Chapter Fourteen Nice, Not Kind #2
I swallow. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s not on purpose.” But heat rises in my chest. I guess it doesn’t look like that.
“So…” Taylor lowers her voice. “If you don’t mind me asking…what exactly happened with Beau? He absolutely will not tell me.”
I swear my throat closes in that moment. I let out an awkward laugh because it’s all I can do. “We just…I don’t know. Didn’t work out, I guess.”
“I mean, you saw the video, right? Who didn’t?” She laughs, then gets real serious all too quick. “But…you just seemed so happy before that, y’know? You were on the homecoming court. I mean, he was. But oh, your dress was so pretty that year.”
“Yeah, things change, I guess.”
When I glance over to the side room, Griffin is back, sifting through the opposite side of the rack. His eyes are focused on me. I avert my gaze back to my hands, twisting in front of my thighs, my thumb chipping away at my nail polish.
Taylor sighs. “That’s so sad.” Say-ud. “Was it him that broke up with you?”
“Um, it’s complicated,” I mutter. God, I could sink into this floor.
I don’t have the heart to tell her he cheated. Even now, despite everything he did, razing his reputation feels cruel.
Suddenly, a hand wraps around my waist. Warm. Solid. Long fingers curl around to my stomach, pulling me into a hard chest. My breathing stops.
“Baby, I’m so lost.” Griffin’s crooning voice heats into my ear. It’s low and gritty, trailing down to my neck and skittering over my spine. “Can you help me out?”
Taylor’s eyes get so big I wonder whether they’ll pop out of her face. I imagine I must look the same.
“Oh.” The word is breathy. “Of course.”
Griffin’s opposite hand slides between both of mine, thwarting my efforts to ruin my painted nails. We don’t cup hands this time; he links our fingers together. His are thick and rough, calloused from his guitar.
“Sorry,” he says to Taylor with a forced smile. “I hate being without her for too long.”
Taylor runs a tongue over her bottom lip as if parched. “Sure. Sure. Can I help you find anything?”
“Beverly’s got me covered,” he says. “Come on, baby.”
Baby.
I swallow again, but my throat is painfully dry. I’m thirsty like Taylor—parched, I mean. Not thirsty for Griffin but—
He nudges my waist and tugs my palm. I follow dutifully, rounding the corner and watching as Taylor disappears behind a wall.
Griffin removes his hand from my waist, slips it down my spine and back to his side. Shivers explode over my back and arms. He doesn’t let go of my hand, though, keeping our fingers tightly entwined. His hot palms to my shivering joints. He pulses a beat, as if reassuring me. Of what, I’m not sure.
“I don’t like her,” Griffin mutters under his breath.
I laugh, but it sounds like I’m an eerie, cackling witch, because his hand is still in mine and it’s warm and rough and distracting.
“She’s a kind person,” I say. “She’s just…nosy.”
“She isn’t kind, Bev.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kind people don’t knowingly open old wounds, even if they say it in a kind way. She’s nice. Not kind. She’s stuck in the past. And you’re in the present. With me. Okay?”
I blink, finding that I’m squeezing his palm.
“Okay,” I murmur.
“B!” We both look down to see Ava holding a tiny toy truck. She pushes it toward me, but when I’m not fast enough, she just drops it and walks off.
Griffin chuckles, bending to pick it up. I take that moment to squirm away from his hand and follow Ava to another room. I immediately miss his warmth.
For the next twenty minutes, I pick out clothing with Ava. She seems to love every single option. Or maybe she just loves when her dad nods in confirmation at every piece I hold up. If he loves them, she loves them.
I get it, girl.
Griffin’s approval seems rare and unique, and I’m not sure what I did to earn any portion of it.
Ava will thankfully never know how it feels to long for his attention like so many other women do.
He will always give his love to her unconditionally, as he should.
But as for me, my mind is still racing at the memory of his hand in mine.
When Ava leads us to the book room (aka runs off and we follow), I take the chance to browse the small section in the corner with Westerns.
They’re tattered but smell old and lovely.
Griffin walks into the tight space, almost the size of a closet.
Not exactly fit for two. Or maybe it is if you like bumping arms, which I shouldn’t.
But I’m already heating up from the inside out.
He’s Griffin. Just Griffin. Calloused hands and thumping heart Griffin.
