Chapter 20 #3
Bellamy cuts her off, his voice low and icy. “I warned you, Gracie.” He lets that hang between them for a moment, and Grace looks around, scanning her immediate surroundings. “You didn’t listen. Now, you’re going to understand that actions have consequences.”
Grace swallows, her nostrils flaring. “I couldn’t stop them—”
On the other end, he laughs again. “Here’s a lesson for you, Grace: Consequences don’t always hit you directly, but they’ll always hit you where it hurts. I can promise you that.”
Her heart begins to hammer in her chest as panic starts to overtake her senses. She’s still scanning the area, not sure what exactly she’s looking for, when he says, “Or Trey can, actually—he’s the one who tailed your precious Caldwells all the way to Highway 46 tonight.”
Time freezes then. The entire world cracks open, and Grace is free-falling into its depths, never to recover. The breath leaves her body in a shudder and she gasps, desperate to fill her lungs, to regain the ability to speak so she can ask exactly what he means.
She doesn’t have to. He tells her happily.
“That Suburban of theirs…it rolled and rolled and rolled like a tumbleweed. Didn’t even look like a car by the time it was done.”
Grace’s knees give out, and she falls to the ground roughly, nearly toppling over.
“Please,” she wheezes, but the plea isn’t to Bellamy.
Her eyes squeeze shut and she says it again, and again, prayers falling from her lips before her brain even has the chance to process what’s happening.
On the other end of the line, Bellamy sighs.
“What are you gonna tell them when they wake up in the ICU—if they wake up at all? What are they gonna think when you tell them you could’ve stopped this? You could’ve, Gracie. Could’ve called them off, after all I did for you, all I saved you from. And this is how you repay me.”
“I didn’t know it would—”
“Of course you did, and now you’ll have to live with that. And that boyfriend of yours? If you think he’s safe from all this, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Grace’s head swings in the direction of the bunkhouse.
She can see the light of the movie flickering through the closed blinds, changing the windows from white to blue to gray and back again.
Crew is in there, completely unaware, and all Grace wants is to rewind to twenty minutes ago when she was, too.
When she was safe in his arms and happy and in love. “You leave him out of—”
“You don’t give me orders, you ungrateful bitch,” Bellamy snarls.
She hears his panting breaths, the rattle of phlegm in his chest. It disgusts her, makes the nausea in her gut that much sharper.
“Meet me outside the north entrance at midnight, or I’ll put him in the hospital, too. Think I’m bluffing?”
The line goes dead, and the phone falls from Grace’s sweaty hand, crashing to the ground and flipping shut upon impact.
Geysers of chaos and despair continue to burst in Grace’s head, each bigger and more devastating than the last. Worst-case scenarios of every variety pile on top of one another, and for a long, indeterminate amount of time, she cannot breathe, or speak, or think of anything besides the terror she’s wrought on this family simply by choosing them. By letting them get close to her.
She doesn’t hear the swing of the bunkhouse door, nor the running footfalls of Crew’s boots as he races over to where she sits, nearly catatonic from the shock.
Only when he’s right in front of her face does she realize he’s outside, he’s with her, and the storm brewing in her gut implodes—tears pour down her face in hot, endless streaks.
He’s wiping them away before he even asks what they’re for, and Grace is shaking her head, wishing she didn’t have to do what she’s about to—wishing she could go back and never darken the door of Halcyon at all.
This man she loves, this man who didn’t try to save her but instead gave her something so much bigger.
So much more than she ever thought possible.
Her heart feels like it’s literally being ripped to shreds, piece by agonizing piece, as she stares into his fearful eyes.
Sound comes back to her ears in gradual waves, Crew’s voice growing louder until she can finally make out the hurried, “What’s wrong? Talk to me, baby. What’s going on?”
Grace’s head falls forward, and she gives herself over momentarily to the sob wracking her body. As it desists, she breathes deeply, then gathers up whatever courage she has left and looks him in the eye again.
She’s never hated herself more than she does in this exact moment. She should’ve known she was always going to end up right here. She should’ve known that outrunning the past was a luxury reserved only for those who deserved to escape.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Tell me,” Crew says quickly, nodding, so wholly unaware of the bomb that’s about to be dropped in his lap. The bomb that’s already detonated on some darkened highway outside of Victoria. “Tell me,” he repeats softly.
“I lied—when you asked me why I stayed at Braxton, I lied.”
The concern on Crew’s face shifts minutely into something else, but then he’s brushing it off, immediately reassuring her. “That’s all right. What’s—”
“It’s not all right, Crew. I lied, and there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason I never left after I turned eighteen. I—I did something. When I was young, I did something really awful.”
A wrinkle forms between Crew’s brows, his eyes narrowing slightly. “What?”
Grace swallows, glances away from him to center herself—she knows she needs to look him in the eye when she tells him, but every atom in her body is screaming at her to look down instead, to keep her eyes on the ground where they belong.
She doesn’t listen; she picks up her chin and looks at him as tears continue to flow down her cheeks.
“I killed my father when I was sixteen.”
The bob of Crew’s Adam’s apple is visible, and it’s the only part of him that moves for a moment—for an eternity, it feels like. Then his face contorts into confusion, and he’s shaking his head like he can’t quite make sense of what she’s just said. “What do you—”
Grace doesn’t give him the chance to wonder or speculate.
“It was during the summer before my junior year—I woke up one night to my parents screaming. They screamed a lot—I could usually sleep through it. This was different. My mom—she wasn’t screaming at him, she was just…
” Grace’s eyes go sightless, and she’s back there, in that tiny bedroom, listening to the sound of her mother screaming for her life.
