CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
“I mean, listen—it was fair. Hoffman and Son was a perfectly accurate description of who was running the store. But it felt like he was trying to prove a point. He was so chummy with Ted and just simmered with resentment whenever I tried to talk to him. I couldn’t stand it.
So I stopped trying, but still hoped he’d change his mind about me.
I thought maybe he just needed time, that one day he’d call and say it was time we talked, or even just ask how I’d been.
But then when the phone finally rang, it was my mom crying on the other end.
” His expression has clouded over, a sharp line of pain etched in his brow.
“Oh, Grant,” I say, reaching for his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
He draws a deep breath. “I just hate that it ended that way. I always thought I’d get a chance to make things right somehow.
I missed him, long before he was gone. Yeah, he could be stubborn and close-minded, but that wasn’t all he was.
He was also funny and smart, and he worked so hard to build something he could be proud of.
I was proud of him. I wanted to tell him that.
And I was angry, and I wanted to tell him that too.
And then all of a sudden it was too late.
It’s just …” He clears his throat, and when he speaks again his voice is rough.
“It’s not the ending I would have wanted. ”
My chest aches seeing him like this. In real life, sometimes shit happens and bad luck is just bad luck.
But Grant’s life, and everything that happened in it, was by design.
Someone did this to him on purpose, and for what?
A good story? I wish more than anything that I could give him a different one.
“Maybe it’s not the ending,” I say.
“No, he’s definitely dead. He’d never have fit into his urn otherwise.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “I mean, he might not be around anymore, but that doesn’t mean the story of you two has to be over.
Maybe the rest is just about how you remember him.
Not as a villain or a hero, but just as your human father who could have been better and could have been worse.
You can hold on to the things you loved about him even if there are memories that still hurt. ”
He doesn’t speak for a moment, just nods quietly as he studies my hand in his, running his thumb over my knuckles. “Thank you.”
I squeeze his hand. “You know, a very wise dreamboat once told me the end of a relationship doesn’t have to negate the good things.
Maybe that goes for fathers and sons too.
” It’s advice I couldn’t really take to heart when he gave it to me, but now it clicks into place.
Being here with him is so good that I can’t imagine anything spoiling it retroactively.
“Maybe it even goes for storybook carjackers and carjackees who end up liking each other a lot.”
He’s looking at me in a way that I would have shrunk back from once, but now I want to sunbathe in it.
“A lot,” he whispers back.
It already hurts, knowing this is going to end. But if I get to replay those words whenever I want—remembering how he said them, solemn as a vow, his deep gaze holding mine and wrapping me up in warmth—then maybe it will even out somehow. Maybe I’ll be okay.
“In any case,” I say, pulling myself back to the present, “I hope you can be proud of your weird secret hobby now. It’s incredible, Grant. If your dad thought anything else, maybe that’s just because he never got the privilege of seeing you LARP a guy in the face.”
“You LARPed the guy in the face,” Grant says, then acquiesces with a tilt of his head. “I did LARP the rest of him pretty well, though.”
“We’re a LARPin’ good team, you and I.”
He smiles and wraps an arm around my shoulders, and I settle in against him again. I want to memorize all of this, all of him. To tuck it away for safekeeping.
“It’s too bad you only asked for one book,” Grant says with a weak laugh. “Otherwise maybe we could have a sequel. Or a whole series.”
The bittersweet thought brings a smile to my face, and then it fades as my mind starts collecting fragments.
“I’m … not sure I did only ask for one book.”
Grant looks at me quizzically as I mentally journey back to the moment this all began—a street corner, a magic-maker, and an exasperated, tongue-in-cheek, secretly desperate wish. Something like hope is taking shape within me. “I wished to be the next Anna Matthews protagonist,” I recall.
“Which could mean more than one book,” he says, his face lighting. “More of this.”
“More of us,” I say, wanting to speak it into existence. But a snag of worry tugs at the back of my throat. “Would you really want that, though? I doubt she’d write a sequel about us vacationing uneventfully in the Bahamas. We’re crime-thriller characters, you know.”
“Crime-thriller-romance,” he corrects, lifting my hand to kiss it.
Then he fixes me with such a heavy gaze that for a moment, I think I’ve made a mistake reminding him what the real story is—that it’s not all bedsheets and pillow talk.
I brace myself to hear him say, Actually, never mind.
I don’t want it. No one is worth that. But when he speaks, his voice is soft.
“If the only way we can be together is by chasing down serial killers, then I hope the world is full of them,” he says.
I almost want to laugh, comparing this Grant to the one I first met, but my throat has gone unexpectedly tight with emotion.