“What are you looking for?” he asks.
“Westerns for Greg.”
Griffin hums, crossing his large arms over his chest and leaning against the opposite wall.
“What’s his deal?” Griffin asks. “He’s…”
“Weird?”
“Fun,” Griffin clarifies.
“He’s always been fun. He’s also been through a lot, though, so I think he finds humor where he can. His divorce wasn’t pretty.”
Griffin lifts an eyebrow. The unspoken question.
I continue, “My Aunt Andi…she cheated on him years ago. He forgave her once. He couldn’t forgive her the second time.” I sigh. “Greg’s a good guy. And sometimes the world isn’t so nice to a guy like that. But he just wants what everyone else wants.”
“And what’s that?”
“A soulmate,” I answer. “He’ll never say it, but I know he’d love to be married again.”
“Do you believe in that?”
“What? Marriage?” I ask.
“No, a soulmate.”
“No.” I must say it too fast, because Griffin’s head jerks back.
I tilt my head to the side. “I mean, maybe I did at one time. My parents are deep, desperate, hopeless romantics that are deeply, desperately, and hopelessly in love with each other. They aren’t super affectionate, but they’ve lived their entire lives together: childhood friends, marriage immediately after high school, opening Momma’s dream pancake house…
and they’re still not sick of each other.
“Nana and Grandpa were the same way before he passed. They always acted like they were fifteen, experiencing their first love, even after over fifty years of marriage. They spent a lot of time apart because of his work, but I guess I kind of…”
But the words fade off. I don’t want to finish that thought.
Truth is, I expected Beau and me to follow that same path.
High school sweethearts. Achieving dreams together, going through the theater and music scene in LA hand in hand.
Maybe we’d start a family later in life, maybe we wouldn’t, but we’d always have each other.
I was wrong.
If soulmates exist, I thought I found mine at sixteen. But then he changed, and so did I. Maybe if we were really soulmates, our souls would have grown together.
I shrug. “Soulmates is just something people say to make their relationship feel ethereal. Like it’s unattainable to everyone else because it’s mystical and unexplainable.”
Griffin grunts. “Hmm. Well, I think soulmates might exist.”
I scoff without thinking about it. It’s rude, and I immediately wince. “Sorry. What, um.” I aimlessly open a book, close it, and set it back. “What makes someone a soulmate to you?”
He cocks his head to the side in thought. “I think it would be easy. And I think Greg knows that, which is why this part hurts so much. He has to get through all the dating to get back to the easy. It’s that deep, desperate, hopeless love your parents have that we all want.”
I choke out a laugh. “You too?”
“Sure.”
“It’s that musician in you. A romantic.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you write love songs?” I ask.
“Sometimes.”
I grin. “Probably songs with a lot of feelings at least?”
“Too many.”
“You’ve got a lot of layers, Griffin Patrick Harvey.”
He chuckles. “Enough to make my three-name curse go away?”
“Maybe.”
His fingers pulse into his jacket pocket at my response. I notice they twitch a lot lately. Mostly when he writes music. But sometimes when he’s looking at me.
I look over my shoulder. Griffin’s gaze follows mine. We both see Taylor lingering in the corner of the other room, pretending to put things away but unabashedly staring at us instead. I avert my eyes, chewing my bottom lip and letting out a shaky breath.
Out of nowhere, Griffin sets his hands on my hips and spins me around.
My back lands against the bookshelves. One of his hands grips the shelf above my head as the other stays locked on my waist. Griffin towers over me, crowding my body with his.
The shelf squeaks above my head. The smell of him and books and old wood is suddenly intoxicating.
I’m out of breath, confused, and growing hotter by the second.
“What are you—”
“Look at me,” he says.
Where else would I look?
I stiffen, dancing my eyes between his. Dark. Intense.
“Now laugh,” he instructs.
Anxieties bubble up to the surface like fizzing soda pop. I burst out laughing. Griffin laughs with me. From the corner of my eye, I spot Taylor gawking.
Oh.
“Laugh some more,” he commands.
I sink under the weight of his stare, letting the sound sputter out of my choked throat.
“Is she still looking?” he murmurs.
I peer over his bulky shoulder. Taylor blinks at us in disbelief as we shamelessly steal an intimate moment in public. My cheeks flush.
“Mm-hmm,” I answer.