Chapter Eleven
G race,” he said. His voice came out pained. Almost a whisper. His eyes traced my tongue as I licked my lips and he groaned, so low I felt it more than heard it.
He kneeled so close that his breath mingled with mine.
He raised his hand slowly. Like he was afraid to touch me, like I was precious and he didn’t want to break me.
When he did finally touch me, his hand was like a brand on my cheek, heavy and hot.
I could see indecision in his eyes and a bit of fear.
I wasn’t having any of that. I moved that last inch. Leaned into him, into his touch. The thrill of it ran down my spine as my lips touched his. I ached for this man.
A moan escaped me as his once hesitant hand wove itself in my hair and pulled me in closer.
My arms, with a mind of their own, traced their way across his broad shoulders.
The shoulders I wanted to touch the first moment I saw him.
The shoulders that gladly took on my burdens.
I traced his bottom lip with my tongue and wanted to push through, to taste him.
“Wait. Wait,” Anders said as he pulled back, his hand still tangled in my hair. Disappointment crowded out the fire and arousal that his kiss brought on. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I knew what was coming. I heard it all before.
“Hey, no. No, it’s nothing bad.” His hand moved down to my chin, much more sure this time, and tilted my head back up toward him.
I didn’t realize tears swam in my eyes until his face blurred and then they poured down all at once.
“I’m so sorry. I’m messing this all up.” His finger brushed away a tear as it tracked down my cheek.
I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing until the moment I drew in a breath, my body desperate for air.
I was drowning in a decade of subtle rejections under the guise of Christian purity.
I couldn’t respond to him. The floodgates had opened.
I expected disgust, frustration, anger, anything but him simply pulling me in for a hug and letting me cry for as long as I needed.
I wanted to claw at my chest and rip my skin right off it just so I could get a bit of air, but the gentle pressure of his hug held it all in.
Like being wrapped in the best blanket. Like he could squeeze my soul back into my body.
Eventually, I could distinguish his breathing from mine and used his calm, steady breaths to regulate my own. In and out, and my shoulders fell. In and out, and my face burrowed into his neck.
The subtle scent of him further grounded me, reminding me of a technique my cousin taught me.
I didn’t open my eyes to count the things I could see, but I could count the things I could hear.
The tick of a clock. The low hum of air conditioning.
The chirp of a bird. A door closing down the hall.
I could count the things I could smell. His fresh sweat.
The leftover pizza from our dinner. A floral scent that I recognized as my shampoo.
I could count the things I could taste. The slight garlic flavor that was sprinkled on the crust of the pizza.
The mint of the toothpaste he used that had transferred to me in the kiss.
Which brought me back to our mistake.
I’m much more clear-headed, so it didn’t send me into another panic attack, but it prompted me to pull away and create some much needed space between us.
“I cried all over you. I’m sorry,” I said.
Which sounded lame and not at all what I wanted to say.
Y ou’re amazing and I’m embarrassed and I’m a mess and I don’t know when anyone has ever let me do that before and I was always able to control myself when I cried and save it for the shower.
Why is it different with you? All competed for space on my tongue, trying to push out and bare myself to this man I hardly knew.
On second thought, perhaps it’s good I didn’t say those things.
“Never apologize for that. You get to have feelings and from what I’ve gathered, you have plenty of reason to have lots of them,” he said.
His voice was deep and resonant as he brushed my hair back from my face.
I didn’t even realize it had come loose.
Which brought me to my second problem: the post-cry red eyes, puffy face, snot, and dried tears, grossness that was probably my face right now.
I needed to escape, run to the bathroom, hide, but the look in his eyes caught me off guard.
It was… tender. The big bad marine looked at me like I was worth seeing, like he didn’t dare look away, like I might break, but that was ok because he would stay by me, even if I became a version of myself that had never existed before. Oh.
Panic and pain burned away my earlier lust, but in its place blossomed something unexpected and new. Hope and acceptance, maybe. It was too new, too fragile to play with it and figure out what it was, but it was there. A bright little speck in the otherwise foggy, drab landscape of me.
“Ok,” I whispered back, still afraid to shatter that new brightness inside myself.
A small smile, as small as that light, tried to take shape on my lips, tremulous at first, but grew when he grinned in response.
I didn’t realize how close we still were until he sat back on his legs and took my hand in his larger and warmer ones. It was comforting.
“I didn’t pull back because I didn’t want to kiss you.
I wanted nothing more than to kiss you and kiss you and kiss you until the world stopped spinning.
I pulled back because I didn’t want to take advantage of you.
” He ran his finger along my cheek as he said this.
His eyes trained on me. The intensity of his gaze was almost too much to bear.
“I kissed you,” I reminded him.
“That’s right, you did,” he said. He still didn’t move to kiss me again. He just stared at me with that inscrutable look on his face. “You don’t have to, though. I want you to know that. You have my help, regardless.”
“You think I only want to kiss you because I think you won’t help me if I don’t?” I asked. I had pulled back a little at that and his hand dropped. The sudden lack of contact was jarring, but it had to be done.
“I won’t lie. It crossed my mind. I also think it’s been a long and difficult day.
I think you are in the middle of a divorce.
You could have been kidnapped today. That’s a lot for anyone to take and the last thing I want is to add to that by making you think I’m taking advantage of you.
I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be a cause of pain,” he said, he voice turning desperate by the end, and he face crumbling into an expression that was vulnerable and pained, like the very idea of hurting me flayed him and left him open and bleeding.
He didn’t move from his kneeling position in front of me. He just sat there, waiting for my response.
“What if I want you to take advantage of me?” I pressed him. I didn’t actually want anything more to happen tonight. All of what he said was true, but I didn’t want to admit that the distance he placed between us helped clear my head so I could decide instead of just act.
