Chapter Twenty-Seven Grant
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Grant
“Tell me something I wouldn’t expect. And it doesn’t have to be happy, you know?”
“Ahh, we’ve moved to the depressing part of these conversations.”
“The real part,” Mercy corrected.
“It’s all real, darling.” I braced my hand on the credenza in the hotel room, staring out over downtown Ann Arbor. The sidewalks were busy, as they often were on a sunny spring day. Mercy and I often walked those streets on the weekend, no matter the season, with her arm tucked in mine.
Someday. Someday, we would again.
“Fine, it’s all real,” she said, “but we’ve had a couple pretty easy conversations. I think I’m ready for something . . . more.”
“Arguing about football is hardly easy.”
“Of course it’s not easy for you—you’re the one who’s wrong.”
I tutted. “Come, now. We decided it’s a difference of opinion, and therefore we’re required to keep the peace.”
“You’re bribing me into silence, buddy.”
“That is not what the flowers were for.”
Mercy inhaled loudly and sighed as she exhaled. “Maybe not, but the whole house smells like spring, and I can’t be mad at that.”
“Do you know what they mean?”
“Tell me, Professor Hastings.”
At her flirtatious tone, my mouth tipped in a smile. Two more lengthy phone conversations, countless texts over two days, and I could feel the tide shifting. But a shift wasn’t enough.
I wanted her certainty.
“Blue hyacinths represent constancy,” I said.
“Sincerity. Two things that I hope you can feel from me above all else.” I straightened, tucking a hand in my pocket as I stared at the skyline, wishing she were by my side.
“I have no intention of giving up on you. On us. And if I need to let all that be said through my actions, I will. I’ll send you flowers every day, Mercy. ”
She pulled in a trembling breath. “What would they say today?”
“While I was sorely tempted by the banal choice of forget-me-nots . . .” I glanced at my watch and smirked when the doorbell chimed through the phone, just when it was supposed to. “I managed to resist.”
“You didn’t.” Muffled conversation came through the speakers, then the sound of the front door closing. Mercy laughed. “Grant, these are ridiculous.”
“Tell me it’s obnoxiously large.”
“Two people had to carry it inside the house. It was on a wheeled cart.”
She was smiling again. I’d never thought I could love the sound of her smile, but I found myself craving it quite intensely, wanting to memorize the way it curved her speech, softened each word.
“Show me.”
“Hang on.” A few moments later, a picture came through on my phone.
It was the single largest bouquet I’d ever seen in my life, a riot of bright-green leaves, dark-red petals, sunny-yellow and snowy-white blooms. And next to those, far more beautiful, far more precious, was her face, fixed in a What the fuck did you do sort of expression.
“Beautiful,” I said in a soft voice.
“They are.”
“I meant you.”
She inhaled. Exhaled. “Thank you.” Then she cleared her throat. “Red roses, I can guess on those.”
“And . . .”
“Sunflowers,” she continued. “Don’t tell me what they mean, though. I want to . . . I think I want to look them up myself.”
“What else?” I nudged. I knew every single stem in that bouquet symbolized. What every bloody petal meant. If sending her flowers could allow her to trust in what I felt for her, trust that what we’d had was real, I’d clean out the entire city.
“Yellow lilies. Freesia?”
“Yes.”
She paused, humming quietly.
“Do you know the white ones?”
“I don’t. They’re pretty, though.”
“Anemones,” I answered. “Mustn’t forget those in your research.”
“You’ve given me a lot of homework.”
It was late afternoon, and normally we’d both be working. I’d rescheduled a conversation with one of my clients so that I could be on the phone with her when the flowers arrived.
“Shall I let you go to it, then?”
“You were supposed to tell me something serious.”
I took a seat in the armchair tucked into the corner and leaned my head back while I tried to decide which story to choose. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She exhaled a self-deprecating laugh. “No.”
“Any particular subject you’d like to explore?”
