Chapter 16 #2
Grace grins, carefully placing each one, fanning them out so there’s no confusion on how many points she’s about to rack up.
Crew holds only two cards, but he’s been holding on to them for the better part of fifteen minutes, itching to play them so he could use the large fan of cards she’d held in her hands against her with his win.
But Grace is no stranger to rummy tactics. In fact, she’s quite an expert.
“Don’t be a sour sport,” she volleys back. When she’s done laying out the riches of her hand, and only one card remains between her thumb and index finger, she looks at him, feigning innocence. “You’re up.”
He tilts his head, glaring at her. “I am aware.”
Grace’s smile widens. She’s growing fonder by the second of how cute he is when he isn’t getting his way. It must be something that doesn’t happen very often.
Scanning the cards in front of her for an out, Crew groans when he finds none. He reaches for the deck to pull a new card, peeks at it, then shakes his head in frustration. “You’ve rigged this deck,” he proclaims, tucking the card into his hand. “I’m certain of it.”
Grace places a hand to her chest. “Are you calling me a cheater?”
“You heard me,” he says, then he nods toward her one card. “Go.”
“It’s not nice to call people cheaters. I, for one, am full of integrity when it comes to rummy.
You’re just mad that I’m better at it.” Grace reaches for her own card from the pull pile.
When she picks it up to reveal a king of diamonds, she keeps her poker face as neutral as possible.
He doesn’t need to know that unless he gets lucky this turn, she’s about to beat him.
He doesn’t get lucky. He just gets ornerier, in the most harmless, adorable way. He mutters under his breath and sneaks little glares in her direction when he thinks she isn’t looking. Grace tucks this information away for safekeeping: Crew Caldwell is a sore loser.
When she places her remaining cards down onto the victory-scape of her sets, she does so with gentle but purposeful force. And she doesn’t take her eyes away from him as she does it, clocking his expression as she lays the last one down and says, “Rummy.”
Instantly deflating, Crew hangs his head. “Jesus.”
“Look, you gave a valiant effort,” Grace says, sweeping up the cards.
There’s no point in actually counting them—she was already beating him by a wide margin and definitely would’ve gotten past their agreed-upon two-hundred mark with this hand.
“I just happen to be really, really good at this game. I used to play it with my grandma almost every day.”
Crew looks up at this, a glimmer of softness washing over him. “Yeah?”
Grace nods. “Yeah, she was the one who taught me the art of sandbagging. I used to get so pissed when she’d win after hoarding half the deck for the whole game.”
He chuckles. “Sounds like you were cut from the same cloth.”
“Yeah,” Grace says quietly. It surprises her, how casually she just brought up her family, how easy it was to tell him something about her life before.
Pangs of wistfulness ache in her belly at the memory, but she doesn’t feel the urge to tamp it down, or shove it into a drawer in her brain and throw away the key.
Instead, she wants to keep telling him about the woman who was once one of her favorite people in the universe.
“She died when I was still a kid. She was the best,” she adds.
Crew stares at her for a beat, and then leans back until he’s fully horizontal on his bedroll.
He scoots over just enough for her to burrow in next to him, an offer he makes with his eyes as he settles in.
When Grace hesitates, he gives her that painfully soft smile that she is very quickly beginning to love—beginning to understand on a molecular level.
It means so much more than any other smile, carries so much more weight.
I’m with you, it says. I see you.
She lifts up onto her knees and crawls in next to him, and for a moment, it’s slightly awkward.
She’s on her side, he’s on his back, and she doesn’t want to drape herself all over him the way she knows she should in order to be comfortable in such a tight space.
But they haven’t—there’s been no real touching since the previous day.
Nothing as definitive as an all-out cuddle like this would be.
Grace bites her lip, contemplating, holding herself still and stiff.
Crew makes the decision for her. Ever the steadfast, confident leader.
He gives her no room for any further doubt when he slides his arm under her head, letting her use his bicep as a pillow.
He takes one of her arms and wraps it around his torso, then sets his hand atop her elbow and begins to rub soothing lines up, down, up, down.
It instantly puts her at ease, and it doesn’t feel odd or ill-fitting, the way they’ve tangled together so quickly.
It feels like the shape of his body was carved specifically for her to fit against him.
He ducks his chin down and his lips are at her forehead; he presses a kiss there, lets it linger, and Grace’s eyes flutter shut. “Tell me more about her,” he says.
And so she does.
She tells him more than she’s ever told anyone.
How her grandmother used to watch her on summer days when her mom was at work, and she’d lie on the couch and watch Mr. Rogers, and she can still smell the cup of coffee her grandmother perpetually drank—she took it with milk and cinnamon, and it was somehow always lukewarm.
She tells him about the hushed conversations her mom would have with her grandmother when she came to pick up Grace, the frustrated, animated way they’d talk to each other outside of the car, too muffled for Grace to know what they were saying.
She’d figured it out eventually—it was about her father; it always was.
Her grandmother had known from the start that it wasn’t a good match—that he was a sinking ship that would bring them down with him.
