Chapter 7
Michael
F our weeks to the day since I’d last seen Grace, I was headed south on I-65 on my way to pick her up and bring her back to Lark, for good if I had anything to say about it. And if her brother or ex ever did show up, they’d have a lot more than just Grace to deal with.
I hadn’t talked with Grace at all over the past few weeks, just texted with her a few times, mostly about logistics for the move. My instinct when she’d first texted to say that she was coming back to Lark had been to move her back right away before she had a chance to change her mind. She’d wanted to finish out the season at Barney’s, though, so I’d tamped down my impatience and tried not to bug her too much in the meantime.
That, and reminded myself daily that she wasn’t moving back for me, not directly. She needed a job, a place to live, and someone to help her watch out for herself. I was part of that, true, but it wasn’t as if she was moving to Lark because she wanted to be with me.
Now if I could just get my stubborn heart to accept that.
A few hours later, I pulled into Cameo’s lot and around the side of the building to the door up to Grace’s apartment, excited as a kid on Christmas morning to see Grace again. Tamping down my eagerness, I texted Grace to let her know I was there. Not thirty seconds later, the door swung open, and I saw Grace’s smiling face. My brain told me that her quick appearance simply meant she was ready to go while my ego argued that she was as eager to see me as I was her.
With that internal argument raging in my head, I stepped out of my SUV and returned her smile.
“Is this new?” She nodded at the SUV as I joined her. “What happened to the truck?”
It took me a few seconds to realize what she was talking about.
“The truck I was driving last time was Levi’s. We’d all driven down together, so I borrowed it when I came to see you. This...” I glanced back at the vehicle behind me... “is about a year old.”
“Got it.” I followed Grace up the stairs to her apartment, listening to her while simultaneously trying to convince myself not to stare at her perfect ass. “I remember the blue Civic you were driving when I lived in Lark before.”
I laughed thinking about all the times I’d stuffed myself in that car. It was a great vehicle, but not for someone my size.
“I finally upgraded for some more space.”
Grace opened her apartment door, and I followed her inside, noting a few boxes and bags sitting near the door.
“Well, at least for today, space shouldn’t be an issue. I don’t have a whole lot of stuff.”
She wasn’t kidding. Even if I left every piece of furniture I owned behind, I’d still have ten times the number of boxes that Grace had. The reason she had so little was sobering. She’d been in hiding for more than two years, needing to be ready to move on at a moment’s notice. In that situation, the fewer possessions, the better.
Grace shrugged, her rueful expression telling me she knew the direction my thoughts had gone.
“In some ways, it’s been a good thing. You realize how little you really need when you get right down to it.”
Someday, if she gave me a chance, I’d give her the house of her dreams full of everything she could ever want, let alone need. But that was a conversation for another day.
“I can’t say I’m sorry there’s not a couch or bed that has to be carried down those narrow-ass stairs.” I eyed her slim build. “Especially since you’re too little to be much help.”
That earned me an eyeroll.
“Please,” Grace scoffed. “’Too little’. Whatever.” I loved the rare moments like this when Grace forgot to be nervous or shy with me and threw some sass my way. The more of them I could get, the better.
“Besides,” Grace went on, “I’m stronger than I look.”
That, I knew to be true – in all ways. Somehow, Grace had convinced herself that she was weak for running from her brother and her ex. In reality, she was as strong as they came.
In just two quick trips, we had everything packed up and were on our way.
“Thanks, again, for coming to get me.”
I glanced over at Grace, happier than I should have been to have her sitting in my passenger seat.
“Glad to do it.” Understatement of the year; I’d jumped at the chance. “Did you get the car transferred to Vanessa’s brother okay?”
Grace’s car, the same one she’d had in Lark, had been in rough shape. It had been all but guaranteed to break down at some point on the trip back to Lark, stranding Grace who knew where. Rather than chance it, Grace had sold it to Vanessa’s brother, an auto mechanic, for a few hundred dollars.
“I did. He was ecstatic to get it. He has big plans for it, which he told me all about and I understood none of. But he’s happy to have it and I was happy to get rid of it before it needed another repair. I’ll have to look for something in a little better shape once I get settled in. Thanks to Mercy, though, I’ll have a super short commute to work.”
I glanced at Grace again, glad to see the smile on her face as she said that.
Instead of coming back to work at the pub, at least right away, Grace was going to help my cousin, Mercy, with office work for the family’s business, Baron Properties. They did construction and property management, with Levi, Ace, and Rycker doing most of the heavy lifting, both literally and figuratively, on the construction side, and Mercy running the property management side.