“The other day, in the parking lot,” she said cautiously. “You said you’d had a front-row seat to every time I ran. To all my reasons and excuses.”
I clenched my jaw. “I did.”
Mercy didn’t speak again right away, and I could sense her hesitation through the phone. Were she in front of me, she’d be chewing on her bottom lip, a wrinkle in her brow. I’d want to smooth my thumb over that dip in her skin.
“Did I ever do that? With you?”
It was the whispered question that unraveled something knotted tightly around the pit of my stomach.
“Never.”
“Really?”
“I can’t speak for what went on in your head, of course. But we started from a place of mutual understanding. Clearly outlined stakes of what this marriage was. What it wasn’t.”
“It felt safe because it wasn’t love.”
“Just so.” I licked my lips. “Our feelings took us both by surprise. And we . . . we fell together. I think that’s why it wasn’t as frightening.”
She processed that quietly.
“Did you . . .” She paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Did you want me . . . before?”
“Before we married?”
I raked a hand through my hair and blew out a slow breath. “At times, my thoughts strayed past propriety, yes.”
“When?”
I groaned. “Don’t make me relive this. I felt so guilty seeing Connor the next day.”
“Tell me.” She paused. “Just one thing, Grant. Please.”
“Oh, you dirty minx.”
Mercy laughed.
“Your twenty-first birthday,” I answered quietly.
We’d talked about this once before, of course.
Made quite a fun game out of it, truth be told.
“I don’t think you quite understand what you looked like, in the dark, standing in the water without a stitch of clothing on.
Daring me to react. I felt like an absolute lecherous old goat.
” I closed my eyes and pictured it. Pictured her.
Long legs. Flat stomach. High, firm breasts with nipples so hard from the wind that my first filthy thought was whether they’d be cold against my tongue.
“You dressed. Left without a word. And it took everything in me not to race to the bathroom and take myself in hand, thinking about taking you against that tree where no one would hear us. No one would know.”
“You didn’t?”
“Oh no. I suffered. I ached. Because that felt like what I deserved for thinking of you that way for the first time.”
“No wonder we only made it three weeks,” she answered weakly.
“Nothing short of a miracle.”
Mercy let out a shaky breath. “Did we have a prenup and all that? Like the smutty books Rae loves and always begs me to read where the down-on-her-luck heroine gets a monster payout for helping the duke keep his fortune through marriage?”
I smiled. “Of a sort. I didn’t worry you’d clean me out, if that’s what you’re asking, but you did have access to a certain amount once we’d been married a year.
Yours, free and clear. Another installment after the second year.
And I gave you free rein of the joint account, which is when you started donating your entire paycheck. ”
“And then some, it sounds like.”
“Indeed.”
“A million dollars, really?” I could practically hear the wince in her expression.
“You set up an endowment at Michigan in your brother’s name. Funds a scholarship for low-income students wanting to go into law.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “Hard to be mad at that.”
“No risk of that happening, no matter where you donated it.” I tipped my head back, recalling with perfect clarity the flash in her eyes when she’d told me.
“When you came home and told me, you were nervous and baking one of those bloody cakes, and you made an argument out of it because you thought I’d be upset. That was the first time we . . .”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Philanthropy really does it for you, huh?”
I’d fucked her against a wall. Knocked down picture frames.
Broken a lamp from the end table next to the couch.
Torn her shirt ripping it off. Had blood on my back from where her nails had raked down my skin.
Worried for a moment the neighbors might hear her scream.
Came so hard I almost blacked out. I’d never wanted anyone more in my entire life than I did her.
In that moment. All the moments that came after.
It was the start of something unexpected.
Where we lied to ourselves that it was just about the sex.
It was what allowed her to stay. What allowed me to indulge.
Where the want of her didn’t feel like a betrayal.
Before long, the lie was impossible to uphold.
Keeping our hearts behind a barrier was no longer an option when each time we kissed, I wanted to hand her my fucking soul.
