Chapter Twenty-Eight Grant
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Grant
The sight of her knocked me back on my heels, breath snatched clean from my lungs. “You’re here,” I said dumbly.
She left the elevator, the scent of her soap following when she passed. My brow furrowed as my eyes closed in a pained blink. I couldn’t breathe her in deeply enough.
“You were leaving,” she replied.
“I was coming to you.”
Mercy sucked in a quick breath.
“I should’ve called. Or texted or something,” she said, hardly able to meet my gaze as the elevator closed behind her. “I just . . .” Her eyes filled with tears.
“What is it?”
Anything. I’d give her absolutely anything to remove that pain from her eyes.
“Yellow lilies mean happiness,” she whispered.
“Freesias are—” Mercy turned, hands hanging off the back of her neck, and I wanted to yank her around so I could see every shift in her expression, every wrinkle, every twitch of her lips.
But I waited, hands fisted at my sides, until I could see her face again.
“Freesias are trust. And also innocence, which seems like a stretch for me, but I’ll take it. ”
I exhaled a quiet laugh. “And the others?”
At my gentle prompt, she blinked. “Anemones are anticipation.”
I nodded. “Sunflowers.”
Her voice shook as she answered. “Loyalty. Adoration.”
“And the roses?” I took a step closer. “What about them?”
“Love.”
I held her gaze, heart turning over in a slow, chugging lurch. “The flowers scared you,” I ventured. “Were they too much?”
At first, Mercy held still. Her eyes unwavering. Then she shook her head.
I let out a relieved breath. “You can tell me if they are.”
“I mean, the house smells like a brothel now.”
“Does it?”
“Honestly, I can’t even breathe from the lilies. But they’re really pretty.” She closed her eyes. “They didn’t scare me, but . . . I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all these feelings.”
I lowered my voice. Kept it gentle. Quiet. Like she might scare at any second. “What feelings, darling?”
“I hung up, and I stood there staring at them,” she said, “wondering if you’d sent me flowers before. If this was normal. If things were always so . . . perfect between us. If you were always this perfect.”
“Mercy,” I sighed. “I’m not—”
She held up a hand. “I’ve never had anything good last long.
I am always braced for the other shoe to drop.
For something to be wrong or to go wrong.
Over and over, I’ve learned the same lesson.
” Her eyes glimmered. “That I don’t get to keep the things I love.
My parents and . . . and Connor. And you. ”
“I’m right here,” I reminded her, urgency pushing me to close the gap between us. “You haven’t lost me.”
“But I did!” she cried. The tears spilled over, and she brushed them away with a harsh swipe of her hand.
“You’re in front of me, and you’re doing and saying all the right things, and I’m terrified.
Not just because I’ve lost a year of my life.
Not because I can’t force it back into place.
I can’t will myself through this. Neither can you.
You’re telling me all about this incredible love, and it was taken from me.
I don’t know how to trust that this is real.
” Mercy weeping, unraveled to her very core, felt like a blow to my chest. “And I—” Her voice cracked on a sob, and she lowered her head for a moment, her entire frame trembling.
“Tell me,” I begged, vision blurring. “Tell me, darling.”
“I don’t— I . . . I can’t—”
“I’m right here.” I cupped her shoulders, and she sagged into my touch. “I promise.”
Mercy lifted her head, staring up into my face with her heart laid bare. “What if I’m never her again?”
My heart. It came to a staggering stop.
“What?”
“I might never be the woman that you fell in love with. What if you stay and we try and I never remember?” Her breathing was choppy, uneven as she swallowed a sob.
“What if I never get those memories back? What if I can’t ever be that person again?
What if I can’t be the woman you fell in love with?
What if I’m standing right in front of you, and you miss her? ”
Tears dripped off my chin, and I lifted my hands carefully, dragging my thumbs over the wetness on her cheeks. “Impossible.”
“It’s not.” Mercy clutched my shirt in her hands, like I was going anywhere. “I kept looking at those flowers, knowing what they meant—and my heart, Grant, my heart broke thinking about losing this, this feeling, if I can’t ever be the same that I was before.”
“I don’t need you to be the same, Mercy. I’ll fall in love with you all over again. Whatever version I have, I will love you for the rest of my life.”
“I believe you. Even before I came, I did,” she said. My chest expanded on a staggering sort of relief. “And then I thought . . . even if I didn’t believe you, it wouldn’t matter if I ran. If I left.”
I sucked in a breath, waiting for what she might say next. “No?”
“I’d be thinking about you no matter where I go.
I’d worry about you. Want to know if you’re okay.
If you miss me as much as I miss you,” she whispered.
“There’s no running from you, Grant Hastings.
There’s no worrying about whether you’ll hurt me, because the only thing that hurts right now is being apart. I don’t want to be. I can’t.”
A tear slid down my cheek. Then another.
She stared up into my eyes, her hands clasped around my wrists as I held her tearstained face in a tender grip. “Will you just hold me? Is that okay?”
In the next heartbeat, she was in my arms, and I took my first full breath in almost a month. Mercy wept as I clutched her tight against my chest. As I cried too. Her hands fisted in the cotton on my back, her forehead tucked against the base of my throat.
Even with a bruised heart, shredded from her fears and mine, it was perfect. Like my entire universe had righted on its axis. I pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, burying my nose in her hair and filling my lungs with her scent.
It was a miracle that no one interrupted us, but we stood there in the quiet until her tears finally ran out. My hands hardly ever stopped moving, skimming along her back, up into her hair, along her arms.
I held her tightly and spoke into her ear, low and urgent and fierce.
“You’re always her, love. Always. I’m not going anywhere.”
Mercy opened her mouth to answer, and a door opened at the end of the hall, a sharp burst of laughter echoing end to end as two teenage girls skipped to another room a few doors down. In my arms, Mercy deflated, like a balloon pricked with a needle.
“I choose the worst places for my emotional outbursts.”
I smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. I couldn’t stop myself, wanting to kiss her again and again. “Your impulsive nature is one of my favorite things about you.”
“Liar.”
I laughed under my breath. “Come inside,” I told her, pulling back to gesture toward my room.
She stared hard at the door, then shifted her watery gaze to me. “I thought you were afraid of wanting to have sex with me when I’m vulnerable.”
My mouth twitched. “I don’t believe those were my exact words. I’ll be good, I promise.”
“I’m too drained to argue.” She sighed. “Lead the way.”