Chapter 37
Greyson
Love is not something you protect.
It’s something you risk.
~ Gayle Forman
Winona flutters around, carefully placing the ice pack and handing me a glass of water and my next dose of meds.
“I have to take your vitals,” she says in her usual bubbly tone. “I really can’t tell why they call it taking. You’d think I should leave the vitals right where they are.”
She wraps the cuff around my bicep and Hallie looks on.
“You need them, after all,” Winona says. “That’s why they’re called vitals.”
I chuckle at her logic, but my laughter falls when I look into Hallie’s eyes.
Everything in me wants to tell her I can take the risk. She’s offering me exactly what I wanted. I’ve been waiting for her green light. But the fire changed everything. I can’t guarantee I’ll be the man they need me to be if my life is regularly on the line.
Winona places the thermometer to my forehead. Then she reads it out loud, pronouncing, “Normal. And your heart is in tip-top shape.”
She looks between me and Hallie. “Well, I’ll just get out of your hair—and your house. I’ll be back tonight to see what you need before bedtime.”
“Thanks, Winona,” I say.
“It’s my pleasure,” she says. “Stay off that leg.”
She picks up her purse and heads out the door.
“If Amelia Bedelia were a nurse,” I tell Hallie.
She smiles softly and then her eyes drift so she’s staring out the front windows, across the lawn. I don’t say a thing. What can I say? Nothing I could say would make this easier for her.
A few moments later there’s a knock at the door.
Mrs. Kinkaid pops her head in. “Oh! Hallie. You’re still here. I forgot my pot holders. I’ll just grab them and go.”
Hallie stands abruptly. “Actually, I was just leaving.” Her eyes dart around the room, avoiding mine. “I think I’ll go meet my sister and my daughter for some celebration ice cream.”
Mrs. Kinkaid says, “Don’t go on my account.”
Hallie says, “I think Greyson might need some company—besides mine.”
Mrs. Kinkaid laughs, unaware of what Hallie’s actually saying. “Well, enjoy your ice cream.”
“Thanks,” Hallie says in a voice that already sounds far away.
She glances at me and says, “Goodbye, Greyson.”
I stare up into her eyes. “Goodbye, Hallie.”
Another voice inside my head screams, “Noooo.” But I shut it down. That voice isn’t the voice of reason. Hallie can’t rely on me. I’m not the man she needs regardless of how we both feel about one another.
She walks to the door and I almost call her name, but I hold the tip of my tongue between my teeth to give her what’s best for her.
Mrs. Kinkaid takes a seat in one of my living room chairs.
After a few minutes of silence during which I stare in the direction where Hallie walked out of my house and life, she says, “I like her.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I sigh, long and deep. “A lot.”
She watches me and I shift myself around on the couch, wincing when the movement pulls on my leg.
“Did you need to grab your pot holders?” I ask.
“They’re at home,” she says. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on between you and Hallie?”
I sigh again. And then I tell her everything, needing to bleed the wound—to get her perspective. Secretly hoping she will either agree with me so I can stop second-guessing myself or correct me if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life.
I spend the next few hours filling Mrs. Kinkaid in on my relationship with Hallie, starting with the night I met her in Munich, spending extra time telling her about how Zach joked with Hallie when they met.
We cry fresh tears through our laughter and she thanks me for giving her another piece of him back to cherish.
Then I share everything from the day Hallie walked into the station here in Waterford to the day she recognized me—dinner at her house with Mia. I close my eyes, picturing Mia, squeezing them to keep the sadness and another wave of tears at bay.
“I wanted to be the man who helped raise her,” I confess.
Mrs. Kinkaid’s face softens. She doesn’t say a word.
The memories flood me as I recount baseball practices and games, Hallie’s and my middle of the night meetings and Dustin catching us.
The ache for Hallie intensifies when I get to the parts where we snuck around together, the four days we shared when Mia was away, breakfasts at Mo’s, late nights on this couch, holding her. It’s almost too much for me. I clench my teeth, forcing myself to finish my recounting.
Mrs. Kinkaid’s face is gentle—her eyes filled with empathy.
I practically growl when I tell her about Danny and how he left them for no good reason.
Then I brag about Hallie—how strong she is, how determined, and yet so very feminine and kind.
I don’t even try to keep the tears from coming now.
They aren’t many, but my eyes tug and burn and a few slip down my cheek.
I end with the fire.
“She was there—with me—and I witnessed what nearly losing me did to her. If you could have seen her face—the way she looked at me when I was being rolled into the ambulance. I scared her. And it could have been so much worse.”
