39. Grace
Grace
My vision blurs, and I swipe at my eyes, annoyed more than alarmed until I realize I’m crying. Actual tears, spilling fast enough that the road doubles and bends in front of me.
My grip on the steering wheel tightens as my insides shudder, breath stuttering, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m near sobbing.
I guide the rental onto the shoulder and throw it into park, my hands shaking as I lean forward, forehead dropping to the steering wheel. This doesn’t happen to me. I don’t unravel like this.
Not since—
But something inside me has split open, and I can’t hold it together long enough to pretend I’m fine. The sound that escapes my throat is raw and foreign, torn straight from the place I keep locked down.
My shoulders hitch as everything I didn’t say, didn’t ask for, didn’t allow myself to hope for comes crashing in all at once. Maddox didn’t just see me—he met me.
Steady, patient, unassuming Maddox, who never pushed but somehow got closer than anyone ever has. Who made space for me without making me feel weak for taking it and who listened like what I said mattered, like I mattered.
And then he turned his back on me, both figuratively and literally.
The grief of it burns, surprising in its intensity. I trusted him and thought he would keep me safe, and I don’t offer pieces of myself easily or carelessly.
I let the reality of that hurt, let it settle into my chest and work its way into my bones, because pretending it doesn’t matter would be a lie. I press my palms to my eyes and breathe through the sting of it, through the loss of it.
He’s a good man.
The best I’ve ever known, maybe.
And he’s flawed, but who isn’t? And who among us hasn’t let fear ride shotgun when we should have kicked fear to the curb and taken the wheel?
That truth lands quietly but solidly. Maddox isn’t cruel, he isn’t careless, and he wasn’t playing games. He was scared for his family, for the quiet life he’s built here, for everything he’s already lost. He couldn’t stand to lose again, and oh, how I get that.
On the cusp of being a man, his life and future as he knew them ended with the death of his father. Then he chooses a path to fix things for his family, no matter what he may really want, only to find heartache and strife.
And then there was me.
All he could see was that I had the power to take it all away, everything he thought he was gaining with his second chance in Winslow Grove.
That fear has been running underneath us since we met that first afternoon in the Grill, an undercurrent I felt but couldn’t name.
I name it now.
And now, the idea of driving away—for real this time—feels unbearable in a way I didn’t expect when I packed my suitcase and left the inn.
I lift my head and stare through the windshield at the road stretching forward in the direction I was so certain I needed to go.
It would be easy to leave. But I want this man more than I want my life back in Los Angeles, and that’s not a small thing to admit.
The job is replaceable. The apartment is replaceable.
The careful, self-sufficient existence I built around never needing anything I couldn’t provide for myself—replaceable.
He isn’t.
How do you walk away from a man like Maddox? From the way he looks at you like he’s already chosen you, even when he’s scared. From the quiet certainty of how right it felt when it was good between us.
You don’t, not without one last try.
The thought settles into my chest with a steadiness that surprises me.
This isn’t desperation, and it isn’t hope running ahead of sense—it’s clarity.
I didn’t come this far, emotionally or literally, to turn my back on the one thing that has felt true in longer than I can remember.
If there’s a chance we can work through this, I owe it to both of us to find out.
I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand and breathe slowly until my pulse evens out. Gripping the wheel, I signal and ease the car back onto the road toward Winslow Grove.
I’m choosing him.
I’m about a mile out when headlights bloom in my rearview mirror. A truck rides my speed, closer than I’d like, and my shoulders tense as I clock the shape of it. Dark. Familiar lines.
My pulse skids sideways, and I check the mirror again, heart loud in my ears. The grille is wide and squared off, the kind you don’t forget once you’ve stood beside it in a gravel drive, once you’ve watched its owner lean against the door with his arms crossed.
The truck honks once, sharp and insistent.
My breath catches somewhere in my throat. The driver lifts one hand from the wheel, slow and deliberate.
Maddox.
His name lands heavy and warm, right in the center of my chest, and my foot eases off the gas. The car slows onto the shoulder ahead, and I pull over without letting myself think too hard about what comes next.
When I cut the engine, the quiet presses in around me. Through the windshield, I can see the faint outline of Winslow Grove in the distance, the town sitting just there, patient and waiting, like it knew I’d be back.
He gets out of his truck, and I wind my window down. The cold moves through immediately, biting at my cheeks and slipping under my collar as the sound of his boots on gravel grows louder and steadier with every step.
I stay still with my palms flat on my thighs and my breath shallow. Every instinct I have tells me to brace, to rebuild the wall fast before he gets close enough to matter again. I don’t. I’ve already broken open today, and there’s no putting me back the way I was, so I let him come.
He appears beside my window with his shoulders hunched against the cold and his jaw set, and he looks exhausted but determined. Like a man who made a decision and chased it down before it could get away, or maybe that’s what I want to see.
He braces one hand on the roof of the car and dips his head toward the open window. The familiar pull of him is almost enough to undo the last of my composure.
“You weren’t supposed to leave like that.” There’s no accusation in his tone, no anger—just the truth, laid bare between us in the cold.
Something loosens in my chest. “I wasn’t supposed to stay either.”
His gaze drops to my mouth and then lifts to meet my eyes. “I couldn’t let you go without trying. Not again.”
Not again.
His admission has me pushing the car door open and stepping onto the gravel.
