Chapter Eight Mercy #2
The second was a giving statement for a local charity that provided evening and weekend meals to school-age kids who dealt with food insecurity.
The logo made my chest clench, because countless times I’d been the grateful recipient of those simple meals when I went home on weekends.
Until my parents kicked me out. Until I moved in with Connor; then I never needed another brown-bag meal placed in my backpack again.
If I tried hard enough, I could still recall sitting on the edge of my bed and savoring that first bite of the sandwich on a Saturday afternoon, my teeth sinking through the cheap white bread. The peanut butter always stuck to the roof of my mouth.
The monthly donation made my eyebrows rise. Doing the quick math, I realized it was close to half my paycheck. That amount could cover a lot of meals.
Several of my students used that program, and we were so thankful for the volunteers who came and packed meals. Slowly, I sat down on one of the stools and sank my head into my hands.
I couldn’t sit there all day waiting.
I’d go out of my fucking mind.
The restlessness crept in like a fog, and I was powerless against it. I’d never done well with doing nothing, and that’s what everyone was asking of me.
Do nothing.
Rest.
Give myself grace.
Time for healing.
I stared across the kitchen until I noticed something sticking out of the drawer beneath the junk drawer. It was blue marker on a piece of white paper, and when I pulled the drawer open, I saw pictures and cards exploding with bright colors and well-wishes that made my ribs tight.
Get well soon, Miss K
We love you, Miss K
Sorry about your head
I hope you didn’t forget your favorite student (you promised to give me all A’s right before your accident)
I exhaled a quiet laugh, so fucking overcome that I almost burst into tears right there in the beautiful kitchen holding so many secrets.
With a short exhale, I pressed the pictures to my chest and decided I was sick of waiting. Grant had left the car keys in a beautiful cream-and-gold antique dish on the kitchen counter, and I snatched them out, marching toward the garage before I could talk myself out of it.
I yanked open the door and found myself face-to-face with an empty space.
My excitement deflated like a popped balloon.
Car accident.
Only one car.
I looked down at the keys in my hand and realized belatedly that they were the spare set. The empty key dish mocked the fuck out of me as I set the key fob back in the gleaming center circle.
“Let me guess, you’re probably three hundred years old and personally blessed by the queen or something.”
The dish, as one could imagine, did not say anything back.
I speared my hands through my hair. “God, I’m speaking to inanimate objects. I need a hobby.”
With no clear idea of when Grant would return or what the hell I was supposed to do with myself, a quick glance out the window offered one option.
But while the landscaping in the back was even more beautiful than the front, I didn’t know what to do with any of it.
I wandered down to my office and settled into the reading chair, sighing happily when it was soft and perfect and held my body like a hug.
On the table next to the chair was a stack of books I’d presumably pulled for my class. I turned onto my hip and selected the book from the top—from a young adult series set in a mythical kingdom following the adventures of talking animals.
Kayla would like this one, I thought. The fantastical stories always pulled her in.
I sighed when I turned a page, remembering she wasn’t in my class anymore.
But someone else might need it. Might want the same kind of story.
It was the most gratifying part of my job, finding which stories appealed to every kid in my class.
Every Friday, I gave my classes a few options, and they had to pick which first chapter they’d try. First-Chapter Friday was one of my favorite things, and if I thought too hard about how many I’d forgotten . . .
I pinched my eyes shut, only reopening them when I was ready to focus.
For a while, I was able to lose myself in the book, but the house was too quiet. The questions in my head were too loud, and even reading couldn’t drown them out.
My stomach let out a discontented growl, the first real pang of hunger I’d felt since waking.
I pulled a yogurt from the fridge and one of those healthy protein bars that taste like stale cardboard from the perfectly organized pantry, but with my fidgety hands and fidgety brain, I needed something to do.
Sugar. I needed something sweet.
Cake. I could make a simple cake, couldn’t I?
Baking had never really been my thing, but then again, neither had gardening. Neither had getting married for money or sharing a bed with the handsome man who smelled really nice and had big hands and silvery eyes with streaks of blue.
Before I knew what I was even looking for, I was searching the cupboards. Tucked next to the container of sugar was a recipe box, and my curiosity got the better of me, prying open the lid to see what kinds of things were stored inside.
