Chapter 42 Grayson
GRAYSON
The Mercer house on Thanksgiving is controlled chaos in the best possible way.
Sherry runs it like a strict coach who also happens to love everyone in the room unconditionally, which is a specific kind of authority I’ve never encountered before but immediately respect.
She moves between the stove and the counter with the efficiency of someone who’s done this exact dance for years, issuing instructions without ever raising her voice, accepting help without giving up an inch of control.
Thomas is on drink duty, which I suspect is a role assigned to him rather than chosen, based on the way Sherry redirects him every time he drifts too close to the oven.
Kai is setting the table with Wren, and judging by the scowl on his face, he’d rather be doing literally anything else, but he won’t say that out loud because it’s Thanksgiving and his mom told him to do it.
Harlow stands at the counter beside Sherry, helping transfer something into a serving dish. She laughs at whatever her mom just said, her shoulder brushing hers, easy and unguarded in a way that makes something in my chest pull tight.
I’m leaning against the kitchen doorframe, officially assigned to staying out of the way until called upon, which suits me just fine. It gives me an excuse to stand here and watch her.
She’s wearing a cream-colored sweater, her hair down around her shoulders, and she’s beautiful, which isn’t exactly new.
But this feels different somehow. Softer.
Brighter. She looks comfortable in her own skin in a way that still catches me off guard sometimes—not because it’s new, but because I remember the earlier versions of her.
The careful stillness. The way she used to map every room before she let herself settle into it.
She’s not doing that today.
She’s just here. Present. Laughing with her mom over something I can’t hear.
I watch her reach across the counter for a serving spoon without hesitating, without that brief internal calculation I used to catch in the smallest moments—especially the ones involving food.
“You’re staring,” Kai says, appearing beside me with a stack of napkins.
“I’m observing.”
He gives me a look that says exactly what he thinks of that distinction. Then his gaze follows mine to Harlow, and something in his expression shifts.
Relief.
The kind that’s probably been lodged in his chest for a long time and is only just now finding room to breathe.
He doesn’t say anything.
Neither do I.
Sometimes the things that matter most between people don’t need to be spoken out loud. They just need to be witnessed by someone who knows the whole story.
Kai heads back toward the dining room, and I push off the doorframe in search of a way to make myself useful.
The table is full in a way that makes the house feel smaller and warmer at the same time.
Sherry’s sister is here with her husband, Ron, who has strong opinions about football and shares them freely.
There are cousins—two of them, college-aged and loud in the easy, comfortable way of people who’ve never had to make themselves small to survive.
A family friend named Patrice has known Sherry since before Kai was born and calls everyone, including Thomas, baby.
Wren’s family is here, too, her mom and all four of her younger siblings, which somehow makes the room feel even louder.
It’s a lot of people. A lot of voices. A lot of dishes being passed and conversations overlapping.
Harlow sits beside me, and as the noise rises around her, she doesn’t flinch.
She passes the rolls without cataloging them. She takes the mashed potatoes when they come around and puts some on her plate. She listens to Ron’s latest football take and offers a response that’s polite enough to pass for respectful but sharp enough to make Thomas hide a smile behind his glass.
And she eats.
Not like she’s forcing herself so no one notices. Not like she’s doing it to avoid causing a scene. She eats because she wants to.
Just like a person sitting at a Thanksgiving table.
Which is what she is.
And I know enough about what it cost her to get here to understand that sentence isn’t as simple as it should be.
Under the table, I rest my hand on her knee and give it a gentle squeeze.
On her other side, Wren catches it. Her mouth curves with a smug little smile, and she gives me the slightest shake of her head before turning back to the conversation. I also catch the way Kai keeps glancing at her when he thinks nobody’s looking, which is its own thing entirely.
Thomas asks me something about hockey, and I answer. Harlow turns slightly toward me while I talk, her shoulder pressing into mine, and when I glance over, she’s already looking at me.
“What?” I murmur, low enough for only her.
The corner of her mouth lifts. “Nothing.”
I arch a brow.
She looks back down at her plate, smiling to herself. “You’re a natural.”
“At what?”
“Being here,” she says simply. “Fitting into the chaos.”
I look around at the table, at the noise and warmth and love packed into every inch of it, and I can’t help the thought that rises up in me.
I want this.
