Chapter Seven Mercy
Chapter Seven
Mercy
Growing up, I’d had a mean old neighbor with a mean old dog who liked to chase little kids when they passed in front of their home.
His bark was vicious—all snarly and slobbery and loud.
I had nightmares about that dog for years.
We’d all keep our distance because he scared the shit out of us.
But until I was twelve, we’d never known him to actually bite anyone.
Connor was there that day—my parents still allowed him to visit me as long as they weren’t around. Given that I was smack in the middle of my softball obsession, he was helping me with my batting stance. I’d already worked up a bit of sweat, and he went into the house to get us a drink.
So I waited, adjusting my feet, keeping my elbow at the correct angle and swinging that bat like I was about to win a gold medal.
A little girl down the street was taking her brand-new bike for its inaugural ride, the paint job purple and pink, with white streamers coming out the handlebars, and when I saw it, I was wild with jealousy, the bat slowly falling to my side as she floated down the street, a big smile on her face.
It must have been the streamers that distracted her from her proximity to the forbidden front yard, because she got a bit too close, and for the first time, that dog crossed the threshold of the property, darting into the street with his teeth bared and his hackles raised.
He went straight for her furiously pumping legs, and I’d never forget the sound of her terrified scream as she pitched forward off her bike with his jaws tight around her shoe.
Another kid might have run scared. And if I thought about it now, maybe I should have too. Should have called for my brother and let him handle it.
But I didn’t.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had that bat in my hand and charged across the street with a yell channeling Buffy the Vampire Slayer. More than anything, I wanted to be her. Wanted to be strong and save the world and have perfect hair and instill fear in anyone who dared cross me.
That dog raised his head, took one look at me, and fucking ran.
I didn’t even have to hit him, but with the screaming adrenaline going through my veins, I would have. Kinda wanted to, actually. No matter how much we think we’ll react one way or another, there’s no predicting whether our nervous system will kick into fight, flight, or the dreaded freeze.
As a gangly, slightly feral preteen, I could face down a rabid asshole of a dog without blinking. But shift me into adulthood and show me a beautiful home that was allegedly mine?
Frozen as fuck.
I sat in that car for fifteen minutes, then another fifteen, studying each and every stone that made up the timeless facade. I wanted it to be cold and uptight, the way I’d always viewed Grant, but it wasn’t.
It was perfect.
God, I hoped it was ugly and pretentious and fussy on the inside, because the alternative was terrifying.
Grant gave me time, and somehow that made it even worse. He’d already brought my bags inside and was now waiting patiently in one of the two stained Adirondacks flanking the door.
He wasn’t watching me. Wasn’t staring through the windshield like he could will me to movement with only the power of his piercing gray eyes and sublime bone structure.
He answered three phone calls while I sat in the car.
More texts than I could count. What a busy man he was.
And now, as he held a leather-bound journal in his lap and his undoubtedly expensive pen flew across the pages, Grant seemed entirely unbothered. And maybe he was.
Questions—no matter how much they intimidated me, no matter how tightly they caused the panic to spiral in my gut—would not be suppressed much longer. But neither could I pry the answers from his non-holey brain. They were locked away, no matter how badly I wished it otherwise.
Where was the girl who’d taken her bat and charged a violent dog? Instead of a fictional warrior with shiny hair and a quick wit, I wanted to channel myself.
Burst through the door and demand answers. All of them. Force him to flood me with information because I needed to know.
But what if those answers rocked me even further than I’d already been rocked?
I could feel the creeping need to rip the car keys from Grant, leave tire tracks in the very nice driveway, and travel across town to the place that felt like home.
With the black door and the dented red siding and the small kitchen that smelled like garlic.
I’d always had such a strong sense of what defined me. The foundation of Mercy Kincaid was unshakable.
The girl with the bat would be horrified at what she was seeing now. I was shaken. And I was scared.
My hands clenched into fists as I counted the stones on the columns that held up that inviting front porch.
There was something inherently discomforting about the shame I felt for hiding this way. It was a pulsing, writhing presence in the car with me.
You’re pathetic.
When did you become weak, Mercy?
Can’t handle it?
Maybe you don’t deserve to know what you’re missing.
“Fuck off,” I whispered firmly.
