Chapter Six
W ell, damn. So, he’d confessed that . Something about this little velvet couch must have been reminiscent of a psych office. Not that he’d ever been to one. Though, some, like his manager, would argue he should go. Deal with his issues. His grief.
But he didn’t want to. His grief was his blanket and without it...without it he would be exposed.
Though, grief was a damned itchy blanket.
Even so, he was attached.
“You...what?” She blinked rapidly, dark lashes fluttering with the movement.
“Are you asking for me to elaborate or to repeat the statement?”
“Elaborate, please. I was under the impression you just went through a divorce. Though, if you hadn’t had sex in six years, I can see why the divorce was necessary.”
He shook his head. “I got divorced six years ago. Or rather, my wife left me six years ago, I’m not really sure when the thing was finalized. I just signed papers. Neither of us did much. She didn’t want the house. We didn’t have any...kids to fight over.” That always pulled him up. Saying he didn’t have kids.
He didn’t. But he still felt like a father. He still loved a little girl with everything in him, even though she wasn’t here.
“It was an easy divorce,” he said, because that much was true. There hadn’t been any glue holding him and Stephanie together in the end.
He didn’t blame her for it. She wanted to leave their house, leave the town. He didn’t. She wanted to run from the memories, he wanted to live in them. And in the end, it had meant she’d needed to run from him. He couldn’t be angry at her for that.
“Oh... I... I’m sorry. I mean...good for an easy divorce, but... I’m sorry.”
He looked down at his food, a ball of hard, heavy emotion settling in his chest. The worst thing was, now he felt like he had to talk about it. Because pretending Tally hadn’t been a part of everything was...it wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to act like she didn’t exist. But he didn’t like talking about her, either.
So he wouldn’t. Not now.
He set his plate down on the pretty little side table. “Suddenly, I’m not so hungry for food,” he said.
“But we just...not a half hour ago we...”
“Come on, Grace. I just told you. Six years.” He picked up his wineglass and knocked back the remaining contents. He needed it. He needed to forget.
He needed her .
“Where’s your bedroom?” he asked.
“Down the hall.”
He stood up and she did, too, then he scooped her up into his arms. She squeaked and wrapped her arms around his neck. She was so small, so light. He kind of liked it. Because it made him feel strong. And because he knew he could lift her up and move her around easily. For sex in interesting ways. He was a simple man. At least, he would prefer to be. Sex and beer. He could deal with that.
Maybe that had been half his problem for the past few years. Beer and sadness. Not beer and sex. He was changing that.
He was changing it now.
He charged down the hall, holding her close to his chest. “That door!” she said, gesturing to the one near the end of the hall.
He pushed it open with his shoulder and brought them inside, putting her down on the center of the bed. He stripped his clothes off as quickly as possible. “This is becoming a habit when you’re around,” he said. “Why did I even bother to get dressed?”
“You would have emotionally scarred the delivery guy.”
“Is my body that hideous?” he asked.
She laughed. “ Hideous is not the word I’d use.”
“What is?” he asked, arching a brow.
“Jaw-dropping. Sexy. An ode to classic masculinity.”
“Stop it, Gracie, you’ll make me blush. Now take off your dress.”
She obeyed, revealing herself to him slowly. Inch by tantalizing inch. “How about that, cowboy? What do you see?”
“I’m an artist, you know,” he said, feeling like a jerk for saying it in even a semiserious manner. “So I’m an expert on art and the like.”
“Are you?”
“I am. So I know a little something about fine pieces. About beauty.” He got down on the bed beside her, tracing her curves, shaping her body with the palms of his hands like she was clay. “You are a masterpiece.”
He pressed a kiss to her stomach, then lower, spreading her thighs and burying his face between them. He would never get enough of this. Of her.
“I don’t think I was ready for the likes of you, Grace Song,” he said, rolling out of bed. “And now I have condom issues to see to.”
“See to them,” she said, waving her hand.
She lay on her back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Not thinking or moving. Then Zack came back into the room, hovering over her.
