Chapter 3 Grace
THREE
Grace
LOGAN
“Hey there handsome!”
My heart raced as I turned to see Grace leaning against the doorway to my bedroom as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
The woman managed to live up to her name in such an effortless way that I was often caught off guard by her presence.
Her long blonde hair had been ironed down into a silk curtain that looked so soft I wanted to run my fingers through it.
There were other fantasies I had about her hair and fisting it as I…
“Grace,” I said before my thoughts could derail what I’d been working on.
I turned back to my laptop. I had to finish these last few lines of code before I allowed her to distract me.
Luckily for me, she understood that. It was something that made being around her so easy.
If I said I had to finish a line of code, she would back off and sit quietly.
I didn’t have to feel guilty for shutting her down temporarily.
It was refreshing to not have to choke on the guilt like I did with Aoife when she called and I was in the middle of something.
At the thought of my life-long best friend, my stomach twisted.
I knew what Aoife expected to happen when we both eventually graduated from college.
It wasn’t that I was against it necessarily.
I would do anything to save my best friend from what her father had in store for her.
We both knew there was a marriage contract somewhere with her name on it because Bill-Fucking-Quinn had zero fucks to give about selling off his only living daughter to one of his mob buddies.
Still, I was trapped between wanting something more in the meantime and feeling like I was cheating on her just because I was getting closer to Grace.
Then there was that phone call where Aoife had been a complete bitch to Grace.
I’d never yelled at her before but I was so angry when Grace sniffled and told me that my best friend had said some awful things to her.
The girl I’d once pledged my future to had gone off on her for having the audacity to answer my phone.
It was so out of character for Aoife to behave that way, that I’d spoken out of anger before I allowed it all to simmer.
Part of me understood her being territorial and even somewhat rude to another woman.
She was obviously threatened by Grace’s presence in my life.
Again, that twisty feeling in my stomach lurched and dipped because she had reason to feel threatened. I glanced back over at Grace in-between fumbled keystrokes and had to back up and start the line again.
Focus, Logan!
This was always the problem with thoughts of Aoife and Grace.
They were equally distracting even when I knew at least one of them didn’t mean to be.
Finally, I got the last line in, saved, and diligently shut everything down before I tucked my laptop into the locked drawer I kept it in.
I wasn’t a fool. MIT was a school for the top academics, especially in my field of study, but that didn’t mean people didn’t crack under pressure and look for an easy way out, like stealing someone else’s work.
My brothers insisted that I could live in my own apartment and they would foot the bill until I could use my inheritance to pay them back.
College was different from our boarding school days and I wanted to experience everything.
Being closer to the action and to classes made life easier.
It also allowed me to be more accessible to my new friends, like Grace, who stopped by often because she lived one floor above me.
Once everything was locked up, I turned toward the only woman who made me question Aoife’s place in my life. “What brings you by?”
Grace grinned and then slowly swayed those hips of hers into my room and shut the door behind her.
She was wrapped up in what looked like a naughty version of a boarding school outfit.
It wasn’t usually a look that did anything for me, but her skirt kicked up a little with each swish of her hips as she approached and I couldn’t help it when blood rushed to my dick at the sight.
Grace was tall, probably 5’8” or 5’9” and most of it was leg.
Her thighs and calves were sculpted to perfection from the time she spent in the gym.
It also didn’t hurt that she was on a partial athletic scholarship for soccer.
Grace had beauty, brains, and a body that wouldn’t quit.
From the look in her eyes, she was also hungry for me.
Up to this point, I had kept her at a distance, despite knowing that she wanted more than friendship from me.
I had been so conflicted about my relationship with Aoife that I hadn’t wanted to date anyone else.
Aoife was always meant to be mine, but we wouldn’t be able to be together for another two years until we both graduated.
Grace was present and in my life every single day.
She smiled and flirted and little-by-little I lost myself to the possibilities.
The only thing that held me back was the thought that I could really fall for Grace.
What the hell was I supposed to do in two years if I fell for this woman who seemed perfect for me and then I had to go marry my best friend instead?
I made promises to Aoife. They weren’t easily pushed aside because if I didn’t follow through, she would basically be sold off to the highest bidder in her father’s world full of assholes who would break her without a thought.
I’d talked to my brothers about it recently and they told me that they had other ways to hide Aoife from her father if it came down to it.
It wasn’t my responsibility to marry her, no matter the promises I’d made when we were just kids.
I knew it was true, but at the same time, there was a part of me that had looked forward to being the man who got to call her his wife.
Distance has a way of muting those desires, though, especially when a seemingly perfect woman for me only lived one for up and attended half my classes.
Judging from the gleam in Grace’s eyes, I knew that she wouldn’t wait around much longer for me to make a decision.
She had been getting more-and-more pushy about wanting me.
To my shame, I’d been slowly distancing myself from Aoife, too.
In the back of my mind, I already knew the choice I was going to make and that was why, once again, my gut twisted up and lurched uncomfortably.
It felt like a sign that I was making the wrong decision, but when I talked to my brothers about it, they told me it was just because I felt guilty for letting my life-long friend down.
Maybe that was it.
Grace plopped down on my lap with her legs perpendicular to mine and booped my nose with her finger. “Now that you’re finished with your fabulous code, how about we blow off some steam at that party I told you about?”
My eyes drifted to the clock on my desk beside the empty space where I normally worked on my laptop.
It was a little after nine and an alarm would go off any minute to remind me to call or text Aoife and check in on her.
