Chapter 1
Grace
END OF JUNE, PRESENT DAY
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. The club music reverberates through my earbuds.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. The sound of my shoes hitting the pavement punctuates the beat of the music.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Over and over again, everything in rhythm, everything in sync.
Everything under my control.
Everything perfect.
Just the way I like it.
As I run past three guys who have started to slow down, I don’t look left or right. I’m not worried so much about who I’m beating, male or female. Instead, I’d love to do better than my own best time at a local 10K road race since I moved to Orlando.
In ninety-degree Florida heat, it’s a lot to ask of most people, but I don’t let those kind of factors enter my mind.
In my family, it’s win or go home. I’m not wired any differently from my brothers, and historically, I’ve hated to fail.
Though, running is different for me now. I’m not trying to be the best on the planet. That dream has passed.
I see a marker for the ninth kilometer, and I keep my eyes focused on getting there.
One. Two. Three. Four. The predictable rhythm is soothing and keeps all external distractions away.
As I pass the marker, I look for my next visual target. I don’t allow myself to recognize the aches and pains creeping into my body or how thirsty I am. Just that next goal.
Once I spot the race’s end point in the distance, all bets are off. In competitive running, you tightly control your pace at each phase of the race. I know exactly what’s left in the tank at the end, because I planned it that way. Some of my better habits still linger from my college days.
As I kick up my speed, I moderate my breathing to handle the higher demands of my body.
And when I pass the finish line, there’s the result I hoped for.
“Congratulations to Grace Battle, our ladies winner today!”
Yes, that, but it’s also the personal best time I was looking for.
I breathe in and out for several minutes, walking around by a fan station to recover while the race staff hands me a cooling wrap and water. Even though I’m in great shape, I pushed myself hard in hot, humid conditions.
These road races are a complete shift from my college days. No spotlight, no one calculating points, just me, the road, and my favorite orange running shoes.
They’re definitely not the Olympics, or a national championship.
I’ve already tried to go down that path, and now I’ve veered left.
“Grace! Grace!”
I look around, my eyes landing on my younger brother Rawley, who watched the race. With our older brother Landon in London for Wimbledon, we’re both crashing at his place to house-sit.
His college football season at the University of Texas over, Rawley’s flown in to hang with us in Florida a lot lately, as we fight to keep him on the straight and narrow until the NFL draft next year. He’s a bit of a wild child, though with a heart of gold.
“How was that time?” he asks, knowing what my goal was.
“Personal best for a 10K since I moved here,” I say, a big grin spreading across my face.
“Hell yes!” He gives me a big hug, picking me up off the ground. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Rawley is the third oldest in the family, twenty years old to my twenty-two. Our youngest sibling, Connor, is eighteen years old and headed to Princeton in the fall. A legacy after I graduated just over a year ago myself.
In contrast, Rawley is not “academically-inclined,” like our high school guidance counselor used to say. He’s following in Landon’s footsteps, heading into the NFL after his junior year, no question. As good as Landon is as a linebacker, Rawley may be even better at his position, wide receiver.
“Let’s head back to the house,” I suggest. “Check on Grover.” We’re dog-sitting Landon’s beagle as part of our duties.
As we walk to the car, Rawley grabs my keys, and I’m happy to be a passenger princess this morning. I stuff down a protein bar while Rawley navigates us through the Orlando suburbs and heads towards Landon’s house.
Landon’s only had two seasons in the NFL, but he’s swimming in endorsement money after becoming a star player in college and then a first-round draft pick.
As a result, his house is four times the size of our childhood home, so there’s plenty of room for all of us to hang out.
It’s so big and his life so crazy that he even asked me to act as his part-time personal assistant when I moved here for business school.
He pays me an overly-generous salary that lets me rent a condo in a town closer to my school, Winter Haven.
Why not crash at Landon’s full time? I’m sure he would say that’s okay.
But I need my own place to stay sane. Where there are no brothers stomping around, no one needs anything from me, and I can have complete quiet. Ideally with a good book and a chai latte.
No chance of that right now. Between Rawley’s chatty nature and Grover’s need for attention, I’m on call to be social and fully present. Rawley offers to walk Grover so I can take a shower, though, and I smile in response.
“You’re the best,” I tell him, turning on my heel and heading to the bathroom that I use when I’m here.
Thirty minutes later, showered and changed, I head to the kitchen where Rawley is whipping something up. That’s right, my brother may be a fun-loving partier, and allergic to books, but he’s also an incredible chef. Soon after I take a seat on one of the stools, he puts a plate in front of me.
“Teriyaki salmon with rice and sauteed vegetables. Tell me if there’s not enough flavor.”
“I’m sure it’s delicious,” I say as I take a bite. “Oh yeah, this is awesome.”
“Sweet.” He makes his own plate and leans over the kitchen island while he starts to eat. His face wears a look of pleasure with his own first bite.
“I need to make something like this for Gretchen,” he says, chuckling to himself.
“Who’s that?” I ask. I’ve never heard the name before, and that’s unusual since Rawley tends to talk to me about girls he’s interested in.
He grins at me. “A tattoo artist I met last month back at school. I’m currently friend-zoned. Maybe a home-cooked meal will turn the tide.”
Rawley’s notorious for his crushes on women who are unattainable or unavailable in some way, so no surprise there.
“Wait. Did you get a tattoo?”
