Chapter Forty-Two
Grace
I stretched as my body woke up. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so soundly. So deeply. It had only been a few days, but every time I closed my eyes, he was there. Hovering over me. Whispering to me. I guess my body had just given out.
I didn’t dream last night. Not of that anyway. I dreamed of King. Of the life we could have had. Going to sleep with him every night and waking up with him every morning.
I was still dreaming. I didn’t want to wake up. I was lost between the dream and real life, where I was still lying on his chest, feeling his warm skin under my cheek. I took a deep breath, inhaling his scent.
Wait!
My fingers tapped. My eyes flew open, and I sat up. He was staring at me. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” he asked with a smile.
I shook my head and climbed out of bed. I heard his sigh as I closed myself behind the bathroom door. I turned on the water and undressed. My hand jerked back when I tested the temperature, and Sam’s words rolled through my head.
“Grace, that’s too hot.”
I stared at the knob. I knew it was too hot, but even the scalding water wasn’t enough to burn away the memories.
But King did!
I closed my eyes tightly. Did he? How long had I been wrapped around him while I slept? Was that why the nightmares didn’t come? Did he keep me safe? I felt safe. Until I woke up and he was watching me. Searching my eyes for something I couldn’t find myself.
Something that wasn’t there anymore.
Bullshit!
It wasn’t bullshit. What happened to me broke me. The way it broke my mother. She was never the same after that. I loved her, but she’d changed. She was different.
I couldn’t even put into words how she changed. But there was always something bubbling beneath the surface. She tried to hide it from me. But it was there. I saw it when she didn’t know I was looking.
I’d expected sadness. I’d even expected shame and anger. It was all the things I was feeling now. But that wasn’t it. It was a look. Calculating, planning. When she told me we had to leave, it was like she knew it would happen. She was ready to go. Ready to run.
I turned the temperature down so that it was a few degrees cooler than Hell and stepped in under the water, letting it rain down on me. I imagined it washing everything away. The pain, the humiliation. The guilt.
The fucking guilt was killing me slowly.
Karlyn had endured the same thing I had, and I hadn’t spoken to her.
I hadn’t apologized for dragging her to Trudy’s.
She hadn’t wanted to go, but I pushed her into it.
I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault, but if I’d just stayed put, not let my emotions get the better of me, everything would be different.
Johnny wouldn’t have been shot. Indigo either. And Jackson. He almost died, and it would have been my fault. King should hate me. He’d almost lost his brother. The one he’d just found.
He might still lose him. Jackson would blame me for what happened to Karlyn. He would blame King for my part in it.
I heard the knock on the door as I turned off the water.
King was talking to someone. I dried off and slipped his shirt back over me.
I stood in front of the mirror looking at myself.
The bruises were fading. Eventually they’d disappear.
But the memories wouldn’t. The nightmares, the reminder of what happened. The pain I’d caused so many people.
I jumped at the knock on the door. “Grace?”
“I’ll be right there.”
“What do I do, Mama? How did you do it? How did you live the life you did with this shit hanging over your head every fucking day?” I whispered to the reflection in the mirror.
I looked so much like my mother. She was beautiful, with her blonde hair and blue eyes. My eyes were green. They must have come from my father. I should have realized Steele wasn’t him. He had dark-brown eyes.
“Who was he? Who was the man you loved?” I asked my mother’s face. “Where did he go?”
My mother talked about my father. She would never tell me who he was, but she told me how much she loved him. Said he saved her. That without him she would have become someone she didn’t want to be.
I should have known it wasn’t Steele once I met him. I should have known he wasn’t the kind of man a woman pined over. He was selfish. He wasn’t the kind of man who put someone else first.
“Who is he, Mama? How do I find him?” My words were a desperate plea whispered to a woman who couldn’t answer. “Maybe if I could find him, he could save me too.”
I waited for a breath, praying that somehow a dead woman would answer my question. It was possible. I heard her voice all the time. I just needed a memory. A phrase I heard her say years before. Any kind of hint that would give me a direction to search.
But there was nothing.
The room was silent, and for once, so was my head. It angered me that the one time my brain was quiet was when I was trying to remember something. A nugget of information long forgotten. Some obscure recollection that had been hidden.
“Sometimes I hate you,” I hissed. “You kept something from me. Something so fucking important that I’m here now still looking for it. Still searching for a piece of me I’ll never fucking find.”
I took a deep breath and with one last look at myself and the woman I used to be, combined with the woman I hated and loved, I stepped out into the room.
