Chapter 35
35
TESSA
Dinner was some sort of roast I’d never had, but it was really tasty, and I gobbled my share down along with the asparagus and salad sides. Agatha and my mother were both very good cooks, but I’d had everything my mother had ever made. I'd eaten food Agatha made for parties all the time, but I realized I didn’t know what kinds of food she made on regular evenings with the family.
But I was about to find out.
I was going to sit next to Grant the way Nora sat with Ethan and eat at this table often. The idea made me smile, and I looked to my right to catch Grant’s eye.
He wasn’t looking up. Instead, he was glowering down at his plate, cutting his meat with a surgeon’s care. I’d eaten with Grant enough times to know this level of focus only came when he was upset. When he was relaxed, his bites were still perfectly cut, but he chatted his way through dinner, cutting as he went.
Slipping a bite into my mouth, I set my fork down and lay my palm on his thigh as I chewed. He looked down at my hand for a split second, then up at me, and the smile fell from my face. His eyes were usually a startling blue, but they were a dead gray tonight. He looked hollowed out, and I didn’t have the slightest understanding why. All I knew was that my hand lay untouched on his leg. I gently took it back and cut my next bite.
“This is good, Mom,” Grant said, flashing that damned Big Smile that did nothing to light up his eyes.
“Thank you, honey. It’s a new recipe,” Agatha replied. “How’s the van looking, Ethan?”
Ethan launched into an update on the van he and Nora would use to travel the country in just two more months—an old maxi-van they’d been turning into a living space—and my mind spun.
The only thing that loomed between us was the offer for Grant to return to the office. I’d asked him early on what he intended to do, but all he’d told me was he had to decide what to say to Dr. Burns.
Had he decided? And was the answer to leave Bridgeport and return to the city to work at the hospital again? Would he ask me to come with him? And would I want to go? Claire moved with Hudson so soon after meeting him, but that was to be closer to family, not farther away.
The rest of dinner passed in a blur, and as the plates were cleared I turned to Grant. “I’m feeling tired, would you mind if we headed out?”
Grant gave me a quick nod, then he stood, catching his mother’s eye. “We should get going. Tessa is tired and sore.”
I hadn’t mentioned being sore, but, of course, I was. I’d been weaned off my painkillers last week and by the end of every night I felt like I’d been pummeled.
“Oh, Tessa, I’m sorry,” Agatha said. “Let me pack up dessert for both of you.”
“You really don’t need to,” Grant interjected.
“Hush. Tessa wants dessert,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you, Agatha,” I said, though my stomach was too twisted up to even consider eating more.
Agatha packed a bevy of little dishes for us—more than just the promised dessert—and loaded them into a bag while we said our goodbyes to each of Grant’s siblings, along with Nora. Then Grant helped me into my coat and we walked outside. The quiet as we walked to the car was deafening.
The drive from the Duprees house to my own was short, but Grant said nothing, and I wasn’t sure what I should say—how to broach the subject that sat like an elephant between us. I’d just braced myself to ask about the job when Grant pulled into my driveway.
But before I could speak, he turned to me and said, “Why have you still not told Claire and Emily about me?”
My mouth had been open to speak, but now I gulped at the air uselessly, my mouth opening and closing like a fish trapped on land. “Grant?—”
“Forget it, I don't want to hear the answer,” he said.
“How can I tell them when I don’t even know if you’re going to stick around?”
Grant’s expression hardened completely. “Good night, Tessa.”
I didn’t move. Grant had slept in my house—first on the couch and this past week with me in my bed—every night since I’d gotten home. “Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
“I’ll check on you tomorrow,” he replied dispassionately. “But tonight I want to be in my own bed.”
I swallowed hard, biting back the emotion that burned at my eyes and clogged my throat. “How can you be mad when you’ve been stringing me along for weeks, not telling me if you’re staying or going?”
He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Colin Burns,” I replied, my voice rising with each word.
“That’s ridiculous, Tessa. I never even considered that move. You told me I should go, but I never considered it.”
I swallowed hard. I had told him he should go, but while I wanted what was best for him, I didn’t believe those words. “You told me you had to decide what to say to Dr. Burns,” I said, my voice low as I struggled to hold back tears.
All the air seemed to leave Grant, and his shoulders sagged. “I needed to decide how to let him down, Tessa. There was never a single moment when I wanted surgery more than I wanted you—a lifetime with you, a family with you.”
I choked on the tears in my throat, barely getting out the words, “I want that too. Let’s go inside and talk, Grant.”
He shook his head. “You might want that, Tess, but you still don’t trust me.” Again he sighed, looking out the window and then back at me. “And you have no idea how much that hurts.”