Mercy’s assistant had eloped to Jamaica a few weeks before and decided he was never coming back to Kentucky, leaving Mercy in a huge bind. I’d felt guilty even asking Grace if she’d be willing to help Mercy out for a while, but she’d agreed readily. As part of the deal, Grace would be living rent-free in an apartment just across the street from the Baron Properties office.
“Thanks, again, for helping her out. She’s just the tiniest bit excited to meet you and put you to work. If she charges at you like a dog being reunited with its owner after a long absence, try not to let it freak you out.”
Grace’s quiet chuckle made me smile in response. I was exaggerating, but just a little.
Not to mention that I completely understood how Mercy felt.
“As for the car, Jamey said you can borrow Meg’s old one for as long as you need to. It still runs fine, and they plan to sell it eventually, but for now it’s just taking up space.”
I felt Grace go still at my mention of Jamey. Not sure what had caused her reaction, I waited her out. She stared out the side window silently as the moments ticked by.
Finally, she spoke, her voice hesitant. “He’s not still mad at me, then?”
Puzzled, I looked over at her. “Jamey was never mad at you, Grace. Why would you think that?”
“Well,” she shifted her gaze to her hand, pulling on the tiny loose threads around a ragged hole in the knee of her jeans, “the way I left, I just figured he’d be angry, that you both would be. You were both so nice to me, and then...” She broke off, shaking her head. “You were so mad when you saw me again at Barney’s.”
Thinking about the way I’d spoken to Grace that day, I wished, once again, that I could kick my own ass. Thank God Levi had been there to calm me down and make me see what I was doing before it was too late and Grace had run again, this time from me.
When I spoke again, my voice was rough with remembered tension.
“We weren’t mad, Grace, we were worried about you. We looked for you. I...” I broke off, wondering how much to say to her, how much to reveal... “after you disappeared, we looked for you. We went to the hotel where you’d been staying, looked for your car in case you’d broken down or left it in a parking lot somewhere. We looked Grace, for weeks.”
It was Grace’s turn to look puzzled. “But...why?”
It was the same question she’d asked me weeks before when I’d asked her to move back to Lark.
Why did we care? Why would we worry about her?
Had she truly felt no connection to me at all when she’d been in Lark? I’d wondered before, but I couldn’t believe it was true. It had been there – a spark, just a beginning – but it had been there, and I knew that both of us had felt it.
Did she really think I’d just gotten pissed when she left, and then forgotten all about her until I’d seen her again at Barney’s and blown up at her? That was so far from the truth it was laughable.
“We didn’t know if you’d left on your own. It was so unlike you to just take off, and we’d already thought that maybe you had something going on. When you disappeared, we thought there was a possibility that someone had taken you.”
Grace’s eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth in shock. “I never thought of that,” she said so softly I could barely hear her. “I never, never thought of that. I thought you’d be mad – you had every right – but I never realized you’d worry or think... I’m so sorry.”
Every one of the texts I’d sent her, the one voicemail I’d let myself leave – all of them had told her. Told her that we just wanted to know that she was alright.
Had she not read or listened to even one of them?
“Did you read the texts I sent? Did you listen to the voicemail?”
Grace lowered her hand. “No. I didn’t. I didn’t want to see how mad you were at me, or if you hated me. I just couldn’t.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
All this time she’d thought I was angry at her, that I hated her. And I’d thought she didn’t care enough to just let us – me – know she was okay, or worse yet, that she couldn’t.
I wanted to ask her now. If she’d known, if she’d realized, would she have contacted me? Would she have reached out?
I didn’t ask, though. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
What would it feel like to hear that, even if she’d known I was worried out of my mind about her, she wouldn’t have done what she could to give me at least some small measure of peace? I still would have missed the hell out of her and wondered why she’d left, but at least I’d have known she wasn’t lying dead in a shallow grave somewhere.
I shook that thought away. It didn’t matter now, anyway, what she would or wouldn’t have done. She’d been on the run, terrified for her life. She’d done what she had to do. Agonizing over it now served no purpose other than to make Grace feel bad, which was the last thing I wanted.
Like she’d read my mind, Grace looked at me, eyes wide with guilt this time.
“I’m truly sorry, Michael. You must have thought I was the most awful person. No wonder you were so mad when you saw me again.”
My reaction had been far more about being hurt than it had ever been about anger, but I didn’t want to get into that now. Right now, I wanted to get us back on even footing.
“I never thought you were awful, far from it. It was a bad situation all around, but we’re through it. What do you say we put it in the past and let it stay there? In a few hours, you’ll be back in Lark, everyone – including Jamey – will be happy to see you, and we’ll start from there. Deal?”
As I had before, Grace took a deep breath, then nodded.
“Deal.”