Chapter Six Mercy #2
Grant waited patiently for every single goodbye, and by the time we made it through the crowd, he was closer than when we’d left the room, his hand hovering just behind my back as we began walking to the elevator.
“All right?” he asked quietly.
No.
Not even in the same universe as all right, but I nodded all the same. Eventually I’d have to stop lying about it, about the complete lack of all-right-ness, but that was for later.
The elevator ride was quiet. So was the walk out the front entrance of the hospital. I thought maybe I’d wait on a bench while he went to get the car, but he carefully touched my elbow and steered me toward a gleaming SUV parked near the valet stand.
I blinked.
“That’s your car?”
Grant paused, waiting for the back hatch to open so he could set the bag in the trunk. “No.”
My eyebrow arched. It was a deep midnight blue, one of my favorite colors. A black grille and black rims, tinted windows, and the blocky Range Rover lettering on the hood were just about the sexiest things I’d ever seen on a vehicle.
The back hatch closed on a quiet click, because this was not a car that made a single clunky noise. Grant opened the passenger door, and the sight of the camel-colored leather threatened to pull a whimper from my throat. God, I bet it felt better than sex inside that car.
“It’s yours,” he said.
“I beg your finest fucking pardon?”
Grant’s chest, encased in crisp white cotton, moved on a deep, intentional inhale, like he, too, was a bit unsteady. Not that he looked it. Cold as freaking ice, this man was. “You don’t believe me?”
My mouth hung open, snapping shut when a couple walked past us and gave me a judgy look. “No,” I hissed. “No, I do not. What happened to my Honda?”
“Well, when the transmission fell out on our street, I convinced you it was time to let her go.”
My lip pushed out in the smallest of pouts. “I loved that car.”
“Believe me, I know.” He tipped his head toward the open door. “You love this one, too, I promise.”
“Well, sure I do. Look at it.”
I sounded pissed off. Probably because I was pissed off.
Being surprised by something so mundane as a car—even a car like this—was just one of a million things I’d have to get used to. The universe was hammering into me over and over and over that my own life was an unrecognizable landscape. That its foundation was something completely outlandish.
I let out a harsh breath and slid inside, hands running over the sumptuous leather.
“Oh, screw you,” I muttered.
It was too perfect. Maybe if I hated the house, I could sleep in the car. It smelled incredible—crisp and clean. Fresh laundry and sandalwood. Or, I realized after an embarrassingly large inhale to trap the scent in my lungs, it might be Grant that smelled so fucking good.
He eased his long legs into the driver’s seat and gave me a quick once-over. “All right?”
“Are you going to ask me that with every scenery change today?”
He glanced into the rearview mirror, then pressed a button that started the car with a low, throaty growl.
That was sexy too. Damn it.
Grant’s big hand held the top of the steering wheel as we pulled away from the hospital, and I studied the interior of the car with a slight pinch in my brow.
“What is it?”
This guy. He didn’t miss a fucking thing, did he?
“So I wasn’t driving my car,” I said slowly, “when I got in the accident.”
His eyes flicked to mine, then back to the road. “We were in mine, actually. Haven’t had a chance to replace it yet. Been a bit distracted, as you can well imagine.”
The breath in my lungs expelled in a quick punch of air. “You were with me?”
Grant glanced down at where my hands had fisted in my lap. “I’m not sure—”
“Just this one thing,” I said. He was conflicted—that much was clear. And I really couldn’t blame him. “Please.”
His jaw tightened, the bunching muscle visible through the dark stubble that he still hadn’t shaved off.
Eventually, he relented with a curt nod.
“It was dark,” he said. His voice was crisp, the consonants sharp.
“We were on our way home, and a deer darted out into the road. You’d taken off your seat belt to— It doesn’t matter.
” His voice cut off, and given that I was struggling to breathe properly, I didn’t press him on it.
“You weren’t in your seat. That’s why you hit your head so hard. ”
“Oh.”
“Quite.”
Maybe it would be like this for a while, where I put my life back together one puzzle piece at a time. Maybe I’d wake up tomorrow and he’d be ready to hit me with a flood of information, but that didn’t seem likely.
Exhaustion hung heavy off my bones as we drove in silence. It was like a road trip to a secret destination. Except it wasn’t a very long road trip in the end.
The University of Michigan Hospital was on the northeast side of Ann Arbor, and instead of driving back toward the southwest side of town, where I used to live, Grant drove a bit farther east, around the arboretum and Forest Hills Cemetery, with its great tall green trees, then into the neighborhood of Ann Arbor Hills.
As we passed houses—big, beautiful houses that I’d never in a million years think I’d be able to afford—a disquieting sort of acceptance filled my veins.
This was my life now.
Nice joggers. Fancy T-shirts. A car that cost more than I made in a year. A husband who’d stepped off the cover of G-fucking-Q. And as he pulled the vehicle into a hidden driveway that seemed to disappear into the trees, I knew the house would be beyond anything I could have dreamed.
For a moment I was again the little girl who’d had a tiny bedroom at the back of our trailer. Thin corrugated walls, where cold air always slipped through the cracks. Threadbare carpet. The smell of cigarettes that clung to my clothes and hair, prompting the kids at school to tease me mercilessly.
My hands shook as he stopped the car in front of a single-story home set among the trees.
I knew enough about this neighborhood that the fact that it looked normal-size from the road didn’t mean shit.
The stone facade covered the full exterior, but it wasn’t cold and it wasn’t stern.
Everything about it looked warm and inviting and intentional—from the colors to the covered front entry framed by stone columns, to the pristine landscaping that followed the front of the house in curving lines, dark-brown mulch with bright-green bushes: boxwood and another, lighter-colored one I didn’t recognize.
There was a tree with bright blossoms next to the front porch.
Planters flanking the door filled with light-purple blooms. Pansies, maybe.
I couldn’t tell from this distance. The front door was stained wood.
And the land surrounding the house . . .
there was a lot of it. More than I’d ever had.
The canopy of trees towering over the house would create magic in the fall.
He turned the car off and stared at the house, like he, too, was seeing it for the first time. Maybe he was trying to imagine what I saw. What I was feeling.
But that, I had to believe, was impossible.
I kept staring at the big windows that stretched along the front of the house, wondering what waited for me on the other side of the glass and stone. After this . . . everything changed.
The house I was renting before was red. Small.
I’d just repainted the door a glossy black.
There was a gouge in the siding where the neighbor kids had hit the house with a baseball.
A front stoop just large enough for a single planter that I’d filled with white geraniums. They were the only things I could keep alive.
It was two bedrooms and one bathroom, with carpet that needed to be replaced and an irrepressible smell of garlic in the kitchen that never quite went away.
It was the first home that really felt like mine.
Now it was someone else’s. Filled with their furniture.
Their pictures and their books and things.
Connor had helped me move in. He sang show tunes at the top of his lungs and made me laugh so hard I cried.
That was mine.
This wasn’t. It was nothing to me.
“Take a moment, if you need one,” Grant said, like he was reading my mind.
I sank down in my seat and pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, pushing until I saw stars behind my eyelids.
My voice was reed thin when I was finally able to speak. “I might need a little longer than that, Hastings.”