Like he’d heard me, Grant’s face turned in my direction, and for the first time since he’d left the vehicle and its sex seats, his eyes locked with mine.
The increase of my heart rate meant nothing outside this strange situation.
Meant nothing about him—the holder of all the knowledge I needed.
A perfectly dressed executioner, just waiting for me to join him on the platform of my own demise.
I blew out a harsh breath and yanked on the car door’s shiny handle, treating it more roughly than it deserved. As I got out of the car with my chin raised, Grant unfolded his tall, lean frame, face unreadable as I marched up the curved brick path toward the front porch.
“I’m no fucking coward,” I said.
If he chose to comment on my thirty-minute freak-out in the car, I’d know that his sense of self-preservation was flimsy.
“Trust me, Kincaid, I am more certain of that than just about anything else.”
My jaw tightened.
He held his hand toward the front door—warm and inviting, with a beautiful old-fashioned door knocker mounted in the center. “Shall we?”
I paused, eyeing him. Honest to God, where did he buy his clothes? I’d never seen a man wear a shirt that fit so perfectly. It was so much more irritating than it had any right to be. “If I freak out, don’t . . . don’t take it personally.”
The slightest glint of humor lit his eyes and disappeared a moment later. “Rest assured, my monstrous ego would never allow it.”
I crossed my arms and scoffed—a sound that came a bit too close to a shocked laugh, for my taste. “If you’re going to throw my previous words back in my face, this house tour is off to a rocky start, Hastings.”
“It’s how we operate best, my dear.”
“That, I believe.”
“You’ll find that you can believe everything I say to you.”
It wasn’t the way he said it—his voice was as smooth and cultured as always.
But the eye contact was brutal. The distance between us was less than a foot, close enough that it was impossible to breathe without filling my lungs with sandalwood and something else, and close enough that the look in his eye was impossible to ignore.
He meant it.
He meant every fucking word.
I pinched my eyes shut and fought the torrential swarm of nerves that rose in the wake of what he’d said so easily.
Can I, though? I wanted to ask. I wasn’t sure that I could. Not only because it would require the kind of trust I’d only ever put in one person, but because it would be so easy to lie to me. I had no choice but to take his words at face value.
“Let’s do this,” I said, opening my eyes again, keeping them trained on the door instead of him. As he reached out to open the door for me, I held up my hand. “Wait.”
He glanced back, brow raised in question.
“There’s not, like, giant wedding pictures framed on the wall and I’m going to walk in to see myself dressed in some puffy monstrosity with Live, Laugh, Love painted above the frames?”
“That’s what you’re most afraid of?”
“Most is subjective, because my list is incredibly long at the moment. There are no less than eighteen things currently fighting for the top spot. Plus, I’ve always had a healthy amount of vanity.
” I chewed on my bottom lip and studied his expression—not that I got much from it. “Was the dress puffy?”
His lips twitched. “No.”
“Okay.” My eyes found his again. “No Living, Laughing, Loving?”
“Nowhere to be found.”
“That’s comforting.”
“You’re stalling.”
I arched an eyebrow, ruthlessly ignoring the way that the back-and-forth between us—a glimpse into the way it used to be—unlocked some of the pressure in my chest. “Open the door, Hastings.”
“After you, Kincaid.”
Chivalry was not dead, at least not in the Kincaid-Hastings house, because even though I was perfectly capable of opening that door myself, Grant did the honors, setting his hand on my lower back, and, with the heat of his palm seeping through the soft material of my shirt, gave a gentle nudge.
There was a moment—pure madness was the only explanation—where I wanted to reach back and clutch his hand, just to have something to hold on to.
But the emptiness didn’t go away, not even when I had to look around and make peace with the fact that the inside of the house, unfortunately, was just as beautiful as the outside.
The rooms were big. The furniture welcoming. High-end touches in the art framed on the walls and the herringbone pattern of the floor. Much like the man at my side, it looked expensive. Refined. Elegant.
I’d been holding my breath that I’d walk in and see something precisely to my own taste—colorful materials and eclectic artwork, bookshelves stuffed to groaning.
It wasn’t that. Not exactly. But it wasn’t his either—the cold, sleek, and modern vibe from his penthouse when he’d lived closer to Detroit after he and Connor graduated.
It was something different from both of those things.