“You do it for me, Kincaid.” I lowered my voice. “But I wager you know that by now.”
“I think so, yes.” Mercy sighed. “He’d like that. The scholarship.”
“He would.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Did I ever make it past the front of my car at the cemetery?”
“Not right away,” I told her. “It took you another month or so.”
She swallowed audibly. “Did we go together?”
“Always.” I scrubbed a hand over my face and let it drop into my lap.
“We didn’t bring flowers because you hated the thought that they’d die with no one taking care of them.
The first time we made it past the parking lot, it was warm.
The sun was just setting. And you were happy because it was the first night of the summer you could see the fireflies. ”
“He helped me collect them in jars when I was little,” she said. “Those lights in the greenhouse, they remind me of fireflies. Is that why I put them up?”
“It is.” I smiled. “We left a jar on his headstone. You wanted him to have some when it was dark out.”
“I miss him,” she said, voice thick, heavy with sadness and unshed tears. “I hate how much I miss him, Grant.”
“I know, darling.”
“The last thing I remember is sitting in my car. I couldn’t make myself open the door.”
I stared up at the ceiling. “That’s where I found you. We talked for hours, drinking more than we should, sitting on the hood of your horrible little car.” At that, she let out a quiet laugh. “I think it was the first conversation where you didn’t threaten me.”
“I was probably thinking it, if that helps.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
She was silent for a few moments, and I contented myself with the sound of her breathing. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that my brain just . . . stopped right there? Right before a single memory of this relationship began? The only one I’ve never run from.”
It was the question I’d never wanted her to ask. There was no answer to be found. No matter how badly we both wanted clarity, it didn’t exist for us. Not in this.
All I could do was answer honestly.
“I want it to be a coincidence.”
She didn’t respond right away. When she did, her voice was hardly audible. “I do too.”
I sat forward in the chair, digging my hands into my hair and bracing my elbows on the tops of my thighs. Before I could speak, she did.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” she said.
“Of course.”
“I’m sorry, Grant.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” There were a million things I wanted to hear from Mercy Kincaid.
I’m sorry was not one of them. In truth, not much could have made me feel worse.
There was no vulnerability without a foundation of safety first. We’d go nowhere if she didn’t trust me.
Trust that I wasn’t going to run and I wasn’t afraid of this being hard. “We do this at your pace.”
“Okay.”
A dull ache took root in the middle of my chest, and when we disconnected, it only grew as the minutes passed. There was a desperate longing to be close to her, and I tried to breathe through it. Tried to talk myself out of something rash.
It was that same urge that had overcome me when I left and could hardly force myself down the street. When I chased her out into the rain. When I followed her into the bloody greenhouse.
The feeling wasn’t dull any longer. It was sharp. Insistent. Agonizing.
Knowing that she was sitting in that great, big house, alone with her fears, alone with her questions . . .
The flowers felt like an absolute mockery.
What good was loyalty without action?
What was consistency without showing up for the person you loved?
Anticipation without stoking the flames? And love. What good was love if we were apart?
The way I’d fallen for Mercy was unintentional. Against all my better sense. It wasn’t done with quiet, rational steps and easy movements. It was all-consuming. The storm I never saw coming, one that I’d never want to end.
I’d been sitting here, bargaining with the universe so that she might come back to me, when I was the one who’d walked away.
I walked away.
My keys were in hand before I allowed myself to second-guess. The hotel door closed on a slam, and the pounding of my feet echoed through the hall as I ran.
With a heaving chest, I braced my hands on the wall next to the elevator and wondered whether I’d lost my fucking mind. If she’d think me mad when I showed up and begged to simply be by her side, no matter how long it took.
She might.
She might ask me to leave. She might remind me again that space was the thing she needed. But she’d know. Mercy would know that I’d keep showing up for her. Again and again and again.
I sucked in a breath as the elevator opened with a soft, tasteful ding.
It wasn’t empty.
“Hi.”