“I went out to see what was going on and he—he was stabbing her. Over and over and over again—and she—” She gasps, and her entire body trembles with it. “She stopped screaming.”
Crew’s hands are at her forearms, and it occurs to her then that he’s holding her up, keeping her in place. She didn’t even notice that she was at risk of falling, but it makes sense. She can hardly feel her body at all.
“I don’t really remember what happened after that.
From what I’ve read on the internet, it was some kind of trauma response.
My brain’s way of protecting me. But I remember coming to and holding a knife of my own, and my dad lying on the ground next to my mom, holding his neck.
Staring at me. There was so much blood. It was—it was everywhere.
He died in less than a minute. His eyes were wide open, just like hers. ”
“Grace—”
Grace shakes her head firmly. “No—you don’t—no.
I’m telling you this because Bellamy took me out of that house and made sure that I didn’t get picked up by the police.
He said they’d be able to tell from the forensics, or whatever, that my mom was already dead by the time I stabbed my dad, so that would make it premeditated murder, which means first-degree.
And because I was sixteen, they’d probably try me as an adult, maybe even give me the death penalty, since we’re in Texas. ”
She hears something that sounds like Jesus Christ from under Crew’s breath, and she finally lets herself look down, letting the weight of it all rest atop her head.
“He promised me if I ever did him wrong, he’d out me.
Your mom could tell when those TDA guys showed up that there was more to the story than animal abuse—she saw me lose my shit, and I— Rather than telling her the whole truth, I told her I’d been scared they were coming to question me, and that’s when she started looking into Bellamy’s dealings.
I don’t know how he got my number, but he did—and he texted me about a week later, saying he knew I’d been the one to send her sniffing around.
He asked if I really thought I’d be safe here.
” Despair seeps into her voice, breaking it into warbles, but she catches her breath and soldiers on.
“And three days after that, the horses got sick.”
The realization begins to dawn on Crew’s face, and any pieces of Grace’s heart that remain intact shatter completely. Anger, shock, disbelief—it all builds in his eyes, his mouth, the set of his jaw, and she knows, right then, that this is it. This is the moment she loses Crew forever.
“When they said it was probably just a bad batch of alfalfa, I didn’t argue with them.” Her sobs become hysterical then, as the reality of the current situation comes tumbling back. “I didn’t think it was him. Logistically speaking, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t think he’d hurt—”
Crew’s voice is firm, unflinching when he cuts her off. “Who did he hurt?”
Grace stares at him, takes a brief second to memorize his face.
She tries to burn it into her brain so she can always remember how beautiful it is.
After this, she’ll never see it and all its loveliness again.
“Your parents—they were in a car accident—I think he made one of his ranch hands run them off the road on Highway 46.”
Crew’s launching into action before she can even finish her sentence. He’s turning away from her, reaching into his pocket for his phone, and then he takes off, running at full speed toward his house. Boone is right next to him, and only the dog spares Grace a backward glance as they go.
She follows, unsure of what she’s trying to accomplish, but something in her makes her go—forces her to get to him, even if it’s the last thing he wants.
The front door is wide open when she reaches the porch, and Crew’s pacing frantically around the living room on the phone with someone.
His hand is at his brow, covering his eyes, but his mouth is twisted in anguish.
“Where are they now?” he asks, switching directions so his back is to Grace.
He stomps into the kitchen, unaware that she’s even in the same room.
“Get the fucking chopper out there right now, Martin. The only trauma center worth its salt is in Victoria and that’s an hour away.
Right now. Call me back.” He hangs up, then turns and spots her in the foyer.
He freezes, and a look of fury and disgust flickers over his face.
It feels like a punch directly to Grace’s gut.
He says nothing as he walks out of the kitchen, doesn’t stop to acknowledge her at all as he walks toward his bedroom.
She follows him once more, standing in his doorway with splotchy cheeks and swollen eyes, watching as he begins haphazardly throwing clothes into a duffel bag.
He yanks his phone charger out of the wall by his bedside table and shoves it in, then disappears into the bathroom and does the same with his toothbrush.
Zipping up the duffel, he flings it over his shoulder and then makes to leave.
She doesn’t know why she does it, isn’t remotely sure what her end goal is, but she moves into the middle of the doorway, blocking his exit.
Crew stops, but his eyes remain straight ahead. The only outward sign that he’s even aware of her presence is the way his jaw flexes hard and stays taut. He’s breathing heavily, and the hand that isn’t wrapped around the duffel bag’s strap is balled into a white-knuckled fist at his side.
Grace is almost trembling with the panic and anxiety and desperation of the moment, and the words escape her mouth before she can stop them. Her heart, it seems, has different plans than her brain. “Crew, you have to know that I—”
Upon hearing her voice, his eyes fall shut.
“Get out of my way, Grace,” he says, and it’s so quiet, so devastatingly emotionless that Grace feels her knees threatening to buckle once more.
“Please, just let me say—”
“I can’t even look at you right now,” he says, and when he opens his eyes, he makes good on that statement, keeping them on the wall behind her.
She doesn’t fight him anymore after that.
She moves, and he leaves, the door slamming behind him.
Grace remains in the empty hallway, and when the rumbling sound of his truck engine fades into the distance, she slides down a wall and buries her head between her knees.
She cries harder than she has in years, hard enough that she makes herself sick and throws up undigested kernels of popcorn on the hardwood.
One glance at the clock on Crew’s bedside table—that same clock she counted his heartbeats against—tells her it’s almost eleven thirty.
It’s almost time to leave.
It’s almost time to walk away from Halcyon, from Crew. From this life that was so painfully beautiful but never really hers to begin with.