Chapter 24
Grace
This is beyond dangerous, but it’s also the best thing I’ve ever felt. Nate slides into me as if he’s coming home, and all I want is to take him deeper. He whispers as he thrusts, loving words I definitely don’t deserve, but which I absorb like a sponge:
I love you, fuck—I love you so much.
Squeeze me again like that—fuck, that’s so good…
You’re my perfect girl, you know that?
I’m not. I’m no one’s perfect girl. I’m the daughter of a woman who wanted me dead my entire life, who loved making me hurt, and who probably got off on the sympathetic looks we drew at the hospital. And I’m the wife of a man who helped her continue hurting me until a few days ago.
No. NO.
I try to get back into the moment. Nate’s mouth is on my neck again, kissing me between loving, rapturous words. It’s more than enough to light my synapses, to set my body on fire, but in my mind… I’m still in the living room. I’m still seeing that timeline.
Right here, Eileen said, pointing at the year I married Nick, that’s where she did the most damage.
It was when you were about twenty-two, and I think you experienced a systemic Coeliac Crisis.
Your joints, stomach, and organs were damaged, most likely because of malabsorption leading to severe malnutrition.
Whatever she gave you during that time made things go from bad to severe.
I’m honestly surprised you weren’t checked for outright poisoning, but it looks like the doctors really trusted your mother.
I’m so sorry, Grace, they should have protected you.
I try to hold back the tears, though I know crying isn’t a turn-off for Nate. Somehow, crying because I need what he’s doing is worse than crying because of what he’s doing. It’s fucked up. I am fucked up.
“Hey,” he whispers, stilling suddenly.
“Don’t-fucking-stop,” I say all in one breath. “Fuck me until you come.”
I shrink back from his answering frown. He was angry before, colder than I’ve ever seen him.
I brought him back by giving him the access he wanted; I figured this access, this risk of indissoluble closeness, would be enough to make up for what I did.
But I’m crying because of my new knowledge.
Because I didn’t have him to lean on when I really needed him.
I want to give him everything now, and I want to hurt myself in the only way I have left.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Nate pulls out as fast as he plunged in, cock bobbing wetly as he steps away. He tucks it into his pants a second later, eyes flinty. “That bitch took everything she could from you, Grace. You are not giving her this.”
Before I can respond, he scoops me up off the desk.
“Nate, no,” I try to squirm out of his hold, “I want you to keep going.”
Ignoring my demands, he carries me to the bathroom at the back of the home gym. Then—I try to fight him off—he wedges both of us into the shower stall and flicks the water on full blast. And freezing. I shout, but Nate forces me still, cold water drenching us in seconds.
“You ready to come back to me, Grace?”
“Fuck you!” I try for venom, but the curse is weak.
Even though I slap at his hands, he shucks me out of my top, forcing me to stand naked under the cold spray.
“One more minute of cooling down, then we’ll go into the sauna. Want to count with me, Grace?”
“I hate you.”
“Say that again. Come on, like you mean it this time.”
“I fucking…” I swallow, trying to stop the tears choking me up. I’m hugging myself to keep from collapsing. I try again. “I fucking hate you, Nate.”
“One more time, little girl, then you get to go in the sauna.”
I shake my head. Because it’s a lie. He knows it and so do I.
“She—” I swallow, unable to say it.
“Yes, tell me.”
“Sh-she hates me.”
He shuts off the shower and I hear the echo of my ragged breaths in the tight space.
“Who hates you, Grace?”
I’m shaking with cold, with despair. “M-mother.”
“That’s right.” He takes my elbow and leads me into the sauna.
It’s just a bit bigger than the shower stall, with a short bench and an aura so Hadean I catch my breath. Nate sits down, taking me on his lap as I finally break down and sob.
“That’s right. You’re safe with me. You’re home with me.”
“I don’t h-hate you,” I whisper between sobs. “I don’t. I’m s-so sorry, Nate.”
He hooks a finger under my chin, tilting my face to his. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“But I said it. Over and over.”
