Chapter 14
Grace
I had dropped Esme off at Conrad’s after our talk. It wasn’t her favorite place to be, but she claimed it was better than the penthouse now that Celine lived there.
The silence in my new Queens apartment felt significantly heavier, thicker, and far more dangerous the absolute second Joss walked out the front door.
“I can easily cancel the flight,” Joss had said for the fifth time in ten minutes.
She was standing in the doorway, her battered canvas duffel bag slung over her shoulder, looking at me with deep concern.
“My mom will understand. Her knee replacement went totally fine, she doesn’t actually need me to fetch her herbal tea for a week.
My sister is already there. And frankly, Grace, you look like you’re about to vibrate out of your own skin. ”
“I’m fine,” I lied smoothly, attempting a reassuring, breezy smile that probably looked more like a painful grimace. “Go. Tell your mom I said hi and I hope she feels better.”
I had practically shoved her out the door.
Her trip to Florida had been planned, so she could spell her sister in her mom’s post-surgery recovery.
The plane ticket had been paid for long before my carefully curated life had spectacularly imploded in the Hamptons.
Joss was my absolute lifeline, the only person actively keeping me anchored to reality while the vicious undertow of my impending divorce tried to drag me under.
But I couldn’t drag her down with me. I couldn’t ask her to put her life on hold while I figured out how to rebuild mine from the ash up.
Besides, my internal reality was currently a fractured, agonizingly confusing mess that Joss couldn’t fix.
Ever since Celine’s alley visit and the unsettling diner conversation with Esme, my brain had been stuck in a vicious, exhausting, endless loop, playing two contradictory realities on a split screen in my mind.
He only lies to protect the people he loves.
He whispers your name against your lips before he kisses you deeply.
Two conflicting, absolute truths about the exact same man.
I spent my Sunday night off pacing the small, cramped, heavily scuffed hardwood floor of the living room, wrapped tightly in an oversized fleece blanket, desperately trying to make the jagged puzzle pieces fit together.
If Adrian had lied about the viability of my eggs simply to protect me from the devastation of my own failing body—as Esme’s stories of his fierce, protective loyalty suggested—it was a misguided, arrogant, controlling act of love.
It was a massive violation of my bodily autonomy, but it wasn’t malicious.
But if he had touched Celine...if he had kissed her in the dark while I was crying myself to sleep down the hall...then the lie in the clinic was just the opening move in a sociopathic strategy to replace me. It was a betrayal so absolute, so complete, I didn’t think I could survive it twice.
I collapsed heavily onto the worn sofa. I turned on the television, cranking the volume up, desperate for the mindless, enthusiastic chatter of a late-night infomercial to drown out my own racing, destructive thoughts.
The building in Queens was nearly eighty years old.
It settled, groaned, and popped with a vast repertoire of strange sounds I wasn’t used to.
The massive TriBeCa penthouse had been silent, heavily insulated from the chaos of the city by thick layers of acoustic soundproofing and staggering, incomprehensible wealth.
Here, in the real world, I could hear the upstairs neighbor walking heavily across the floorboards. I could hear the distant, wailing siren of an ambulance on Queens Boulevard. I could hear the low, throbbing hum of the refrigerator compressor kicking on in the tiny kitchen.
Thump.
I froze.
The sound hadn’t come from the ceiling. It hadn’t come from the kitchen. It had come from outside. Specifically, it had come from the rusted metal fire escape directly outside my single bedroom window.
The television droned on in the living room, a cheerful blonde woman enthusiastically chopping vegetables with a miracle knife. I hit the mute button, my thumb shaking slightly.
I strained to listen, holding my breath.
The silence stretched out, thick, taut, and suffocating.
Creak.
It was the unmistakable, terrifying sound of ancient, rusted metal shifting under substantial weight.
My heart instantly slammed against my ribs, a sudden, primal surge of raw panic flooding my nervous system with cold adrenaline.
I was alone. Joss was currently somewhere over the Carolinas.
The front door of the apartment had a flimsy brass chain lock that wouldn’t stop a determined teenager, let alone a grown man with bad intentions.
I grabbed my cell phone off the coffee table, my fingers fumbling clumsily over the glowing screen. I opened my contacts, fully intending to dial 911.
But my thumb hovered uncertainly over the emergency dial button.