“I know that sounds crazy,” he adds. “But even when everything else is a nightmare, I feel better when I’m with you. You make me want to say yes to whatever the plot throws our way. Running from murderers, rappelling down skyscrapers, jumping out of planes … bring it on.”
Grant’s worry lines have deepened at the mere mention of those hypothetical adventures, but this is still the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.
Actually, all the more for it. And romantic doesn’t seem like the right word.
That depth of care, the willingness to meet his fears head-on if it means more time together … That’s something else. Something more.
And I feel the same way. I don’t really care what the story is, as long as it’s ours. Even if the plot is my nightmare—a dull investigation of white-collar crime or an undercover mission in a sleepy retirement home. Drop us into an Amish cozy mystery, for all I care. If Grant’s there, I’m in.
I could tell him all of that. I could tell him that I’d say yes, too, even if it meant getting hurt later. Really hurt. Worse than ever before. For more time with him, I’d say yes.
But I can’t quite bring the words to leave my mouth. Instead, I raise my eyebrows at him and say, “I make you want to jump out of a plane? Wow. I hope you meant with a parachute, at least.”
“You are my parachute,” he says, with a sincerity that makes my stomach go all fuzzy, even if my brain doesn’t get it yet.
“You’re the reason I can jump. Everything this book has thrown at us—I’d never be able to do it without you.
Somehow you don’t make it any less terrifying, but you make me feel like I can handle it.
You make me feel capable of doing things I should not, according to the laws of physics and sanity, be able to do. ”
My heart is fluttering in a way I’m not sure hearts are supposed to and my voice is barely capable of a whisper, but still I say, “So I’m also like crystal meth, in that way.”
“Shh.” He lays a finger on my lips. “I’m glad it’s you, in this book with me. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
My chest constricts almost to the point of pain. It means so much, even though I think he has this backward. He’s the one who’s always leaping first, saying exactly what he thinks and feels with total openness. I wish I could be like that.
But maybe I can.
Maybe he can be my parachute.
“I’m glad it’s you, too,” I say.
And then there’s nothing left to say that can’t be said by his arms around me, my head on his chest, and the synchrony of our breathing. Just silence, comfortable and shared.
The next thing I know, it’s somewhere near dawn and we’re being awakened by an urgent rapping on my door. Lesley’s and Lissa’s muffled voices float in from the hallway, bringing me back to reality. Or fiction, as the case may be.
“Yoo-hoo,” croons Lesley. “Lissy Elliott and Banksy in the house!”
I clap a hand over Grant’s mouth before he can say a damn thing. Lissa chimes in with a more frenetic and to-the-point “Get up! Get up! Get up!”
I rocket out of bed to throw on whichever clothes say I have had zero sex this evening, what are you talking about.
Grant bolts up, his eyes darting around the room in search of places to hide before he settles for ducking under the comforter.
After pulling on sweatpants and a T-shirt, I quickly fluff up the bedding to make Grant’s hiding place a little less obvious, then open the door a crack.
Lesley’s as cool and collected as ever, but there’s a new brightness in his eyes. Lissa, on the other hand, is shimmying with either excitement or an awful wedgie.
“Ah. Good of you to answer the door, if not your phone,” says Lesley. “Just popping by to say—”
“HE TALKED!” shrieks Lissa. “Well, sort of. But we got him! And he’s going to spill the beans, I can feel it!”
I blink back at them, trying to clear the whiplash of crashing back into this storyline. I’d almost forgotten we had objectives beyond just getting each other’s clothes off last night.
Lesley frowns at me, assessing. “Oh, dear,” he says. “You’ve taken a thumping.”
I rear back. “Excuse me?”
He points at my face. “Your cheek.”
“My cheek …” My hand flies up to the spot I’d forgotten all about. “Right. Yes. Thumped. I’m fine.”
Lesley nods once. “Good.”
I clear my throat, redirecting myself to the business of the eager crime solvers outside my door. “Where’s Alistair?”
“Fake House,” says Lissa, with a flippant wave of the hand. “All locked up and ready to blab. We’ll tell you everything. Can we come in?”
My breath catches as I scramble for a solid excuse, but Lesley claps a hand on her shoulder. “This is a conversation for the study,” he says. “Meet us there in … I don’t know, five, ten minutes?” He peers at me over his glasses before turning away.
Then he pauses, just for a moment, and calls back toward the room.
“Hello, Grant.”
Deny, deny, deny, my brain says, but before I can, there’s a rustle of surrender behind me and the distinct sound of my comforter saying, “Hi.”
Lesley ambles away, leaving Lissa standing by the doorway. Her eyes bulge and her jaw drops so dramatically I wonder if it’s even still attached.
“Oh, shut up,” I say, closing the door on her just as she emits an earsplitting squeal.