“The only hatred here,” he squeezes me tight, “is against the bitch who hurt you. But she can’t touch you. You’re in your house, with your husband. If Constance Reid showed up at our gates, Shep would run her off. And if she kept coming, she would have to face me next.”
“Please,” I whisper, “I don’t want to think about her any more.”
He kisses my temple, lips lingering at my hairline. “What do you want to think about instead, Grace?”
“Anything else.” I hesitate, my body tingling with the heat so soon after the cold. “Why did you stop before? You didn’t—I didn’t want you to. You could have finished.”
He moves me, taking me off his lap and seating me at his side instead. We’re both naked, but the sexual charge is absent.
When it comes, his voice is thoughtful. “You got me to fuck you bareback and fertile, Grace, and not because you needed comfort or because you wanted it. You tried to use me to self-harm. And I won’t have that.”
I draw back, disgust curling in my belly. “It was your idea.”
“Correct,” he snaps, “until you tried to turn a moment of reconciliation into something else.”
“It’s just about control with you.” I stand, ready to leave both the sauna and this conversation behind.
He catches my wrist, stopping me before I can reach for the door handle. “Ten more minutes, love. You need this as much as I do, especially after that appointment.”
That appointment.
He pulls at me until I’m sitting beside him once more.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“No, you wanted to fuck about it.”
I laugh, unable to help myself, thumbing a last tear from my eye. It dries instantly in the warm, red air.
“I really was sorry I didn’t let you stay. I knew what might be coming during that,” I choose a different word deliberately, “talk with Eileen. But seeing it like that in her files, hearing her tell me what I already knew but never really put together… I wasn’t ready for any of it, Nate.”
“Of course you weren’t.” He puts an arm around me. I lean in, despite the way we’re both starting to sweat. “How could anyone be ready to discover something like that?”
“What…” I trail off, considering the question before I ask it. It’s something that came up only a handful of times with Nick, and which he refused to address. “What happened to your mother, Nate?”
He draws in a breath and I pull back to look at him. His regard is careful, almost cool.
“Nick never told you, eh?”
I shake my head, wondering if he’ll continue.
“She died of ALS when we were ten. But our father moved on before she was even dead.”
“Oh, God, Nate—”
“She used to rescue cats. Dogs too, of course, but kittens were her favourite. She’d go into places no one else had the guts to even look at. Crawl spaces. Junked cars. Garbage heaps. Anything to rescue her little hearts.”
I swallow, refusing to cry during Nate’s moment of grief. He’s sitting still and stoic, eyes distant, his hand squeezing my thigh almost as an afterthought.
Her little hearts…
“You called me little heart the first time we met, all those years ago, when you tried to rescue me.”
“I failed.” He meets my eyes. “And I failed again when you married Nick. But now, here we are.”
I smile. It feels like a minor miracle, sitting here with him, with all that’s come before. I realise that I’ve never given him a nickname before. I want to, despite all our problems. And I already have something to call him.
“Here we are, big heart.”
I see the moment the words hit home. Nate’s nostrils flare and then—my heart clenches hard—he blinks back tears as I watch.
“Is that what I am to you, Grace?” He cups my cheek, keeping me from looking away. “Am I your big heart?”
I try to remind myself: this is messed up, wrong, impossible. My husband is dead. He’s my brother-in-law.
And Nate has wanted me healthy from the start… unlike anyone else.
He has only ever told me the truth. And now I see it. More than that, I feel it.
“Yes,” I whisper, confirming what I’ve just figured out. Relief floods me, warm and red. “You’re my biggest, darkest heart.”
I hold Nate in the warm womb of the sauna.
He wraps himself around me, naked and unaroused, his body shaking with grief I never knew flowed so deep, but which I’ve somehow drawn up to merge with my own.
Together, I realise, we might be able to make something of this twisted situation.
If we can get past our fucked up origins and unacceptable circumstances, maybe we actually can be what he has envisioned.
Maybe we can continue his mother’s good works, and rescue one another.