He shakes his head. “No. The recovery time is too long with football stuff this summer. But in the future, I want a ‘Better Together’ tattoo.”
‘Better Together’ is the motto that us four Battle kids came up with when our parents split up. It represents that we’re stronger when united and have each other’s backs, even when our parents do not.
The pivot in topic carries through to our current conversation.
“Have you talked to Mom or Dad lately?” Rawley asks me.
Our parents are a tough subject to navigate. They split up when we were kids—Landon, fifteen, and me, fourteen, taking on most of the heavy lifting to protect Rawley and Connor from dealing with too much.
It wasn’t amicable. They both had affairs and ended up screaming at each other for about a year before they finally separated.
While us siblings support each other first and foremost, there are differences in our relationships with our parents.
Landon basically wrote both of them off after the divorce.
Connor and I are more connected to our mom, who we all lived with until we each went to college, and Rawley has the closest contact with our dad.
“Yup, Mom and I talked yesterday,” I answer. “She has a huge case that she’s excited about, a wrongful termination lawsuit against a skeezy local politician, so it’s high profile. I didn’t get too many of the details from her, with attorney-client privilege and all that.”
Rawley nods. “That’s cool. Sounds like something she’d eat up. Was she still bugging you about law school?”
My mom is a prominent civil litigator in Alabama. While she hasn’t made big bucks by taking on tough cases against powerful and wealthy people, her career is something I admire.
I wish the feeling were entirely reciprocal. As proud as she is that I went to Princeton, she’d be even prouder if I became a lawyer and followed in her footsteps.
Instead, I chose to enroll in business school. At Tolliver University, which has the best Masters in Business program in Florida. I just finished my first year, with two more semesters to go.
A full ride to one of the best business programs in the country.
Somehow, Mom found that irritating.
“Yeah, she suggested that I apply this fall so I can begin law school right after I get my MBA.” My eye roll is heavy and Rawley laughs.
“At least she’s realized you’re not dropping out of business school,” he says.
“Small wins, I know.”
I’ve always struggled to find my voice with Mom.
Really to find my voice, period. Adding to the complicated dynamic is her old school belief that it’s best for a woman to mind her manners in public—focus on winning with charm and politeness—and mask how savvy she really is until it’s time to unleash her (figurative) weapons.
It works with her personality perfectly. She knows exactly how to wield her words and behavior to triumph in every circumstance.
She’s tried to pass along the same mindset to me since I was young. But I’m naturally shy, a people pleaser, and when I start with my polite filter on, it’s hard for me to wipe it away.
Except when I trust you. Then you’re getting all the unfiltered thoughts. Only my brothers and a few friends fall into that camp, though.
Talking about Mom makes me weary, so I turn the direction of the conversation. “I haven’t talked to Dad on the phone in a while. We text off and on. What about you?”
“Yeah. Same old, same old. We talk sports, mainly. He says he’s going to come to my games this year since it’s my last college season, but we’ll see.”
I hold my tongue about whether or not Dad will show for Rawley. He never did for Landon.
We’ve kept eating as we chatted, and by this time, our plates are almost empty. After we finish the rest of the food, Rawley grabs my plate and sticks it in the sink.
“What should we do this afternoon?” he asks as he turns back to face me.
“I don’t know. I guess we could go to a movie or something?”
“Bo-ring, Gracie,” Rawley says dramatically. “Could we take out Landon’s boat?”
I’m about to shut that down because neither of us has a proper boat license. But before I can, his phone pings, and he picks it up to read the message.
“Oh, that’s cool.”
“What?” I ask.
“Come on, get your shoes on,” he says, excitement in his eyes.
“Okay, what’s the rush?” Rawley races to the front of the house where he left his sneakers.
He turns back to me as he tries to shove a shoe on.
“Johnson Samuels just texted inviting us over to his house. He and Bailey Watkins are messing around in the mock field that he has in his backyard.”
Oh, that’s so not cool.
“Us?”
“Yes, he mentioned you too. Hurry up, Gracie.”
I’ve come to accept that Johnson Samuels is going to haunt my time in Orlando. Still, I’ve been doing my best to stay out of his way, made easier by his leaving town for a few months in February.
There’s no reason to put myself in a position to feel like a mistake he regretted again.
To feel like an inadequate, inexperienced woman. Who’s still a virgin.
I’m not striving to stay one, and I’m not the same relative innocent Johnson met in college.
Our time together gave me more confidence with guys when I got back to Princeton after spring break.
Since then, I’ve had a couple of short-term boyfriends, plenty of make-out sessions, and gotten intimate in other ways.
I even bought myself a toy last year (highly recommend).
No one ever lasted long enough for me to lose ‘virgin’ status, however. Either I didn’t like them enough, or they didn’t like me enough, and then—boom, I was single again.
In contrast, I’m sure that the women Johnson entertains these days are sophisticated and plenty skilled. Star NFL quarterback worthy. As far as I can tell, he’s retained the playboy status he apparently enjoyed in college.
I’ve tried not to be around him enough to examine him, or any of them, too closely. Instead, I’ve given myself permission to head in the other direction whenever I feel the need. Which is often, due to the crowds of women that seem to gravitate towards him every time we’re in the same place.
So I’ve successfully avoided him since he got back to Orlando a few weeks ago. Now, how can I escape this invite to his house?