Mrs. Kinkaid’s lips thin. She gives one short nod.
“And that’s when I realized how selfish I have been,” I explain. “Mia needs stability. They both deserve a man they can count on, especially after what they’ve already lived through.”
Mrs. Kinkaid listens to everything. She never corrects me or interjects her thoughts. She just listens.
When I finish talking, she’s still quiet.
We sit like that, staring at one another, her expression soft and compassionate.
Finally, she says, “That’s something. Imagine her ending up here in town.”
“I know,” I say. “I thought it was fate. And I don’t even believe in fate.”
She smiles. “Greyson, I could give you platitudes about how you’re going to be fine and you don’t need to worry. But the fact is, good people—people we love dearly—die.”
Her eyes go soft and she dabs under one. Then she adds, “And we never know who or when that will be.
“If you keep dating Hallie and your relationship leads to more, Mia and Hallie will come to love you. There’s no doubt about that. From the way she was looking at you, I’m guessing they already do.”
I nod.
“And you’d be taking the risk that they might lose you—a loss that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.”
She pauses, looking me in the eyes with an intensity that reminds me of a few of my commanding officers.
What passes between us is something neither of us have words for. But we both understand it because we've lived it—together.
We both lost Zach.
And that loss has never left us.
The hole he left is here—in this room right now.
I tear up and I let my tears fall this time.
“I cried with Hallie,” I tell Mrs. Kinkaid. “Around Zach’s birthday. And she held me. I don’t know how she did it, but she took the guilt away.”
Mrs. Kinkaid shakes her head. “She’s one of a kind, Greyson. I can already tell that.”
“She is,” I agree. “I’ve never wanted anyone else. I never will want anyone else.”
She looks at me like I’m the dullest crayon in the box.
“You think I’m making a mistake.”
She doesn’t answer me. She just smiles softly.
“He'd be shoving me out the door right now, crutches and all,” I say to her.
“He’d haul me up into his pickup and drive me to Hallie's. Then he'd hop out and drag me up to the door, broken leg or not. He’d knock hard and say, ‘I must apologize for my friend. He means well. But he can be an idiot. Please, be patient with him while he gets his act together. He really loves you.’”
Mrs. Kinkaid laughs, swiping at a tear. “Yeah. That about sums it up. He never did beat around the bush, did he?”
“I miss him so much,” I tell her. “Every day.”
“I do too. But I'm sure glad we had him while we did.”
I press into the hollow ache in my chest and nod. “Me too.”
She lets me sit with that thought for as long as it takes.
The realization seeps down like sand through cracks, grain by grain until it hits me. “It’s better that we had him for a while.”
“It’s far better,” she says, nodding with a smile. “I’d take any one of those seconds again.”
I nod. “Even if it meant losing him.”
“Even if.”
She stands and heads toward the door, opening it and holding her keys in the air with a soft jingle.
“Need a lift?” She pauses and adds, “I’m assuming, since no one’s here with their pickup, you might settle for a mid-sized sedan.”
“I do need a lift. Can you grab my crutches for me?”
She grabs them from the spot where they’re resting against the living room wall. I stand, carefully, adjusting my stance and slowly make my way to the door and down the steps.
“I’m sure she’d come back here if we called her,” Mrs. Kinkaid says.
“She’s shown up enough since the fire,” I tell her.
“Okay, then. Let’s go get your girl.”
I slide into the front seat, handing the crutches out to her. She puts them in the back, climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key.
“Now, how did that speech go?” she asks me. “Something about being patient with you because you’re an idiot?”
I chuckle. “That’s the gist of it.”
I pull up my email app on the drive to Hallie’s and compose a response to the FEMA job offer telling them I’m honored to be considered, but am removing myself as a candidate for the position.
Mrs. Kinkaid pulls up in front of Hallie’s house. She turns to me and says, “You always were a man of action, Greyson—even as a boy.”
“I almost blew everything,” I tell her. “I meant well. I was going to take a bullet for them.”
“You always were stubborn too,” she says with a wink. “I’m glad you let yourself off the hook.”
Then she gets out of the car and comes around to my side. She opens the door and helps me out, handing me one crutch at a time from the back seat.
“Her van’s not here,” I say, looking around.
“Ice cream?” she says.
“That was hours ago.”
“Well, this is anticlimactic,” Mrs. Kinkaid says with a pout.
I start to make my way down Hallie’s walkway, toward her front door. Mrs. Kinkaid walks alongside me.