Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
G race watched, fatigued and disappointed, as Wesley packed up her things. “ You don’t have to go,” she murmured meekly, wanting to toss the open suitcase off the bed, scatter her friend’s clothes, and trap her there so Grace wouldn’t be left alone.
Wes paused to give her a withering look and then resumed packing.
“Why are you mad?” she asked tentatively, leaving the quiet part unsaid. It was your idea.
Wes sighed. “ I’m not. I’m embarrassed. Deeply , shamefully, appallingly embarrassed. Bryan warned us not to go, we did the stupid, classic American tourist thing anyway, and he had to rescue us, Gray . Leaving is the least I can do.” She took Grace’s hands in hers. “ Thank you for supporting me in nearly dying. I let my need for adventure get out of hand sometimes. Now I need to be a grown-up.”
A grown-up. That stung. “ But we didn’t. Die .”
“No. And I’m really glad to know I can swim like that in a crisis. But we could’ve drowned, and he took a huge risk coming after us.”
“Yeah.” He was upset at her, but he still did that.
“This was always supposed to be temporary, anyway. Just until the festival ended. It’s over. We’re in his way. I don’t get why you want to stay. I mean I’m not blind , I do understand. But … I don’t want to be in the way anymore. You know how I feel about… I’m not some damsel who needs to be rescued. Only this time, I was.”
And what could Grace say, except some traitorous part of her liked being in his way, for all she ran from him. She was transfixed by the renovation unfolding around her. She wanted to be invited to help with it again, deadline or no, and she was desperate to see the final product.
She craved more late-night soccer and more kissing. She’d also hurt him today, deeply. She couldn’t just walk away now.
Wes sighed and shook her head, but she was smiling. “ Stay as long as you need to. If he comes to his senses and throws you out, give me a call.”
A car door slammed, and Wesley zipped her suitcase closed.
“Father Eòghann’s going to drive me. Don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“Wes, he’s not?—”
“Oh gosh, no. I’ve booked a room at the Beach Road Inn . Double beds, in case you change your mind. Let’s get dinner tomorrow. We still have to make birthday plans.”
Then Wes hefted her bag to the floor before Grace could argue, leaving her to deal with the mess they’d made alone.
* * *
For the rest of the day, Grace stayed locked in her room as Bryan and Lùcas made all kinds of racket. It sounded like the house was being torn down around her, but she didn’t dare emerge to find out. She couldn’t face him after the fighting and the kissing and her absolute inability to admit he was right. He was always right, predicting the weather as easily as he predicted her instinct to say something she’d regret just to win a fight. And then he’d kissed her to shut her up, saving her from doing so a second time in one day.
Well, he could keep his manipulative kisses. They were tainted now. She’d almost rather be a bitch and live with the consequences than have him kiss her and not mean it.
The more she dwelled on it, the more she still wanted to let the hurtful words fly, but she didn’t need more to regret, so she stayed put and let her fingers do the shouting, writing angry words instead of saying them. Her characters’ worst selves were on display, yelling all the hurtful things they had wanted to sling at each other and all the painful truths they’d needed to share since the moment they first met in chapter one.
She wrote and wrote and wrote, still fighting with Bryan in her head and on the page until, exhausted, she crept out to watch her brother’s game against their crosstown rivals.
The living room wall was finished except for sanding and painting, and the windows were gorgeous, opening out to the stormy sea. The cushioned seat was just as perfect and cozy as she’d imagined, with a brand-new electrical outlet for charging wayward electronics, and the space beneath the bench housed a long, low bookcase. It was exactly the kind of room she would write for herself. And there, on the couch, in his low-slung sweatpants and bare feet, Bryan watched her instead of the pre-game he’d already turned on.
She froze, staring at him. Suddenly , with the walls up, the room felt too closed in despite its new windows, and her chest constricted.
“I can leave if you prefer,” he rumbled. An olive branch she couldn’t possibly ignore.
“No. I’d like the company.”
“There’s beef stew if you’re hungry. You need a warm, hearty meal on a day like today.”
Her stomach rumbled before her mouth could lie, and he smirked a little, hearing it all the way across the room.