If I called the NYPD and it was nothing—a stray cat, a strong gust of wind, the old building settling in the humidity—they would take two hours to show up, file a condescending report, and leave me feeling more terrified and isolated than before.
I needed someone now. I needed an immediate, physical presence.
I scrolled quickly past the emergency number. I scrolled past Adrian’s name, the ingrained, seven-year instinct to call my husband for protection warring with the horrifying reality of our separation.
I stopped scrolling when I hit Dane.
I glanced at the digital clock on the microwave.
It was 2:15 AM. In the normal world, calling someone now was insane.
But in the grueling, nocturnal world of high-end commercial kitchens, 2:00 AM was the equivalent of early evening.
Dane would definitely be awake. He would likely just be finishing the intense physical breakdown of his own tasting-menu kitchen in Brooklyn, drinking a shift beer and running inventory.
I hit the green call button before I could talk myself out of it.
It rang twice before he picked up.
“Grace?” His deep voice was low, slightly raspy, with the ambient, rushing noise of a busy New York street in the background. “Is everything okay?”
“I...I don’t know,” I whispered, hating how small, pathetic, and terrified I sounded. “I’m so sorry to call you so late, Chef. I’m at my apartment in Queens, and...I think someone is on the fire escape.”
The ambient background noise on his end vanished, immediately replaced by the heavy sound of a solid door slamming shut.
“I’m on my way,” Dane said. His voice instantly dropped the casual, late-night drawl, hardening into a sharp, focused command that brokered zero argument. “Give me your exact address.”
I rattled it off, my voice shaking so badly I stumbled over the zip code.
“Lock the bedroom door right now. Take a heavy knife from the kitchen. Stay on the phone with me.”
I didn’t argue. I did exactly what he said.
I crept silently into the tiny, dark kitchen, grabbed the heaviest, sharpest chef’s knife I owned from the magnetic block, and retreated quickly into the bedroom.
I locked the hollow wooden door behind me, knowing it wouldn’t hold a kick, but it would buy me seconds.
I sat on the floor with my back pressed firmly against the far wall, staring unblinkingly at the window, clutching the phone tightly to my ear.
Dane didn’t try to make distracting small talk. He didn’t tell me I was overreacting. He just stayed quiet on the line. The steady, rhythmic, powerful sound of a motorcycle engine revving loudly in the background acted as a strange, grounding anchor in the terrifying dark.
“I’m pulling up to the building,” he said exactly fourteen minutes later. “I’m coming up the front stairs now.”
A heavy, authoritative knock sounded on the front door. “Grace. It’s me.”
I scrambled up from the floor, my grip white-knuckled on the heavy knife handle, unlocked the bedroom door, and crossed the small living room.
I peered carefully through the distorted glass peephole.
Dane was standing in the hallway, illuminated by the flickering fluorescent light, looking massive, intimidating, and alert.
I quickly threw the deadbolt and opened the door.
He stepped inside, immediately taking the heavy chef’s knife from my trembling hand and setting it safely on the kitchen counter out of the way.
He didn’t ask me any stupid questions. He walked straight past me, methodically checking the living room, the small bathroom, the closets, and finally the bedroom.
He unlatched and opened the bedroom window, leaned out into the muggy, humid New York night, and thoroughly inspected the rusted iron fire escape with a small flashlight he pulled from his pocket.
When he finally pulled his head back inside and firmly locked the window, turning the latch until it clicked, the crushing tension in my chest snapped like a frayed wire.
“Raccoon,” Dane said, turning around to face me.
He held up a half-eaten, stale everything bagel he had retrieved from the metal grating outside the window. “A very large, apparently aggressive raccoon with a serious taste for complex carbohydrates.”
I stared blankly at the bagel. I stared at Dane, at the serious, unamused expression on his rugged face.
And then, without my conscious permission, I started to cry.
It wasn’t a delicate, polite, single-tear cry.
It was a massive, ugly, full-body sob that tore out of my throat, carrying the immense, accumulated weight of the last three weeks with it.
The absolute betrayal. The devastating loss of my home, my family, and my future.
The terrifying confusion of Celine’s lies warring with Esme’s truths.
The sheer, overwhelming, bone-deep exhaustion of just trying to survive it all without breaking.
Dane dropped the stale bagel directly into the trash can. He crossed the small bedroom in two long, purposeful strides and pulled me firmly against his chest.