King sat on the bed waiting for me. His hand rested on a large white box next to him. “Who was here?” I asked, my eyes on that box.
“Jack dropped something off for you.”
“What?” My curiosity was piqued, but I didn’t move from the doorway. I didn’t reach out for the gift. I wasn’t sure I wanted whatever it was.
King stood up and pulled the cover off. I gasped, and my hand went to stifle the sound, a millisecond too late to hold it in. He pulled out the leather vest; the Silver Shadows’ emblem covered the back. My eyes scanned the words.
Property of King.
I stared at it. For a year I had envied Beck and the others. Seen them wear their cuts with pride. I’d wanted one of my own for so damn long. Never believing he would ever offer it to me.
“The words are a formality; you know that, right?”
My eyes snapped to his.
“I don’t see you as property, Grace. But you are mine. You’ve always been mine, and you always will be mine.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I can’t wear that.”
“Why?”
I moved away from him. I couldn’t stand so close to him without reaching out.
Without jumping into his arms and kissing him.
Running my hands over his bare chest. Licking his nipples.
My body was hot. It didn’t make sense. Why am I not afraid?
Why am I not cowering away from him? Something had changed.
After talking to Amber, and Johnny, and Maureen, something had shifted. After sleeping wrapped around him last night, something ignited inside me, and it terrified me.
I couldn’t become my mother. I couldn’t just push everything away like it never happened.
“Grace.”
I spun around and glared at him. “Why don’t you hate me?”
“What?” His face contorted with confusion. He tossed the leather cut on the bed and stalked toward me. I stepped back, and he froze. I hated that he was afraid to touch me. Afraid to scare me.
He didn’t scare me.
They scared me.
I scared me.
“You should hate me. This is my fault. All of it is my fault.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? None of this is your fault, Grace.”
“I should have stayed here. Karlyn didn’t want to go. I pushed her. I forced her to go to Trudy’s with me. And then everything happened. Johnny was shot. Indigo. Jackson.” I looked away. There was a window in King’s room. A large picture window that looked out over the backyard.
“You almost lost your brother because of me.”
“That’s bullshit, Grace.”
“It’s not!” I screamed. “I never should have fucking come here!”
King stepped back as if I’d slapped him. “What are you saying?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t stop. “I should have known Steele wasn’t him.
I shouldn’t have come here looking for you.
I shouldn’t have tried to frame you for rape.
Don’t you see?” I shouted, my arms flying out wide at my sides.
“This is my punishment. For being her! I loved her, but there was something wrong with her. She had something dark inside her, and it’s growing inside of me. ”
“Grace, I love you.”
“NO!” I yelled. “No. I can’t do this. I don’t deserve you.
When the others find out what I tried to do.
They’ll agree. I told Karlyn. You should have seen the way she looked at me.
We’ll never be friends. Not after what she knows.
You’ll lose your brother, and I can’t be the reason you lose him.
You already almost lost him once because I was stupid.
Because I was mad at you for fucking me. ”
“What?” The word was a pained whisper. His face fell. I didn’t know what he was thinking. “I’m sorry, Grace. I thought…” His hands rubbed at his face. “FUCK!” he thundered as he turned and punched a hole in the wall. I didn’t flinch. I knew he’d never hurt me.
“I’m sorry, Grace. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
He sank down at the end of the bed. “I dragged you up here. I didn’t give you a choice. I should have stopped. I should have asked you first.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You did ask me. I told you I wanted to sleep next to you. That I felt safe with you.”
“If you’d said no... if I thought for one second you didn’t want me... I never would have.” He dropped his head into his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. And all at once I realized what he thought I’d meant.
I dropped to my knees in front of him. Tears streamed down my face. “No, no, no. King, that’s not what I meant.”
I pulled his hands away. “I wanted you! I’ve wanted you for so fucking long. I never said no because I wanted you. I never said stop, not to you, because I didn’t want you to stop.”
I stood up and pulled his head against my chest. “I was mad at you because I wanted you too. I was mad at you because the minute you touch me, I melt. I give in. I didn’t want to give in; I wanted to push you away, but I can’t fucking live without you. But I have to.”
“Why? I love you. I want you to be my wife. I want you to be my old lady. I want you, Grace.”
His hands held the back of my thighs and rubbed up and down. My body began to heat. His forehead pressed against my belly. And with every pass of his hands as they reached just below my ass before he ran them back down to my knees, something stirred inside me.
My fingers ran through his hair. I held his head and tipped it back, staring into his eyes. Silently, I begged him to see what I was saying. Pleading that he wouldn’t make me say the words out loud.