“I thought you were vegetarian,” she asked before she could shush herself.
He shrugged, but then seemed to change his mind. “ Split it and added the beef to half towards the end.”
God, he was perplexing. Why would he do that for her? He’d even left it warming on the stove, knowing—or perhaps hoping?—she’d eventually emerge for Diego’s game.
She filled a bowl and joined him in the living room, collapsing onto the opposite corner of the couch and tucking her feet under her. When she took her first bite, she made an indecent noise, and then blushed hard. He seemed like he was going to pretend not to notice, but then he said, “ It’s Eòghann’s recipe. I’ll tell him you approve.”
Whether he meant it to or not, mentioning Eòghann drew a shutter of awkwardness down between them, and they both pretended to be fully absorbed by the game.
Diego looked exhausted. Was he getting enough rest? He started every match, because when he wasn’t on the field, the team couldn’t seem to find their momentum.
Bryan cleared his throat.
Grace kept her eyes glued to the game.
He cleared it again, not like he was trying to get her attention. More like he was uncomfortable. “ You asked, the other night, if I’m ashamed of the s-stammer,” he finally said.
Now she tore her eyes from the TV and met the full heat of his penetrating gaze. “ You shouldn’t be. That was all I was trying to say.”
He looked away then, back to the game, where Diego sent a chip pass to a striker who blasted it off the crossbar.
“When I was about three, we were at the p— at the local pool. Eòghann was eight. He was running, as kids do. Tripped and fell in, hit his head…”
Suddenly Grace lost her appetite and lowered what was left of her stew.
“No one noticed but me. I tried to sc— to sc— I tried to call for help. Couldn’t get the words out. The lifeguard thought I was just overexcited. I had to s-stomp and jump and p-point until finally they noticed him.”
“God, Bryan . That wasn’t your fault.”
“My cousin almost drowned that day, ’cause the one person who could help him couldn’t fucking get the words out. That is my sh-shame.”
Grace’s heart ached—for the little boy he had been and the burdened man he’d become.
“He’s terrified of the water now,” he added softly. “ It’s why he’s never left the island. Why he never visited me.”
“Why you couldn’t ask him to go with me and Wes . Aside from it being a terrible idea in general.”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry for not listening.”
“How can you listen to what I don’t s-s-say?” he whispered, beating himself up to let her off the hook, though neither of them deserved it.
Someone on TV scored, but they weren’t paying attention anymore. The air in the room felt electric.
Bryan was hurting, under some kind of guilt about their escapade to the castle. Maybe he still thought she hadn’t listened because he hadn’t warned her loudly enough or clearly enough, rather than just because she was stubborn and angry and thought she knew better.
She had done that to him, hurt him in the worst possible way.
Disappointed yelling from the crowd on TV seemed to underscore her fuck up.
She couldn’t let the same trauma happen again, here and now. Grace had to say not just something but the right thing. “ I can’t have an orgasm,” she blurted out. Not exactly the apology she was going for.
“Fuck, do you not have a clitoris?” he asked, so taken aback by her announcement he didn’t seem to register the random shift in conversation. “ Christ , that was inappropriate. Apologies ,” he added, turning three shades of red to match her own blush.
So they were going to do this. A shame for a shame.
She took a breath, the beef stew curdling in her belly, threatening to come back up. After setting the bowl down on the coffee table and pushing it as far away as possible so she wouldn’t have to smell it, she took another steadying breath. “ I have all my parts,” she said, focusing on the game where Diego’s keeper batted away a header off a corner kick. “ They just don’t work right.”
That proclamation was met with uncomfortable silence.
“My doctor says it’s all part of being a woman, but I don’t know,” she added quietly. “ Sex —” she tried to say, and it came out an inaudible whisper, so she said it again, and this time it came out overly loud. “ Sex —” My god, how old was she? “ It’s very painful. I don’t get wet. And I don’t orgasm.”
“Your doctor is bullshit,” he said emphatically. “ What kind of lube do you use?”
“What? It doesn’t—sorry, I just…”
“No, no, I apologize, it’s none of my business but…”
“It’s—it’s not the lube. It’s me. There’s something… off. I’m not normal down there.”
