Chapter Thirty-Two Grace
Thirty-Two
Grace
The bathroom door clicked shut behind Grace with all the finality of a coffin lid.
We all knew it was just a bit of fun, anyway.
Those words Reese had uttered were all it took to unravel everything she thought they’d built in this tower. Eleven words to confirm what the nasty voice in her head had been whispering all along: You’re not the type of woman billionaires fall for. You’re the kind they play with when they’re bored.
She gripped the edge of the sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked exactly like what she was: a small-town waitress who’d gotten in way over her head.
Her hands shook as she turned on the faucet, splashing cold water on her face.
The tower, this whole insane twenty-four hours.
She was just convenient entertainment. He was trapped there with her, nowhere else to go.
Like those reality shows where they lock strangers in a house and watch them crack.
“Grace?” His voice came through the door. “I’m sorry. That all came out wrong.”
She dried her face, anger rising up hot and sharp. Good. Anger was better than the pathetic hurt threatening to swallow her whole.
“Oh, it’s fine!” she called back, injecting as much sarcasm as she could muster. “It was just fun, no big fucking deal. That’s what you said, right?”
Silence. Then she heard him slide down against the door, his weight making the old wood creak.
“I didn’t mean that.” His voice came from lower now, floor level. “I was…Christ, I was worried history was repeating itself.”
Something in his tone made her sink down too, her back against her side of the door. Their heads separated by two inches of oak and a canyon of doubt.
“My ex-wife,” he continued, and Grace could picture him running his hands through his hair the way he did when he was struggling for words. “Megan. She…she played a long game. Was using me for money.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“The worst part wasn’t the money she got out of me,” he said, so quiet Grace had to press closer to hear.
“It was finding out that every moment, every conversation, every time she said she loved me was probably calculated. She’d studied me like I was some mark in a con game.
When I realized you were AutumnDreams87, for a second I thought it was the same with you. ” He exhaled hard. “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” she said, even though part of her was still hurt, still cautious. “You’re just…scarred.”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Grace—”
“No, Reese.”
A sigh, then she heard him walk away. Her heart sank. Of course. Rich boys didn’t grovel. They didn’t—
Something slid under the door. The Polaroid from earlier, the one of them together. She picked it up and looked at it. The way he was looking at her. So intense. So serious. Like she was something so precious he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
“Does that look like just fun to you?” His voice came from right outside again.
She stared at the photo, at the naked emotion on his face. This wasn’t the expression of a man playing games. She cracked the door open, just enough to peer through. He was sitting on the floor again, back against the wall, those green eyes uncertain.
“Hey, WildTrailGuide,” she said softly.
A smile tugged at his mouth, relief flooding his features. “Hey, AutumnDreams87.”
They stared at each other, then Grace pulled him into the bathroom and kissed him. This kiss was different from the ones before. Edgier. Hungrier. Like they were both trying to prove something to each other, to themselves.
“If you ever,” Grace said against his mouth, “ever make me feel like I’m just some convenient entertainment again—”
“You’re not,” he said, backing her against the cold tiles, hands framing her face.
“Grace, you’re not convenient. You’re complicated and stubborn and you terrify me because you’re real.
You’re the most real thing that’s happened to me in years.
” He stood up, lifting her with him and placing her on the bathroom counter, stepping between her legs.
“You drive me insane. You call me on my bullshit. No one else does that. No one else makes me feel like this, off balance and steady at the same time, and I don’t want it to end. ”
Did he just say he didn’t want it to end?
Grace pulled back to look at him, this beautiful, complicated man who’d built walls as high as hers. “We’re a disaster waiting to happen, you know that, right? Billionaire and waitress. It’s a bad Hallmark movie.”
“Good thing my guilty pleasure is bad Hallmark movies,” he said and then his mouth was on hers again—hot, certain, shutting her up in the best possible way.
Her breath hitched as he pushed her panties aside, rolled a condom on, and thrust into her, the world narrowing to skin, heat, and the sheer audacity of it.
It wasn’t sweet or tidy or anything fit for a Christmas special.
It was wild, reckless, like daring the universe to try to stop them.
···
Later, tangled together in the dark, Grace traced patterns on his chest while he played with her hair.
“AutumnDreams87, though?” he murmured. “Really?”
“Shut up. Like WildTrailGuide is any better.”
“It’s mysterious.”
“It’s pretentious.”
“Says the woman who pretended to be from another hemisphere.”
Grace bit his shoulder playfully. “I panicked, okay? Single mom from Nowheresville doesn’t exactly scream ‘take my business advice seriously.’ ”
He tilted her chin up. “Your business advice to the other subreddit members was terrible anyway.”
Grace should have been offended. Instead, she found herself grinning. “So why did you keep helping me?”
His thumb traced her lower lip. “Because you were funny. And determined. And you sent me that rant about how spreadsheets were clearly invented by sadists with a fetish for tiny boxes.”
“They are!”
“And because,” he continued, voice dropping, “every time you messaged me, no matter how crazy my day had been, everything felt…lighter.”
Grace kissed him then, soft and slow, trying to put everything she couldn’t quite say yet into that kiss: that whatever this thing between them was, he better not break her heart.