CHAPTER FORTY #2
I think Grant notices, because his kisses slow, and his touch becomes more languid. His hands are no longer gripping my biceps to keep me in his hold. They’re resting there, moving up and down my arms carefully.
After one hookup, it feels like Grant knows my body better than I do. It feels odd.
I handed him the blueprints to something I didn’t even know I was building, and he studied them in the quiet in order to memorize every inch of me before I had the chance to second-guess it.
The sudden influx of everything I was feeling—all the hurt, the disdain—has soured this moment beyond repair, and I know I can’t have sex with him tonight.
Because my body’s been bracing for disappointment, and my heart’s not far behind.
This isn’t about sex. It never was. It’s about trust. And while I trust Grant more than anyone else, I don’t trust that he’s not going to leave.
Grant’s hands immediately soften, one smoothing up my spine and the other threading gently into my hair again.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to chase away the shame clawing its way up my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, so quietly I’m not sure he hears it.
Grant leans back enough to look at me, his brows drawn together, concern written all over his face.
“Hey, hey—” His voice is a low, careful thing. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What?” My voice shakes the same as my hands.
“What we do, or don’t do, tonight doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything.”
He backs up, sitting down on the edge of his bed before reaching out for me. I’m a bit calmer now, and the anxiety is beginning to lessen as I take a few steps closer to him.
I think he’s expecting me to sit next to him, but standing between his legs makes the need to be as close as I can get to him overwhelm me.
So I end up straddling his lap in a much more compromising position than I mean for it to be. Grant’s hands find my hips, but they don’t do anything to will me closer. All he does is rest his forehead against my collarbone for a long moment before looking back up at me.
“You talked to Sav?” he asks.
“Yeah. I think we’re friends now.”
“Yeah?” He doesn’t look shocked, but there’s amusement in his voice.
I nod.
“Sav’s a good friend to have,” he tells me, sounding sincere.
Her words ring through my head: “ I’m an exceptional friend, Everhart.”
“Well, I won’t be having sex with her.” I mean it as a joke, but when Grant stiffens completely beneath me, I sense my mistake. “I was only kidding.”
I watch his Adam’s apple work as he swallows, nodding like he’s coming to terms with it. “I know, I know.”
There’s a beat of silence, and I hesitate to ask him what’s been on my mind all week. “Will you tell me what happened to your mom?”
His head snaps up, clearly not expecting it, like I just pushed open a door he usually keeps locked.
“I just—” I take a long breath, thinking of the proper way to say what I want to say. “I’m not trying to intrude, but I’ve gotten the sense that your fear of commitment has something to do with her. That’s all.”
I want to make sense of why . Why he doesn’t do anything other than hookups. Why he hasn’t offered me anything more, even when Savannah is telling me he feels it. Why he’s making it so damn difficult for me to allow myself to want someone in the way I want him.
My entire life has revolved around facts. The only thing I’ve ever wanted with the same intensity that I want Grant is knowledge—to learn.
And he’s what I want to understand most. What I want to understand best.
Very quietly he says, “She had a drug addiction.”
“Oh…” My eyes blow wide, stunned. “Is that how she?—”
“Yeah.”
My mind reels with all the ways I should have known. How, when I mentioned girls doing lines of coke on his front porch, he told me he doesn’t mess with people who do drugs. Or the time he grilled me about whether I was taking drugs for my sleep issues.
Grant exhales hard, like the words themselves weigh a thousand pounds.
“She overdosed when I was seventeen,” he says quietly, like if he says it too loud it might tear him apart. “I found her.”
My heart splinters. Without thinking, I thread my fingers through his hair, anchoring him to me the way he’s done for me countless times.
“I’m so sorry, Grant,” I whisper.
He leans into my touch, his eyes closing for a moment, giving himself permission to just feel .
“She wasn’t a bad person,” he says hoarsely.
“She loved me and my sisters so much. She just… she couldn’t beat it.
And part of me—" His voice catches, breaking.
“Part of me knows how much it fucked me up—finding her like that and having to see my dad break down. My sisters having to live the rest of their lives without the most important figure in their lives…”
Tears burn the back of my throat as I lean in, not wanting him to see me cry when this isn’t even about me .
“For her, her addiction was just a bump in the road.” His voice croaks with the emotions he’s trying to conceal, and it breaks my heart. “But for me, her addiction became the reason I no longer had a mother.”
“It’s made me paranoid to the point where I’m terrified of finding stability in people.
Because what if they’re not really stable?
What if I can’t keep them from falling off the deep end?
I can’t…” He scrubs a hand over his face, his voice breaking.
“I can’t survive getting it wrong again.
Loving someone and letting them slip through my fingers. ”
That’s when I feel it: the tear that lands on my hand that’s gripping his jaw. I meet his eyes to find tears rolling from them, drenching his cheeks.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him, my voice stern.
“She was sick, Grant, and addiction isn’t something you can control.
You didn’t make her choices for her. You were just a kid, trying to hold on to whatever you could.
You can’t carry that guilt with you—it wasn’t on you.
” I pause, wiping the tears from his cheeks like he had done for me a few weeks back.
This isn’t exactly how I expected this night to go, and yet I’m completely immersed in the conversation. I want to prove myself to him in a way that shows I’m not going to up and leave him.
We stay pressed close, breathing the same air, hearts pounding in quiet synchronicity. His tears slow, but his eyes remain locked on mine, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he blinks.
“I don’t know how to let people in without preparing for the fallout,” he admits.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I could live my life normally while also loving someone that much.
It drives me crazy, Lina, needing to know everyone’s okay, feeling the need to control and prevent—to keep them safe.
If something happened, I wouldn’t be able to stop blaming myself. ”
I know he wants my honesty, which is why I say, “I don’t think anybody jumps into a relationship without preparing for the fallout to some degree.
” When he doesn’t seem like he fully believes me, I add, “I mean, my ex-boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend at my mom’s wake, and here I am, scared to have sex because of it.
” I let out a single self-deprecating laugh, and Grant kisses my temple.
This isn’t supposed to be about me.
“No matter the circumstances, anyone who has been hurt is scared of it happening again. But we don’t stop living because of it; we just learn to live with the fear and choose people who make it worth it.”
We’re no longer leaning into each other out of passion, but out of solace. As the night wraps around us, the stillness feels like a secret etched into our hearts, one that neither of us will be letting go of.
“Will you stay here tonight?” Grant whispers in the darkness.
His lips are so close to my ear that it gives me goosebumps, and I know he notices because of the short chuckle he lets out before he rubs his warm hands up and down my arms in quick succession.
“I doubt you’ve been sleeping well.” He pauses before adding, “And honestly? I haven’t been either. ”
I nod, sinking further into his embrace. At that moment, I see something in his expression flicker, and it feels like the first glimpse I’ve gotten beyond the looking glass of his heart.
And despite the somberness of the conversation at hand, it fills me with joy. It’s the first time I feel like I maybe have a chance at him choosing me, choosing to allow me to make it worth it.