Not just the meal. Not just the room.
The future it represents.
The one that has her in it.
“I’m glad I’m here,” I say.
Harlow glances at me again, and something in her expression shifts, like maybe she’s having the exact same thought.
At least I hope she is.
“Me too,” she says.
And I know she means something bigger than the table.
After dinner, the cousins migrate to the living room.
Ron claims the armchair and starts narrating the game to no one in particular.
Patrice and Sherry clear plates in a rhythm that suggests decades of practice.
Thomas tops off everyone’s drinks, then lingers in the kitchen doorway looking like a man who is deeply, profoundly satisfied with his life.
I get it.
Kai ends up on the back porch with a mug wrapped between his hands, staring out over the yard.
I know better than to interrupt whatever’s going on in his head.
He’s been quieter since dinner, not in a bad way.
Just in the Kai way. Processing something internally that he’ll eventually come back from when he’s ready.
Harlow finds me in the living room, where I’ve somehow been dragged into a conversation with her cousin Marcus about whether a hockey player could survive a football season.
I have several opinions on that, but before I can share any of them, Harlow appears at my shoulder.
“Can I steal him?” she asks.
Marcus waves us off immediately, already halfway into a different conversation with someone else.
Harlow tips her head toward the back door.
I follow.
The yard opens up behind the house, sloping down toward a stretch of water at the edge of the property.
A lake—small, but real—with the surface catching the last thin light of evening and the glow from the bonfire Thomas must have built while everyone else was cleaning up, because it’s already burning steadily in the stone pit near the tree line.
A few people have drifted outside. Wren has a blanket around her shoulders, and suddenly Kai’s extended porch brooding makes a lot more sense.
Harlow wraps her arms around herself and tips her face up toward the sky.
I watch her do it.
There’s something about her outside. She always seems to take up a little more space—not physically, but in the way she exists. Like open air gives her permission to be less careful. Less contained. Like whatever she spends so much energy managing indoors goes quiet out here.
“Your parents are really great,” I say.
She looks over at me, something fond settling into her expression. “They’re a lot.”
“Good a lot.”
Her mouth curves. “Yeah.” She lets out a slow breath, her exhale clouding in the cold. “My mom cried a little when she hugged me goodbye last time. She tried to hide it, but she’s terrible at it.”
I smile. “Wonder where you got that from.”
Harlow gives me a look. “I do not cry.”
“You absolutely cry.”
“Happy tears are different.”
“They’re still tears.”
She bumps her shoulder into my arm, and I catch her, drawing her into my side and pressing a kiss to her hair.
We stand there at the edge of the firelight for a while. The conversation around the bonfire moves the way conversations do on nights like this—easy and unhurried, people talking not because they have anything urgent to say, but because they want to stay close to each other.
Harlow shifts against me, and when I look down, she’s watching the water.
“I used to come down here when I needed to think,” she says.
“Yeah?”
She nods. “When things were bad. We moved here right after Kai left for college. We all needed a fresh start.” Her gaze stays fixed on the lake. “The ocean’s always been the place where I feel calmest—outside of the rink, anyway.”
Then she tips her head back to look at me.
“At least it was until you came along.”
My heart hits hard against my ribs, and I lean down to kiss her, brief and soft and full of everything I can’t fit into words fast enough.
“I love you.”
Her smile is small and real and still somehow capable of undoing me every time I see it. “I love you too, Gray.”
She’s quiet for a moment after that. Then she says, “I used to come down here and ask myself if I was going to be okay.”
My chest tightens.
I keep my voice gentle. “And?”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“I think I got my answer.”
I look at her, and she looks at me, and the firelight flickers in the space between us, and all I can think about is every version of her that got us here.
The girl on the bench outside the bookstore.
The one in the dining hall.
The one in her dorm room, telling me to stay like it cost her everything and nothing at all.
I think about every room she ever had to map before she could breathe inside it. Every small, quiet victory she never asked anyone to notice.
I think about the fact that I get to be here for this version of her.
For this part.
Her mouth curves slowly.
“Come on,” she says, stepping out from under my arm and holding out her hand.
The water is fifty feet down the slope, dark and cold. The fire is right here, warm and bright and easy.
But not everything worth having comes easily.
I look at her hand, then I take it and follow her toward the water.
I’d follow her anywhere.