Chapter Fifty-Six
Grace
The rich scents of butter and pancake batter pull me into the kitchen.
Yesterday’s headache—along with the halos that plagued me as I drew page after page of senseless shapes and cold, uncaring eyes—have fled with a good night’s sleep.
And though I’m scared how I’ll handle AJ going back to work tomorrow, that’s a worry for later.
AJ’s at the stove, barefoot, and humming softly. The man can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it’s the most relaxed sound I’ve heard from him since I came home.
Bracing myself against the counter, I let my gaze drift to his ass. “Need a hand?”
AJ glances over his shoulder, and his slow, almost boyish grin sends warmth flooding my core. “You offerin’ to flip? Or just taste test?”
“I can work the ladle.” I edge closer, breaking a piece off one of the pancakes on the plate beside him. “But, quality control is important too.”
“Oh, is it? How am I doin’, then?” He swats my hip lightly with the spatula, laughter spilling out of him, softening the lines around his eyes. For a moment, he looks like the man I sometimes see in my dreams. The AJ from before. Younger. Unburdened. Without an ocean of sadness in his eyes.
“Fair to middlin’.”
Lightning cuts across the sky, followed by a loud crack of thunder. Rain lashes against the windows. The kind of fat drops that sound like they’re about to crack the glass at any second.
My hand stills on the bowl. The warm, beige walls of the kitchen fade into the palest wood. The floor is cold against my bare feet. They take my shoes now. Every night. So I won’t run again.
As if I could. They took that from me too.
I press my forehead to the window pane, watching sheets of rain blur the world outside. It hits so hard, I can feel it.
Is it raining where you are, AJ? Are we caught in the same storm?
I feel him sometimes. Or…I think I do. But it could be nothing more than the last shreds of hope fading away.
The damp seeps into my bones. And locked in this tiny room—this cell—I can do nothing but cling to the scraps of my former life that come to me in my dreams.
Like one of our first dates. Mini-golfing on a Sunday afternoon. Until a storm rolled in. Running through a downpour, my hand clasped in his. We were soaked by the time we reached his truck, breathless with laughter, our clothes plastered to our bodies.
He’d kissed me, and I’d tasted the rain on his lips. That was the moment I knew what forever felt like.
Quiet, hopeless tears soak into my simple, white dress. But still, I pray we’re both seeing the same rain.
Warmth seeps back into my body by degrees. I blink, suddenly home again. In our kitchen with AJ watching me, a frown curving his lips.
Only then do I realize I’m crying here too.
“Grace?” He keeps his voice soft and steady. Soothing.
I touch my cheek, then stare at my wet fingers. My chest doesn’t tighten with panic. I’m not afraid. But an echo of the bone-deep loneliness remains. I press my hands to the granite counter and blow out a breath.
“I’m okay.”
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his eyes. So I wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head against his chest. “I remembered something,” I say softly. “It was raining. Wherever I was. I was so lonely, AJ. All the time. And I wished…I hoped…that you were watching the rain too.”
AJ’s chest heaves. He presses a kiss to the top of my head. He doesn’t question me. Just sets the spatula aside, turns off the burner, and holds me.
The rain keeps battering the window, even as the lightning and thunder fade away, but I don’t care. I’m not alone anymore.
The storm retreats slowly, a last burst of darkness before the start of spring.
We painted one wall of my studio yesterday. Well, AJ did. I still get tired so easily. The whisper of pale purple provides a hint of calm, while still giving the room a light, airy feel. Maybe next weekend, we’ll do another one.
The steady patter of rain against the roof carries me into a sketch I haven’t been able to get out of my head since breakfast. On the page, a window takes shape—small, narrow, sealed shut. No latch. No air. I shade the lines darker. So dark, the paper nearly tears.
For the first time, I can see the rest of the room with a clarity that takes my breath away. The bare wood floor. The narrow bed with its single pillow and thin blanket. Next to that useless, inescapable window, a rough-hewn desk that gave me splinters.
Nothing of any comfort. No plant on the sill. No closet. No color. Only two small bins—one with several clean white dresses and folded cotton panties, and the other serving as a laundry hamper.
On the facing page, I start again, and this time the window fills the entire space.
I add the horizon. Low hills fold gently into one another. They would have been calming if they hadn’t stood between me and freedom. A squat building in the distance. Gray and flat, with a winding road leading up to it. But I don’t remember what it was for.
Closer now, tension gathers in my shoulders as first one pole, then another, then another loom over an area my pencil doesn’t want to touch. But I can’t run from these memories anymore. Facing them is the only way I get my life back.
Still, I add the lanterns first. Six of them. They’re not lit—when I close my eyes, the image behind my lids is mostly gray. Dawn, perhaps. Or dusk.
The door behind me creaks open.
“Grace?”
AJ slips into the room, two bottles of Shiner dangling from his hand. He’s still mostly relaxed, his shoulders loose, his mouth free of the tight line it’s held so often the past week. But this morning’s ease is starting to fade.
“You want some company?” His gaze searches mine, and I see the question in his eyes.
How can I make up for three years of aching loneliness?
I want to tell him he can’t. Nothing can. But he’s here now, and that’s enough.
My smile comes easily now. Finally. Even knowing I’m about to draw something that terrifies me, I can still find it—as long as he’s with me. “I’d love some.”
He sets one of the bottles in front of me, but doesn’t stare at my sketchbook. Doesn’t ask to see it. Just settles into the chair in the corner with his phone in one hand and the beer in the other, his long legs stretched out.
His presence fills the quiet in a way I can’t explain. I used to yearn for something as simple as having him in the same room. The same house. The same…life. Now that I have it again, I’ll do anything to keep it. Even draw the one thing that’s scared me most since I started to remember.
I touch the pencil to the page. Right in the center of the empty space. If I want to make it through this, I have to jump in with both feet.
Fear coils in my belly, sharp and sour on my tongue. I don’t remember what happened there. But something did.
The scar at my side aches.
Four lines. A rectangle. Then, a base underneath. A platform. No. An altar. Flowers all around it. Pink and red and white. Oleanders. Even the memory of the scent sickens me.
The voice is so clear, I almost drop the pencil.
“…the bright light to banish all darkness and bring about the Glorious One’s return…”
My throat tightens, but I keep adding more shading, turning the page darker and darker.
AJ’s hand covers mine. He crouches beside me without a word. He doesn’t ask about the drawing. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay. He just…stays.
For several minutes, neither of us move. It’s enough to simply be. To feel the warmth of his skin, smell his aftershave, hear his soft, steady breaths.
But we can’t stay like this forever. Not when I finally understand why everything under the lanterns terrifies me.
“It’s an altar,” I say, my voice barely stronger than a whisper. “That’s where they tried to kill me.”