The first card had a smudge on it, the edges worn like it had been handled quite a few times.
Victoria sponge.
It was so British I almost laughed. Maybe Grant was the one who baked. I tried to conjure that image—coming home from a day of corralling middle schoolers to find my rich-ass husband mixing cake batter, a darling little smudge of flour on his chiseled jaw.
Nope. No matter how hard I pressed my fragile lil’ cranium, that vision was nowhere to be found. Still, I needed something to do, and if there was a cake at the end of it, it seemed like an activity worth doing.
The recipe seemed easy enough, and after scanning the fridge and pantry to make sure we had the right ingredients, I got to work.
Forty-five minutes later, Grant found me perched on a stool, head lying on my folded hands. The house was cloaked in a sick kind of stunned silence that had me keeping my eyes shut.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said meekly, but my voice was slightly muffled by the way my mouth was tucked against the edge of my arm.
Grant still didn’t say anything, but I could clock his movements based on the sounds.
The gentle click of his shoes—leather, expensive.
The key fob going into the ceramic dish.
A bag being set on the floor—also probably leather and expensive.
A restrained sigh from a couple feet away.
The jar of raspberry jam was next to my hand, globs of it dotting the counter, my fingers, probably my hair, and the glass made a gentle scraping sound as he picked that up, then set it back down.
I tilted my head to the side and peeked over the edge of my arm, not exactly sure what I was expecting to see on his face. A subdued sort of horror over the mess, no doubt.
But I found a clenched jaw and two wrinkled lines appearing in the space between his furrowed brows. His eyes, for a brief moment, weren’t shuttered, and they weren’t blank. They weren’t focused on me at all, but on that jar of raspberry jam, and he looked absolutely fucking tortured.
I sat up slowly, a sick feeling crawling inside my stomach and up my throat.
“I’m sorry if I used something I shouldn’t have.
” His face smoothed out, the expression gone in a heartbeat.
“I was going stir crazy, and I thought . . . I thought I’d bake something for you since I’ve been a little bit .
. .” I paused to swallow, and oof, it was a feat that I managed it. “A little hard to handle.”
Grant surveyed the mess. “No,” he insisted, “that’s not . . . that’s not why I’m . . .”
The sight of him so thrown off pulled an unwilling smile at the corner of my mouth.
He noticed, giving the most subdued, posh roll of his eyes. “I’m thrilled that you find my struggle amusing.”
“Oh, come on, that has to be a small comfort in all this.”
At the teasing tone, his gaze searched mine, just for a moment, then it dropped again and he seemed to gather himself. I could see it in the way he stretched his spine and stood taller. The way his broad shoulders squared, his chest expanded.
Grant filled the space around him in a way I’d never seen before—like he was born to command the air around him to bend to his will.
“What made you choose this?” he asked, studying the absolute fucking carnage I’d left behind in my failed baking attempt.
I shrugged one shoulder. “The recipe card looked well loved. I thought . . . I thought maybe it was a favorite of yours.”
A muscle jumped in the corner of his jaw. “Quite.” His eyes finally rose again, and when they met mine, he had his emotions well under control. “You’ve made it before.”
“Oh.”
“Indeed.” He braced his hands on the counter.
The spread of his fingers made the veins on the back of his hands even more visible, and I studied the line as it disappeared up his forearm into the roped muscles underneath his skin.
His shirtsleeves were rolled up, a shockingly informal choice for a man who looked like he slept in a three-piece suit and tie.
“The first attempt ended up with a similarly disastrous result.”
Even though his face was impassive, his voice still smooth and cultured and holding all the refinement of hundreds of years of blue-blooded aristocracy, there was a note of fondness that tugged at something in the pit of my belly.
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Questions didn’t form at the tip of my tongue, nor did I feel the lightning bolt of panic that I was missing something.
“It couldn’t have been this bad,” I said, aiming for casual and falling woefully short.
Grant arched a brow.
With a disbelieving scoff, I pointed at the cake pans. “They’re half the height they’re supposed to be. I couldn’t pry that shit out with a crowbar.”
His eyes warmed with a dangerous glint of humor. “Is that so?”
“And the cream. Look at it. It’s all clumpy.”
Grant did not look at the cream, even though I picked up the bowl and waved it in front of his face. “A tragedy,” he said evenly.