31. Grace
Grace
Cold seeps through the thin soles of my boots and curls around my ankles, sharp enough to keep me rooted. I perch on the edge of a tree stump near the Hartleys’ barn, the quiet pressing in until my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I pull it out.
Morgan: Okay but tell me you’re not actively resisting the Maddox Hartley situation.
My brow furrows as I type back.
Me: What situation?
Three dots appear immediately.
Morgan: Don’t play dumb.
Morgan: I googled him.
Morgan: The racer is criminally hot.
A weak smile tugs at my mouth. She isn’t wrong, though she also isn’t even close because hot barely scratches the surface. And thinking about him—his mouth, his hands, the way the kiss broke me, owned me—chokes something painful in my chest.
For one suspended second, it had felt inevitable.
And then Erica appeared, and he left with her. No explanation. Just gone.
Me: You googled him?
Morgan: Obviously.
Morgan: I have eyes. And Wi-Fi.
Morgan: Also, Grace… seriously?
My thumbs hover over the screen, unsure of what to say. Whatever it was that ignited between us shouldn’t have happened, and then his ex showed up. So, where does that leave us now?
Not to mention, I’ve still got to finish this assignment and figure out my life. No matter what happens with Maddox, do I want to continue journalism? The time and distance from LA, Vitale, and all the memories of Cary have given me perspective.
As Toby’s news has settled, it’s felt more and more like a release, and I’m no longer sure I want to spend the rest of my life digging for something I’m bound to never find.
Me: It’s complicated.
Her response comes slower this time.
Morgan: Uh-huh.
Morgan: That’s the kind of answer that usually means you’re already in trouble.
I huff out a quiet breath.
Morgan: I’m leaving LA tonight. Wish I’d seen you. Miss you. Call me soon. xo
Me: K. Love you. Talk soon.
I slip the phone back into my pocket and rest my elbows on my knees, staring out at the dark stretch of land in front of me. The quiet is heavy.
Maddox and I most probably can’t be anything. Whatever attraction flared between us—whatever intimacy we shared—I can’t hope for more. And yet, trying to smother it feels impossible, like I’m holding my breath underwater and pretending I won’t eventually need air.
I’m so fucked.
Warmth settles over my shoulders as a jacket—heavy and familiar—drops around me, and the scent of it reaches me before anything else does. Cedar and soap and heat, unmistakably him, wrapped around me.
Oh, how do I stop wanting this? Him?
“How long have you been out here?” His voice is low, careful.
I shrug, the movement swallowed by the weight of his coat.
I lost track of time somewhere between getting back to the Hartley home and realizing I didn’t want to be inside.
Meri’s at Katie’s tonight, and my thoughts were too big for the house, too loud and restless to be contained within four walls.
“A while.”
“Why don’t we go inside? I’ll fix you some tea.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it, brittle at the edges. “Tea?” I tip my head to look at him. “I need something stronger than that.”
His mouth teases upward at the corners as a chuckle rumbles out of him, low and raspy, and without asking, he turns toward the house.
My steps fall into sync with his. There’s a tenderness between us, undeniable, but it’s stretched thin over everything we haven’t said. The kiss. Erica. The fact that his hands have been on me in a way that still lingers, still throbs under my skin.
Inside the house, warmth closes around us, but I don’t shed his jacket. I let it stay, the weight of it settling me.
Maddox heads for the kitchen and I follow, sliding onto a stool at the island. He opens a cabinet, pulls down a bottle of whiskey, and pours two generous shots.
When he turns, I see it—the weariness etched deeper than fatigue, and he hands me a glass.
“You look tired.” I take the glass, the amber glow catching the light.
“Probably the pressure of having a reporter glued to my side. Hard to keep my nose clean.” His smile appears but never quite reaches his eyes.
I huff a quiet laugh, not wanting to get into how I’ve been struggling to hold up that front. “Relax, Coach. You’re not that interesting.”
He doesn’t answer right away, only plants his hands on the counter across from me and leans in close enough that I catch the clean, familiar scent of soap, cold night air, and something distinctly him.
His gaze skims past my shoulder, drops to the hard surface of the counter, then lifts back to me. I get the sense he’s steadying himself before stepping onto thin ice.