“You’re blocking my ceiling spot,” she said.
He smiled. “Too bad.” Then he lay down beside her with the subtlety of an earthquake.
“Gah!” she shrieked, popping up off the mattress.
He chuckled and put his hand on her stomach, tracing a shapeless pattern over her skin. “Something wrong?”
“No.”
“I’m tired,” he said. “Can I sleep here with you?”
“You have that gigantic suite,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, but my suite is empty,” he said, pulling her close. “I don’t want to go back to an empty suite. I’m so sick of empty rooms.”
“I bet,” she said, putting her hand over his forearm. She hesitated. She shouldn’t ask him about his past. Shouldn’t ask him about his wife. But she wanted to know. “What happened with your wife?”
He took a deep breath, his chest pressing into her back. “We ended up in a different life than we were supposed to be in. And...in the end we changed too much. Or the world changed too much and we didn’t change enough. Hell, I don’t know. But I remember looking at her one day and realizing it was the first time I’d really done that in months. That’s some stupid stuff.”
“But the divorce was...”
“Very mutual. We were done,” he said, shifting against her, his chin resting on her shoulder. “You make vows, you know. And you think you know what they all mean. Richer and poorer, sickness and health. And you think, yeah, sure, if my wife is sick, I’ll take care of her. If we’re ever broken, we’ll stick together. But...they don’t cover some things.”
He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was rough. “Do you really want to know about me, Gracie?”
“Yes,” she said. “And if you want me to, I’ll forget it in the morning.”
She felt him nod. “Okay. You can imagine a lot of bumps in the road, but I don’t think anyone ever... I don’t think anyone imagines what losing a child might do to them. I know we didn’t.”
Grace’s heart stopped, everything she knew about Zack twisting, turning. Changing.
“When Tally was born,” he continued, “it changed our family. It brought us closer, you know? Stephanie wasn’t just my wife, she was the mother of my daughter. But it became clear quickly that not everything was right. That Tally was sick. Her heart... She had a heart defect. And they missed it on all the ultrasounds. They missed it until she was three months. She wasn’t gaining weight, and she was short of breath all the time. It was treatable. They said it was treatable. And she was small but...fine for a while.”
“Oh, Zack,” she said, not realizing she’d spoken the words out loud until he tightened his hold on her.
He cleared his throat. “When she was three, she got a bacterial infection. The hospital said it was common for kids with her condition. And we knew that. We knew to watch for it. But it...” He took a deep breath. “She died in the hospital three days later.”
A tear ran down Grace’s cheek, and there was nothing she could do to stop it, her heart crumpling into a tight ball she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to release. “I think we were both wrung out after that,” he said.
“I don’t think Steph or I had anything left to give. Because she couldn’t look at me and see the father of her baby girl anymore. She looked at me and saw everything we weren’t. It was just too big for us to fix. And in the end...it was better we tried to fix it alone. Tally died eight years ago, but you know that stuff doesn’t go away. Steph got married again, they have two little boys. I’m happy for her, and I really mean it. I’m glad she got away, glad she got...filled up again. But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to care like that. I don’t even think I could.”
Grace held tightly to his arm. not sure what to say. He’d had this whole life, this whole depth of love that she’d never even fathomed. And then he’d lost it.
She shouldn’t have asked. It was dangerous to know this. To know him this well. To feel this much.
“I’m sorry,” she said. It was a stupid thing to say, maybe, but she didn’t really know if there was anything else that could be said.
“Me, too,” he said. “More than I am about anything else. But I can’t change it. That life is gone, and I’m living this one. That’s why suites and galleries and things don’t matter sometimes. It’s funny, I always did art. But it wasn’t until...something in me changed after, and I had to do it, to keep from going crazy. I worked in my studio—which is just a barn really—all the time. It was the only place to put all that grief. It made me famous. I think that’s why I hate it sometimes, as much as I need it.”
There was nothing to say to that. Nothing at all. So she just held him. All night. And when she woke up the next morning he was gone.