began lifting his shirt over his head, revealing a hard, muscular chest, as he dropped the shirt and made his way to that shower stall.
Marti’s heart was hammering when she saw the fullness of his nakedness, his hot body, and all she wanted was to be in his big arms again. Forget that it was too soon. Forget that he was technically her boss. She had to have him too.
And when he stepped inside of that shower, and placed his hands on the side of her face, and stared at her with a look of love so poignant that she wanted to cry, she knew he had her too. Right where he wanted her. Which was a position she promised herself to never allow herself to ever be in ever again. And she was about to back out. Until he began kissing her.
He kissed her so hard and with so much furious desperation that Marti surrendered her entire body to a man for the first time in years.
Grant could feel his fully-aroused, rock-hard penis pressed against her sumptuously soft body. And the desire to be inside of this particular woman became a need he could no longer forgo. An itch he had to scratch.
But he also could feel her hesitation when their naked bodies first met. He could feel her body begin to back away from his when he placed his hands on each side of her face. That was why he kissed her. He wanted her so badly that he needed her to want him too. And it happened! He could feel her hesitation dwindle as he kissed her with a ferocity he hadn’t felt in decades. She was who he wanted. She was who he needed. She was the one.
And when she began to match the desire in his kiss, and her lips felt like water in a desert for him, it broke him. He hurried her backwards until her back slammed against the shower wall with his hand behind her to cushion her, and their kissing became even more epic.
He was a man who could no longer control his desire for her. He was a man who was not going to be denied. He wanted total control. And since she was a woman whose entire life was a neat little bow of control, and she wanted him to untie that bow, he took the reins. He was starved for her. And she wanted him to eat it up.
She didn’t think he could kiss her any more passionately than he already had, but he did. He went to town on her mouth. His control became out of control. And it felt like freedom to both of them. Finally their past was no longer dictating their future, and the here and now was unleashed. They were in the moment. And they stayed there.