“You came after me.” It’s a silly thing to say. Obvious, but I need to hear him confirm it out loud.
He nods once. “Yeah.”
“Say what you need to say, Maddox.”
“Before anything else, I need you to hear me when I say I’m here.” He doesn’t look away, doesn’t shift or hedge, and it isn’t until I give him a small nod—until I let him see I’m receiving it—that he continues. “I read it.”
“What?”
“The article you said you were submitting.”
The following silence is fragile enough I’m almost afraid to breathe through it.
His gaze bores into me. “You didn’t think I’d believe you. That you’d ever get me to understand how the story needed to be told.” Something honest and tired moves through his voice.
“I just—I couldn’t make you hear me. Not in that moment.” The words leave me hollowed out, scraped clean of everything but the uselessness of having tried.
He exhales, rough at the edges. “I thought you were getting even because I thought the worst of you and walked away. I thought you were choosing the story over me.”
He shakes his head slowly, like he’s still disgusted with himself. “But when I cooled down and stripped away everything I’d been carrying, I knew I was wrong. So fucking wrong. That’s why I went back for the article.”
“I chose you.” I hold his gaze so he understands the full weight of it. “Long before Erica told me about Beto. I still wrote the truth, what mattered to the story, but I didn’t include the parts that weren’t mine to tell. That really didn’t matter.”
He doesn’t hide how my truth lands as his features soften, cheeks flush, and he swallows hard. “I didn’t trust you—”
“No, and you didn’t let me in.”
He nods. “After my dad, I believed I needed to take whatever was coming, alone, that it was the only way through. That carrying it myself, fixing it myself, was just what you did. And I used that as an excuse to shut you out, not hear you, when it mattered most.” His voice drops. “Grace, I’m sorry.”
Even understanding how he got there, the truth of it still burns, because I realize sorry doesn’t answer the real question.
What happens the next time things get hard? What happens when he defaults to the man who shoulders everything alone and leaves me standing on the outside?
“I need to know something.” I slide my hands into my pockets, fingers stiff from the cold. “Are you talking to me right now, opening up and sharing a piece of you, or are you apologizing because you realize I didn’t do anything wrong, and you want to fix things because it’s the right thing to do?”
He steps closer. “I’m letting you in. I fucked up, and I’m done going it alone. And I know none of this might fix what I broke—that’s not why I’m here.” His eyes stay steady on mine. “I should’ve trusted you with it when Erica told you. And if you walk away now, I’ll own that. I mean it.”
“Thank you. That means more than you know.” I press my tongue to the inside of my cheek, grounding myself before the ache can tip over into something I can’t contain. “I need you to understand why I wrote what you read on the laptop—”
“Grace, you don’t need to explain to—”
“But I do. It’s not to justify anything… It’s another piece of me.”
He swallows hard, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“Writing is how I process things. I’ve done it since long before I went into journalism, and that’s why I threw myself into my work after Cary died. And after you walked out. I was never going to do anything with what you read on my laptop. I deleted the—”
“Grace.” His voice is gentle but firm in a way that steadies me. He closes the remaining distance between us. “I know. I trust you.”
I nod, lips pressed together, eyes burning, and for a moment, neither of us speaks. The quiet stretches between us—not awkward, just necessary, the kind of silence that has its own weight and purpose.
Needing to feel him, to anchor the swell of sensations rising in me, my hand finds his. Our fingers thread together, and touching him feels like coming back to something I didn’t realize I’d been missing.
“I’m choosing this.” I lift my chin and hold his eyes. “Choosing us.”
Something breaks loose in him, and he exhales, shoulders dropping, and then his free hand comes up to cup my face, steady and reverent. His thumb brushes my cheek once like he needs to confirm I’m real and standing here.
Then he kisses me.
Not careful and not hesitant—he kisses me like the last wall between us has come down, and he’s walking through it without looking back. The world doesn’t just tilt, it dissolves.
My knees buckle as his mouth moves over mine, urgent and consuming, and I fist the front of his jacket with both hands like he’s the only thing keeping me upright. Every thought I’ve ever had burns away to nothing.
When he finally pulls back, forehead resting against mine, his breath is ragged, and his hands still hold me like he isn’t ready to let go. Neither of us moves.
“Thank fuck.” His voice is rough and heartfelt, and then his mouth twitches as reality nudges its way back in.
“Grace. I don’t want to kill the mood, and I know the timing is terrible, but we have to figure out how this works.
Me here. You in LA. Because right now, I can’t bear the thought of you leaving, and I don’t want to let you go. ”
I smile because I’m not scrambling for the answer. Whether I knew it or not, I’ve already planted seeds and rearranged things for what comes next in my life.
“Don’t worry.” I lean in, brushing my lips over his again. “I’ve got that covered. Let’s just be here for now.”
He doesn’t argue, only kisses me again, deeper this time, and it feels like an agreement sealed between two people who finally decided to stop getting in their own way.
I break the kiss. “Wait. Isn’t there a game happening right now? Didn’t the team make the semifinals?”
“Yeah.”
“Maddox. You left your own game.”
“I did.” He says it without apology, his thumb tracing a slow arc across my knuckles. “I’m going to be wherever you are. That’s just how it is now.”
He presses a kiss to the tip of my nose, and his mouth curves as he reaches for my hand. “So, you want to come watch our boys win?”
I lace my fingers through his. “Lead the way, Coach.”