He looks undone. Quietly so.
“Tonight brought a lot back.” He doesn’t need to say it. I’ve been keeping count: his dad, Erica, all of it stacked together.
He drags in a breath and moves to sit on the stool beside mine. Our knees hover a breath apart. All it would take is one small shift, and we’d be touching.
“I’m trying to work through his accident, his death.” His gray irises darken, features pinching. “You see, for all these years, I’ve held myself responsible for what happened to him.”
I straighten but keep my mouth shut, giving him the space to share this his way.
“He asked me to help him fix an engine, saying things would go quicker with two sets of hands. I blew him off, even though I said I’d be there. My friends were going to the speedway and then a party, and I never gave my dad a second thought.”
My fingers curl around the glass, but I don’t interrupt, although this explains so much about the way he takes on the world. He holds himself accountable for so much, even things that aren’t his to own.
“Only recently”—he gives me a wry smile—“after talking with my mom and Katie, have I started to see things in a different way.”
I reach out and squeeze his hand. When I go to pull away, he tightens his grip.
“He was glad I wasn’t there, worried it could’ve been me.
And when I tried to apologize after the accident, he shut me down so fast, told me to leave…
” He drifts off, gaze now staring down into his glass.
“I took that so hard, as confirmation that I’d failed him, but it had nothing to do with that.
He was in so much pain and didn’t want me to see him like that.
“Then, when he died, Mom and I found out almost immediately about the debt.” His throat bobs as if something is caught there, and when he continues, his voice is quieter, more exposed.
“We agreed not to tell Katie. It was too much, and she was young. I have to tell her now, but I worry it could shatter her memories and beliefs of a man she adored. A man who deserves her love and admiration. Most of that debt was because of me. To cover all the racing and training.”
I try to picture him at barely eighteen, still half boy, half man, forced to reconcile his perceived role in his father’s death, the guilt, only to then discover the family finances, or lack thereof. How easy it would be to take that on as his fault, too.
I can see how all of that, lodged deep inside him, would’ve shaped his choices thereafter. He doesn’t have to say it, but I can’t help filling in the gaps.
The shift from teaching to racing would’ve given his family the sudden infusion of cash they needed. The way responsibility would have tightened around him, leaving little room for anything else.
After all, what other way could he have turned things around so quickly, ensured his mother and sister would never want for anything?
He shifts, his knee brushing mine—barely there but enough to tether me to the moment.
“And knowing how close we were to losing everything after we’d already lost him… I can’t accept that he chose to leave us. It was the pain. He took too much, miscalculated.”
“You loved him. He was a good man.” I rest my hand on his forearm. “That matters more than the questions people asked, their speculation, and more than the struggles and problems he carried.”
He brings his other hand over mine, palm warm, and for a heartbeat, the world contracts, and there’s only the warmth between us. The stillness. The quiet understanding humming in the space we share.
“I don’t know why I told you that.” His laugh is anything but light or funny.
“I do.”
Because he trusts me.
Because he sees me.
Because something between us has shifted—tilted just enough to slide us toward each other.
His gaze searches my face, like he senses the change moving through me even if he doesn’t know what it is yet. His thumb drifts once across the back of my hand before he lets go, slowly, reluctantly.
I shiver.
“You cold?”
“No.” And I’m not. Not really.
There’s more we need to talk about. I just don’t want to be the one to bring her into the room. Like his father, like this moment, I want him to choose when to speak. I want him to tell me about Erica when he’s ready.
“I’ll start a fire.” He rises to his feet, and I follow him into the living room.
The fire catches quickly, flames licking up the logs, filling the room with warmth and a low, continual crackle.
Maddox crouches in front of the hearth longer than necessary, as if stealing a moment, and when he finally straightens, he doesn’t look at me right away.
He settles on the edge of the couch, elbows braced on his knees, hands loosely clasped. I sit across from him, close enough to feel the heat from the fire and from him.
“Erica was my first.” The words are even and matter of fact. “My first everything.”
I nod, already aware of this, the broad strokes anyway, and surprised by the absence of jealousy or sting. We both had lives before this… us. Whatever we are.
