Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
G RANT
My heart is about to fracture in my goddamn chest, listening to her pour hers out on the floor in front of me. Knowing I don’t have a single fucking good answer to any of the questions she’s asking. Knowing I don’t even have the guts to push her away like I should. Because we’re both in the deep end now.
“I won’t take things further with you because I’m still working through my own feelings and my own guilt about it. I know he’s not here. I know you’re a grown ass woman who can make her own decisions, but I also know how I’d feel about someone like me getting anywhere near my sister. I know how Jesse would feel about me getting near you. It feels like I’d be breaking my promise to him.”
“He’s not here. I am . I get to say who does and doesn’t get near me. I don’t need my brother’s permission, and neither do you. I know you loved him, and I know you want to honor his memory, but this isn’t that. He knew then like he would now that you’re a good man. He wouldn’t have been friends with you otherwise. He made some mistakes, but he had a good compass when it came to the people he loved. And he wanted the people he loved happy.”
“But that leads me to the next part, which is…” I take a deep breath, looking up to the ceiling for a moment and then back at the bar. “There’s a lot you don’t know. A lot of things that happened last year, things that have been escalating again since my parents’ deaths. It’s why Hudson and Charlotte have been here, why I’ve been traveling back and forth to Cincinnati. We’re on the edge of getting more information, the kind I’m hoping lets me know what my future looks like. How grim it might be. Because regardless of how Jesse would feel”—I swallow hard, and my eyes rise to meet hers—“I would never forgive myself if I let something happen to you. If something happened to you because of me, the way it did with him. I couldn’t live with myself.”
“You can’t control everything, Grant. It’s not possible. You can’t stop every bad thing in the world by force of will. Bad things will happen. To me. To everyone you care about. As long as you’re there for them… that’s what matters. You keep pushing people away because you can’t control them. That breeds resentment.”
“This is more than just me wanting control. This is about the danger I pose to anyone who touches me. All this stuff with the cops. All the stuff going on with Hudson. My uncle being back in town… I already have a target on my back, and I’m worried it’s getting bigger by the day. If they find out that you’re… If they know how much I care about you, what I’d do to protect you—they’ll use that against both of us, and you’ll be the one who suffers for it. It’d rip me to fucking shreds. I wouldn’t be thinking straight, and I can’t protect you or my family or all the people who depend on me if I can’t think straight.”
“But what is life if you can’t enjoy it? What is life if you don’t have someone who loves you? Protects you? Sleeps next to you at night and knows you inside and out? What kind of life is that for you, Grant?”
“It’s the life I agreed to. It’s the life I signed up for years ago when I promised my father I’d keep this family safe. It’s the only way Ramsey and Aspen and Fallon and fuck, hopefully someday Levi, get to have the lives they want.”
“So that’s it then. There’s no other option?” She sounds resigned, and as much as I want her to respect it, I feel as hopeless as she does when she says it out loud.
“If this project that Hudson and I have going goes well, there’s a chance I might be able to change some things for the better. It’ll take time, but I’m hoping that someday I’ll get to a point where I don’t live in fucking terror of you or my family getting hurt. But right now, I don’t know the basics yet, and I can’t move forward without it. Once the wedding’s over, I should be able to put my attention back on the problem.”
“I see. So what about our arrangement then? From the outside, from someone who wants to hurt you or me, how is it functionally different from something more?”
“Because we’ve kept it a secret. Not a very good one, given how my brother and everyone keep seeing through it. So it needs to have an expiration date. Fuck. It should have never happened in the first place. It’s why when I thought you might have feelings for Hayden, part of me—a very small bitter part of me—was relieved. I thought maybe you could get away from here. Move somewhere else where you’d still have Hazel in your life and have someone who could keep you safe. One of my brothers still knowing you’re all right. I could have found a way to be at peace with that.”
“I don’t want Hayden. I don’t want anyone else but you. Do you want someone else?”
“No. No one compares to you, Hellfire. Not a single solitary soul on this earth, or under it, comes close.”
“Okay…” There are tears in her eyes, but she nods her agreement. “Then we end it tonight. Until you know more and we can know if there’s a future or not. Then we can both think clearly again.”
I reach out and grab her hand, stroking my fingers along the inside of her palm. I can’t take my eyes off her, let alone walk away from her. I’m so fucking twisted up inside. So angry with myself for letting either of us have a taste of this that I feel like I should never let myself have another taste of her again. Resolve I’ve barely started to form before she tests it.
“But stay the night. After the way this week has gone and tonight, I have to be back with my game face on tomorrow, but tonight, I don’t want to be alone.”
“Dakota…” I protest weakly because I can’t say no to her. Not when I hear the sincerity in her voice.
“I’ll keep my hands to myself. Just a platonic sleepover. You’re my emotional support person to help me deal with all the stress.”
Like hell would it be platonic. I’ll be thinking about fucking her all night. But I don’t want to leave her alone when she needs someone. Not after everything she’s been dealing with and the stress of tomorrow looming. She watches me, and she can tell I’m caving.
“Think about it. You’d have to call your driver to come get you. We’d have to wait. There’d be the whole drive over to the Avarice, getting back to our rooms, checking on all our friends and explaining what happened, then showers and bed.” She makes a compelling case. “Here, we just take our showers and then bed.”
“The showers and bed part are exactly what makes me nervous.”
“Nervous? A big bad man like you with someone as harmless as me?” She bats her eyelashes playfully, and I shake my head as I roll my eyes.
“Nothing about you is harmless, darlin’.”
“Fine. But I’ll be good tonight. I promise.” She looks at me sweetly, taking my hand and tugging me toward the stairs.
“Fuck. All right,” I concede, following her up the stairs even though I know I’m probably making a mistake.