He didn’t offer empty, meaningless platitudes. He didn’t tell me it was going to be okay, because we both knew it wasn’t. He didn’t tell me to calm down. He just wrapped his large, solid, heavily muscled arms around me, burying his face in my hair, and let me fall apart.
He smelled strongly of woodsmoke, roasted garlic, and clean sweat. He felt grounded, a solid, immovable object in a world that had been spinning out of control for a month.
I cried until my throat was raw and burning, until my eyes swelled, soaking the front of his faded black t-shirt with my tears.
When the violent sobs finally subsided into heavy, shaky, exhausted breaths, I didn’t pull away from him. The physical warmth of his body was too comforting. I rested my forehead heavily against his chest, closing my eyes, listening to the steady, calm, reassuring rhythm of his heart.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the embarrassment finally creeping in as my logical brain came back online. “I called you across a borough at two in the morning over a raccoon eating a bagel.”
“I like raccoons,” Dane murmured softly, his deep voice vibrating pleasantly against my cheek.
He shifted his weight slightly, bringing his calloused hands up to gently frame my face. He tilted my chin up, forcing me to look at him. His gray eyes were dark and intense in the dim light of the bedroom, stripping away the remaining, pathetic layers of my emotional defenses.
“You don’t have to carry all of this alone, Grace,” he said softly, his thumbs brushing away a stray tear from my cheek.
He leaned down.
His lips brushed gently against mine. It was a soft, questioning pressure, explicitly asking for permission, offering comfort rather than demanding submission.
I closed my eyes. The kiss deepened naturally, a slow, hot slide of friction that sent a massive jolt of pure, electric adrenaline through my exhausted system.
Dane’s hands slid from my face down to my waist, pulling me flush against him.
He was a force of nature—demanding, consuming, present in the moment.
For a terrifying, exhilarating second, I leaned heavily into it. I wanted to lose myself in the heat of his touch. I wanted to let him burn away the confusion, the betrayal, and the agonizing pain. I wanted to feel something—anything—other than the crushing, omnipresent weight of Adrian Wright.
But as Dane’s mouth moved expertly over mine, a phantom, terrifying whisper brushed against the very edge of my consciousness.
Grace.
My husband’s voice. The intimate, desperate vow he made in the dark before he pulled me closer.
I stiffened instantly. The spell shattered into a million pieces.
I placed my hands flat against Dane’s broad chest and gently, but firmly, pushed back.
He stopped instantly, stepping back, dropping his hands to his sides without any hesitation. His chest was heaving slightly, his gray eyes burning with a dark, frustrated heat, but he didn’t push. He didn’t demand an explanation. He read the absolute, panicked rejection in my rigid body language.
“I can’t,” I whispered, my voice breaking in the quiet room. “Dane, I’m so sorry. I really can’t.”
He stared at me for a long, heavy moment. The frustration in his eyes slowly receded, replaced by a quiet, understanding resignation that made me want to cry all over again.
“He’s still in there,” Dane observed quietly, lifting a hand and tapping a single finger against his own chest, directly over his heart.
I couldn’t lie to him. I nodded slowly, fresh tears pricking my eyes. “Yes.”
“Right,” Dane said, his voice returning to its normal, steady, calm cadence. He turned away and walked out of the bedroom, heading purposefully for the living room sofa.
“Dane, what are you doing?” I asked, following him to the doorway.
He grabbed the oversized fleece blanket I had discarded earlier and tossed it casually over the back of the small couch. Then, he sat down, stretching his long legs out on the worn cushions, crossing his arms behind his head.
“I’m sleeping on your couch,” he announced calmly.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested, stepping into the living room. “I’m fine now. You need to sleep before your shift tomorrow. It was just a raccoon.”
“I know it was,” Dane said, closing his eyes, ignoring my protest. “But you’re exhausted, and you’re not going to get a single minute of sleep if you’re lying in there listening for the fire escape to creak. Go to bed, Grace. I’ll be here.”
I stood in the doorway, staring at him. He didn’t move. He didn’t ask for anything in return. He wasn’t trying to manage me. He was just showing up.
He’s the only one who actually shows up.
Esme’s words echoed loudly in my head again, a painful reminder of the man I had left.
I reached out and turned off the living room light. “Goodnight, Dane.”
“Goodnight, prep cook,” he murmured in the dark.
I went back into my bedroom, locked the door, and crawled under the heavy covers. And for the first time in nearly a month, I fell asleep without listening for ghosts.