“We grew up together, started dating in high school.” His mouth tilts, almost a smile. Almost. “We were engaged when we left Winslow Grove. Both of us eighteen and thinking we were on top of the world. I thought I knew her.”
The fire pops softly.
“But once we were gone… Everything changed. Spain was literally a foreign country in every meaning of the word, along with the money and lifestyle. My career took off faster than I expected.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “She fell in with the wrong crowd. Partying. Drugs. People who didn’t care about her, only who she was, her connection to me and that world.”
His shoulders round slightly, the posture of someone replaying moments he wishes he’d caught sooner. “And I was busy. Always gone. I told myself she was just finding her footing, that it was normal and she would adjust. She’d been in worse situations before. The move was a good thing.”
Raw wires of steel thread his voice. “By the time I realized something was wrong, it was already bad.”
I can see it—a younger him, driven, fraught, trying to keep everything upright. Family. Career. Love. All of it balanced on his back.
“I tried to help her with rehab and doctors.” His gaze drops to the fire. “Sometimes she wanted it. Sometimes she didn’t. And I kept thinking if I just did more—earned more, was around more, fixed more—she’d come back to herself.”
He pauses, and the silence stretches, thick but unbroken.
“Everyone told me to walk away. My agent. Guys on the team. People who didn’t know her like I did.”
“But you didn’t.”
He shakes his head once. “Not at first. Then things got worse. She started sleeping around. Stealing from me after I changed her access to the money—cut it back to something small, reasonable. I ended things with her, urged her to go back home. That’s when she moved out.
But then she’d break into my place when I wasn’t there even though I’d changed the locks.
She threw parties that went on for days. Left it trashed.”
The words land flat, stripped of drama, but his expression shifts to strain and distance, like he’s right back there, reliving each awful, disorienting moment.
“It wasn’t about the money. If I’m being honest, if I’d been able to help her, I might’ve forgiven all of it.” He rakes his hand roughly through his hair. “But it was everything together. The lying. The chaos.”
As much as it’s difficult to listen to this, I try to imagine how much this would’ve hurt him, and a big part of me isn’t surprised. From the second I clocked Erica, though I didn’t name it at the time, I knew she was using.
“What did your mom say? Katie and friends?” The question is gentle. I can’t imagine Meri telling him to abandon Erica—but I also can’t imagine her wanting her son to sacrifice himself.
“She didn’t know until the other night. That’s what I wanted to talk to her and Katie about. Erica said she wanted to come home, and I didn’t want any of them, my friends included, to not know what they’d be facing.”
He stares into the fire, jaw set. “She became someone else. Conniving. Mean. Reckless in ways that scared me.” His voice dips. “I still believe the real Erica is in there somewhere. I do. But I couldn’t reach her. No matter what I tried.”
He quiets again, and I stay with him in the silence, sensing he isn’t finished.
“I care about her, but I’m not in love with her. We’re done. There’s no room for her in my life. Before tonight, the last time we spoke was when I left Spain, and I told her then not to contact me unless she was sober.”
The fire shifts, logs settling.
“And tonight? She was high.” I shift in my chair. “What happened?”
Then he turns to me, fully. “I don’t know how she got the money to come back. I meant what I told her. And I know what tonight looked like, but I left with her because I didn’t know what she’d do to you.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I know… It may not have looked like it, but I was choosing you.”
My chest cracks open enough to let in the words I didn’t know I needed to hear. Blinking back tears, I nod. “And where is she now?”
“She’s staying with Reggie.”
“Reggie?”
“Her foster mom.”
The quiet that follows feels intentional, and when I reach for him, he takes my hand in his large, warm palm and interlaces our fingers. “It sounds like you know this, but just in case, you didn’t fail her. You cared and you tried.”
More words rise in my chest that I don’t say yet. About my brother, about the guilt of being the one still standing when someone you loved isn’t—the what-ifs that circle no matter how many times you’ve already answered them.
I know that weight.
But now isn’t my time. This is about him and how underneath it all is the ache for everything Erica cost him. The years. The version of himself he must have slowly stopped recognizing.
So I stay right here, close enough to share the warmth of the fire, close enough to let what he’s trusted me with settle into something solid between us.