He groaned at that. The hand that had so tenderly caressed my cheek rose to tug on his hair as he closed his eyes. I was finally free from that whiskey gaze. I wanted it back.
“Not tonight, sweetheart. I can’t think clearly with you here in bed, kissing me,” he said.
His voice had gone deeper and his eyes returned to me.
He moved forward and placed his hands on the bed on either side of me.
Caging me in. The tempo of my heart increased at his proximity.
I licked my lips, hoping he would go back on that and kiss me. So much for being clear-headed.
“I was working on a plan,” he blurted. He still kneeled in front of me, and after a moment, he pulled back, pushing off the bed, taking his heat with him, leaving me dazed by the sudden lack.
“Oh,” I said. It took me a moment to register what he said. “A plan?”
“Yes. One to draw out the kidnappers, figure out who is behind this, and what they want,” he answered.
“What do you have so far?” I asked. The topic change was jarring, and once I caught up, my body turned cold. I pulled the covers tighter over me to ward off the chill that wasn’t coming from the room.
“They don’t know where you are and someone is clearly pulling their strings. I’m betting that person doesn’t have a lot of resources and hired whatever cheap thugs they could find.”
He walked away from me, leaving me shivering from fear, the lack of him, the cold in the room, all of it all at once, too much. This was too much.
“Someone who needs resources and money, and thinks you are a good target. That means they know about your grandmother’s money and believe you might have gotten a slice of the pie.
Who knows her and that she died?” He paced as he spoke, throwing out his ideas rapid fire.
I could barely keep up as my eyes tracked his every move.
“Everyone,” I answered as I watched him pace.
“Her obituary was in the paper and several societies and clubs she was a member of ran their own announcements.” I toyed with the edge of the blanket while I thought of all the people who would have known her and known my relation to her.
“I imagine someone as wealthy as her doesn’t just die without it becoming public knowledge very quickly.
It’s been months. News would have spread.
” The list grew and grew as I considered it.
“I imagine anyone that knew of her would now know she had passed. She was social and well-liked by most.”
“Right.” He stopped his pacing and turned towards me. “So that doesn’t narrow it down at all.” He said as he leaned against the wall nearest the bed. He propped one foot up behind him and crossed his arms over his chest.
His bare, sweaty chest.
I didn’t even register that until this moment.
I’d had my hands all over him just moments ago and I didn’t even register that he was in only shorts.
I just knew it was him. Now I was keenly aware of all his muscles on display.
The low light spilling from the living room lit up the sweat on him, throwing the contours of his body into relief.
“Grace…” I heard him say.
“What?” I blinked. The ridiculously smug look on his face told me he knew exactly where my mind wandered to. “I’m listening. Too many people.” I prayed the light wasn’t strong enough for him to see the heat in my cheeks at being caught staring.
“Yes, too many people,” he said. He didn’t elaborate and left it to me to pick the conversation back up through my muddled mind.
“Plenty of those people had reason to expect something from her will.”
“Who?” He asked. “Maybe we can make a list and start running background checks,” he said like it wasn’t the middle of the night and he wasn’t standing there shirtless with me wrapped head to toe in a giant blanket.
“Everyone related to her, myself included, though I don’t actually expect anything from her. I got a package from her just before she passed and I think anything she would give me would be in there.”
“Right. I remember you mentioning that in one of your letters. Do you have the things in the box?” He hadn’t moved an inch since settling against the wall. A contrast to his earlier pacing, and a mockery of the urgency and anxiety running through me now.
“It’s in my apartment. There’s nothing too important, though. At least, not to anyone but me. Just some things from my childhood. Recipe books, pictures, some crafts I made with her. That kind of thing.”
I racked my brain trying to think of everything in the box. I cried quite a bit when I first opened it and could have missed something, but I went through the familiar stuff pretty regularly in the months since. Only two people would see value in the objects in the box, and one of them was dead.
“Did you notice if anything was missing when we were there earlier?” He asked.
He fastened his eyes on me, serious instead of tender.
A thrill ran through me, anyway. I guess it didn’t matter how he looked at me, just as long as he did.
“Or was there anything that wasn’t in the box?
Something that you might have expected to get, but didn’t? ”
I shook my head.
“No, I didn’t notice anything missing, though I didn’t think to look.
As for something that should have been there but wasn’t, I don’t think so.
I was just so grateful to get what I did.
” My heart ached, just a little, at the memory of getting that box and all it contained.
I wondered if I would ever be able to think of her without the pain, regret, and longing of missing her.
“That’s ok. It was a tough day. I can’t expect you to recall everything.
” He flinched like he wanted to move off the wall, but didn’t.
“We might have to go back and have a look around. Make sure everything is there.” I opened my mouth to make sure we meant him and me, having learned my lesson from this morning.
“Yes, you and I.” He said guessing my question.
“I wouldn’t very well know if something was missing.
In the meantime, make a list of everyone who might have stood to inherit from your grandmother.
Based on what we know so far, the most likely scenario is that someone didn’t get what they expected and they are coming after you for it instead.
Focus on people who know you personally if there are a lot of people that could inherit. I doubt you were chosen at random.”
I yawned just then, a reminder that I had been awoken from a nightmare and it was still the middle of the night.
“Better yet, that can wait until tomorrow. Just sleep for now.” Anders gentled his voice when he saw me yawn. It was like he was only just realizing he wasn’t talking to a fellow marine. Or maybe he also just remembered it was the middle of the night.
I nodded my head. That can wait until tomorrow. In this state, I wouldn’t even remember everyone, anyway.
I laid down and watched as Anders moved towards me, hesitated for a moment, and then turned around and walked out of the room. A brief pang of disappointment echoed in my chest, but my eyes were already closing on their own and I was back in the dream world before the door fully closed behind him.