“ ‘Love makes you dumb,’ ” Grace says, quoting her. “ ‘Dumb and blind.’ ”
Crew stares down at her, wordless. His eyes search hers, and for a moment, it seems almost as though he’ll argue.
When he doesn’t, Grace looks away, and fills the space with more memories.
Talking about the past, somehow, seems easier than addressing whatever look he was just giving her.
Whatever declaration he may have been about to utter.
She tells him about falling asleep in her grandmother’s arms as she spun her around in a rickety chair at the dining room table, reciting a lullaby that wasn’t a lullaby but simply a string of proclamations said with the softest lilt of a melody: Mimi loves Grace; Mommy loves Grace; Papa in heaven loves Grace; Miss Winters loves Grace; Goose and Lulu love Grace.
She’d always made sure to include Grace’s teacher and her two old, chubby cats because, of course, they all also loved Grace.
Six-year-old Grace never doubted she was loved.
She’d been told she was every single day.
Tears sprout in her eyes at that particular memory.
And then, before she can stop herself from saying the next words, they tumble out of her mouth, as if Crew has hooked them with a reel and is pulling them out of her.
“It was kind of soul-crushing when I realized as an adult that there was no one left on that list,” she says, slightly hoarse from all the talking.
“No one left in the world who loved me.”
She doesn’t realize she’s actually crying until Crew is wiping her tears away with his thumb. He doesn’t say anything—he doesn’t have to. His eyes are full of something Grace doesn’t want to try to decipher, for fear that she’ll find pity. She lets out a watery laugh, turning away from him.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean for that to turn into a sob story.”
“Hey,” Crew finally says, breaking his prolonged silence.
He gently turns her head to face him again, and they’re so close now.
Their mouths are inches apart. He swipes his thumb across her bottom lip, watching the motion, and then finds her eyes again.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” His eyes search her face, like he’s trying to memorize her every freckle.
“I don’t know what happened to you, Grace, and you don’t have to tell me. But I do know this—”
He swallows hard, then leans forward to one of her cheeks, placing just a whisper of kiss there, then doing the same with the other.
He leans back, cradles her face in his hand, and says, “You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be happy every single day of your life. If I would’ve—” His lips flatten in frustration, and his eyes drop.
He stops himself abruptly, but then seems to shake off whatever was caught in his throat and returns her stare with renewed conviction.
“I can’t change the past. I can’t hold you through all of that lost time and tell you how precious you are.
I wish I could.” He lays his forehead against hers. “But I can hold you now.”
The tip of Grace’s nose grazes his as the words settle between them.
As they sink into her bones, her every iota.
He’s making good on his promise—holding her like she’s something inexplicably special to him—and there’s no other way for her to thank him but to tilt her head up and press her lips into his.
It’s tentative, a quiet, fleeting question she asks on instinct, then pulls away as quickly as she’d leaned in.
Crew’s eyes are fluttering when she looks at him, but when they open, they’re glassy, searching hers with a darting wonder.
“Grace.” He says her name on an exhale. Like the very word is a relief.
And then he spreads a hand to encompass her jaw and neck, and he descends.
Grace has been kissed before. Enough times to know that no kiss is the same—there isn’t a rulebook anyone follows, or if there is, most seem to disregard it entirely.
She’s experienced everything from a hard, dry push of her mouth into another person’s to a sloppy, tongue-forward lick fest that left her chin sparkling with saliva.
Everything in between had been forgettable, a mechanical, uneventful locking that did nothing for her, physically or otherwise.
This is nothing like any of those kisses. This kiss is singular; it’s raw like an exposed nerve. It could raze cities; it could start wars. It is everything good and warm and intoxicating, and she wants to live and die in it. To let her bones rot beneath the weight of its intensity.
Crew groans when Grace leans into it, a fervor she’s never known taking over her body and calling the shots.
He reaches down to grab her thigh, then yanks until he’s hooked it over his hip.
Within the space of a pounding heartbeat, he’s halfway on top of her, settled between the cradle of her legs.
He kisses and kisses and kisses her, worshipping her lips with his own.
When he swipes his tongue across the seam of her mouth, she lets out a keening sigh, loud and unexpected.
It just—it feels so good. To be kissed so hungrily. To be wanted like this.
The sound breaks him from the spell they’ve both been under, and he picks his head up to look at her. When the rushing, pulsating blood in her ears dies down, she realizes what he’s doing. He’s listening, intently checking what’s going on outside the nylon—and extremely thin—walls of the tent.
She hears it then. A familiar, sobering, moment-killing sound.
A collective, knowing chuckle.
Crew sighs, letting his head fall onto her collarbone.
After a long moment of silence between them, he starts to kiss her throat softly, hesitantly.
When Grace starts to squirm, her mouth falling open, he seems to pick up on it.
To understand they’re never going to be able to do this quietly.
He picks his head up again, pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and smiles.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, his eyes sparkling. A little mischief, a little adoration. She wants to kiss him again, nearly does—but instead, she refrains, knowing if she complies, they might have a moment to actually be alone.
“To somewhere?” she asks, calling back to his promise from earlier.
Crew nods, then brushes his lips across hers in the most teasing, lovely way.
And then he’s up, pulling her along with him.