“Fuck normal.”
She shook her head. This wasn’t the reaction she expected, she didn’t need his outrage or his sympathy. She was sharing in the interest of fairness. To heal the rift she kept tearing between them. “ I just… thought you should know. A shame for a shame.”
“It’s not… What , never? Or never with… penetration, you mean?”
“What? No . Never . What ?”
“Not with oral? I mean that’s the reason people like it, right? Less invasive.”
“Umm. No … no.”
“Not even, you know, with yourself?”
“Oh my god, can we not?” Why was he so curious? Just talking about it made her feel overly warm, the blackness encroaching like she was about to faint. She’d expected him to acknowledge it and never speak of it again, at the worst to be appalled or consider himself to have made a lucky escape, but not this… empathetic curiosity?
With no one to pass to, Diego made a breakaway run down the pitch and a Hail Mary shot on goal that slipped cheekily over the keeper’s outstretched fingers. Grace and Bryan went as wild as the crowd, jumping from their seats and cheering. She held up her hand for a high five, but Bryan picked her up and swung her around, and god, he smelled good.
“That’s why the old man’s still team captain,” Bryan murmured. “ He makes things happen.”
Grace nodded her agreement, tears in her eyes for her big brother. D was a midfielder, a damn good one, but she could count on one hand the number of goals he’d scored for LA .
She texted her mom in Florida and her dad in Mexico , and Diego , so he’d see it the minute he stepped off the pitch. For a second, she even considered texting Mathilda , too, just to keep from having to face Bryan and resume their conversation, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Rios ,” he whispered after a long moment.
“I’m pretty sure there is.”
She could see his face change out of the corner of her eye, and she didn’t want his sympathy. She just needed him to understand why she kept running away so she wouldn’t be responsible for making him feel badly about himself. She’d had enough of men who blamed her sex drive when the relationship inevitably fell apart, or who blamed her for being too picky or for masturbating too much— as if. What was the point, when she was incapable of getting off? She’d had enough of men blaming her, but she couldn’t stand the thought of him blaming himself.
“When was your first time?” he asked softly, and Grace inhaled sudden and sharp. Hadn’t they shared enough for one night?
Her phone lit up with a text from her friend Andy , an explosion of emojis indicating he was watching Diego’s game too.
“Apologies. Too personal?” Bryan asked.
Abso-fucking-lutely right, but she decided to answer him anyway. “ It was almost in high school. After prom. I wasn’t really keen, but he was, until he realized I was… on my period. He ran screaming into the night like we’d reenacted a scene from Carrie . So , I got a reprieve until my freshman year of college,” she said. “ I didn’t particularly want to then, either, but I really liked him, and I thought if I didn’t, he’d leave. Joke was on me. Boys don’t like it if you cry too much. He dumped me anyway.”
Bryan made a sound in his throat, something like a growl. “ Sounds like your partners couldn’t handle the evidence of their own ineptitude,” he grumbled, and it did funny things to her stomach, complicated things she’d rather it didn’t do.
He was too confident, too self-satisfied. He saw her as a challenge to fix, and when he couldn’t, he would blame her too, for not wanting to be fixed, not trying hard enough. Just like always. It was why she hadn’t dated for almost eight years.
“Maybe,” she answered softly, as the game went to halftime. “ Or maybe it was nothing to do with them. I’m not some puzzle for you to solve like your biochar or your next renovation project. I’m not.”
“Renovation,” he breathed. “ What could I possibly renovate about you?”
It was maybe the sweetest thing anyone had ever said, but though he didn’t physically move, she could feel him withdraw at her sad smile, backing off, giving her the space she was trying to tell him she needed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “ I’m tired, not great company. I should go.”
“What did we say about apologizing? Stay and finish watching your brother win this match,” he said, his voice smooth but formal, as he got to his feet. “ Good night, Rios .”
But LA didn’t win. Diego was injured in the second half, and though he limped off the pitch on his own, it was hours before Grace could shake her anxiety over witnessing the tackle. Despite the red card to the other player, the team seemed as shaken as she did and ended up going down three to one, unable to recover. Maybe she was bad luck all around.