It had been a while since we’d seen one another in person.
My chest squeezed at the thought. She had been coming here at least twice a month, almost religiously, until a couple months ago and then suddenly her visits stopped.
I kept meaning to ask her why, but every time we got to talking, I chickened out.
There was always a weird concern in the back of my mind that she’d replaced me and I wasn’t fucking okay with that thought.
It was one thing to have second thoughts about how I felt where Aoife was concerned, but I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if she was also having those same thoughts, or if she had found some guy there that…
No. Fuck that.
She wasn’t meant to fall for anyone else.
Not just because I was a jealous fucking prick, and had no right to be, considering I had another woman sitting in my lap.
It was dangerous. There were very few men who could get away with getting close to Aoife because of who her father was, and the plans he had for his daughter’s future.
“We should really talk about this out loud rather than you being conflicted internally while you stroke my thigh.” Grace weaved her fingers through my hair as she said that and I looked down at where my hand was indeed tracing geometrical patterns on her leg.
I’d been slowly, unconsciously inching the hem of her skirt up higher with each stroke.
“What exactly are we talking about?”
“Us,” she said bluntly.
“Us?” I questioned.
“You’re not stupid, Logan. Neither am I. We’re meant for more than this cat and mouse bullshit. I know you’re conflicted because you’re hung up on some promise you made to that girl.” The last couple words were said with sneering condescension that caught my attention.
“Aoife,” I corrected while pulling back on the annoyance that simmered below the surface at her disrespect of my best friend.
“Whatever.”
“How do you know that?”
“Like I said, I’m not stupid. Besides, Miles told me all about your pact to marry her.” Grace rolled her eyes as she admitted to knowing more than I meant for her to about Aoife. “What a joke. No one makes marriage pacts in high school and sticks to them.”
“Knock it off,” I scolded as I stood and gently placed Grace on her feet.
“Aoife is my oldest and dearest friend. Remember when I yelled at her for saying mean shit to you?” Grace said nothing and watched me with caution in her eyes.
“Well, it goes both ways. You don’t get to bad mouth her, our friendship, or shit you don’t really know about, especially when you didn’t hear any of that stuff from me. ”
“Miles told me, and outside of your brothers and Aoife, he’s the only one you tell everything to. He would know,” she sassed back, as if that gave her the right to talk about it like she knew my mind. I didn’t even know my own fucking mind on the topic.
“I won’t be telling him everything anymore, and I’m not thrilled that you’re using what you were told to try to influence me.”
Grace huffed and turned her back on me. After a minute or two where silence prevailed, she finally spun around again and gave off the illusion of being contrite as she apologized.
I wasn’t sure if I believed it. Then again, I couldn’t trust the rolling feeling in my gut anymore because it usually meant I felt guilty for entertaining thoughts of being with Grace when I knew Aoife would be heartbroken about that.
“I’m sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t have thrown that in your face, especially since you weren’t the one to trust me with that information. Still, you have to see that the two of you aren’t that close anymore. When was the last time she came to visit?”
I didn’t want to answer. It was something I hadn’t thought about until just a few minutes ago. “A couple months.”
“And when was the last time you actually went to see her?”
I leaned into my desk as if her question had knocked me back a step.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I took the train to New York to go see Grace.
As I sifted through my memories, the truth became a red hot poker that seared a permanent hole in my heart.
It had been more than six months since I’d taken that trip to see my best friend.
My eyes came back up to see the hint of a smirk on Grace’s face. “Figure it out yet?”
“Six months,” I admitted.
Her smirk bloomed into a full smile. “Right around the time we started hanging out,” she reminded me.
I had already put that together. The first weekend I’d told Aoife I couldn’t come up because I had to study, it was Grace who stayed locked in my dorm room with me most of that time.
There were others who started out with us but eventually everyone got hungry, tired, bored, or just restless and left.
Grace stayed and we ended up watching movies and she slept in my bed next to me in one of my t-shirts.
We didn’t do anything. No kissing or touching, other than accidentally wrapping around one another as we slept on the too-slim bed.
Every time I was supposed to go to New York after that, my friends, especially Grace, would convince me to stick around.
“You can see your other friend next weekend when she comes,” they would remind me.
I don’t know when I managed to justify that in my own mind.
It was one weekend, then two, and eventually I stopped thinking about the fact that Aoife was the only one putting in an effort to come see me.
I took it for granted that she would continue to do that.
Just like I took it for granted that she would text or call and I could get back to her at my leisure when my friends weren’t around.
It meant that our calls grew shorter because I returned them when it was late and one or the other of us would always have to be up early.
“Come on, broody boy, before you give yourself worry lines. Let’s go get a drink and you can think about what your friendship means later. Right now, I want you to myself.”
“I thought you wanted to go to a party?” I asked with a quirk of my brow to emphasize my point.
She laughed. “I do. We’re going to drink other people’s liquor, dance, have a few laughs, and then we’re going to figure out if there’s an us or not because I’m getting a little tired of putting in all this effort for a man who doesn’t reciprocate.”
“Grace,” I whispered.
“Not now,” she said as her finger came up to my lips to keep me quiet. “Fun first, then we can discuss what the future looks like. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, though it was done reluctantly because that meant I would be forced to make a choice tonight.
Start something with Grace or hold out for Aoife like I’d promised to do.
And now, I had the added layer of wondering when the last time I’d spoken to my best friend had been.
It couldn’t have been two weeks ago when I yelled at her about talking shit to Grace, could it?