She peeked up at me. Blue eyes fathomless. Rays of sunlight streaking through to touch the bottom of the deepest sea.
Chaos had struck up in the kitchen again when Mallory called to Faith, “Turn it up, Auntie Faith! This one is my favorite, favorite!”
Surprise, surprise, The Spice Girls.
But what really tilted the floor to the side was the fact the kid was calling my sister-in-law Auntie.
She and Bailey were back to dancing with my brother, and Faith laughed her encouragement as she helped Thomas make another batch of pancake batter.
Still, Grace’s voice left her on a whisper, like it was meant only for the two of us.
Well, the two of us and Sophie who’d fully wrapped her little arms around my neck.
“I don’t think I’ve slept so well for as long as I can remember. Thanks to you. Thanks to your family. You’re right, they’re the best people I could ever meet.”
I’d started to sway.
That’s the way whirlwinds were. You were caught up and spinning and getting tossed into a realm you’d never expected before you had the chance to prepare yourself. To stop it.
Just like right then.
Because I let my nose drop to the delicious slope of Grace’s neck.
I inhaled.
Sweet, juicy plum that I’d come to realize was just an overflow of her heart.
I wanted to suck it down and keep it forever.
She took in a sharp breath before she leaned back into me.
Flesh searing into mine.
I wanted to wrap my arm around her waist and hold her there. But that was just foolishness.
I forced myself to take a step back. That was when I noticed Jace watching us from across the room. I thought he might smirk. Rub it in that he was right again. Instead, he sent me a sympathetic smile.
Like he got that, no matter how this turned out, it couldn’t turn out in my favor.
One way or another, I was going to lose, and I was pretty sure that was going to hurt worse than anything else had in all my life.
Thirty-Three
Grace
“You love him?”
Faith’s soft voice broke into my thoughts where I was sitting on the porch. I was watching my children play on the back lawn with Ian and his brother and his sweet little girl, Bailey, this family so wonderful I was having a hard time processing all the emotions threading through the middle of me.
Stitching and binding.
I glanced over at her. The gorgeous woman was holding a bouquet of fresh-cut roses that she’d harvested from the rose garden off to the side of her magnificent house.
Everything about her screamed beauty.
Her face and her home and her spirit.
While mine swam with turmoil. I tried to swallow around the surge of it that was threatening to wash me away, and I cast her a weary smile. “I’m trying not to.”
She grimaced and came to sit on a chair next to me. “Not so easy to tell love what to do, is it?”
A weak sigh blew from my lungs. “No, not so much.”
Rambunctious laughter rolled through the cool air, and Ian chased after Thomas, who was running with all his might, Ian just barely missing him as he reached out to tag my son.
It seemed crazy that just last night Ian had swept into my home. A dark savior. Today, it felt so much that way.
As if we’d been rescued.
Lifted directly out of the storm.
“Ah, man, Thomas, you’re way too fast for me!” Ian hollered, his smile freer in that moment than I’d ever seen him wear.
My chest stretched tight.
Squeezing and binding.
Silence spun between Faith and me as we watched them play.
Sophie Marie tottered around, trying to keep up, while the rest of the kids ran circles around her. Jace was holding their son again, so protectively, as if the man refused to let him go.
Faith finally broke our quiet bubble. “Ian is . . . complicated.”
I almost laughed, my gaze flitting to her before it was back on Ian, who’d swept Sophie back up into the strength of those arms. He ran with her, chasing after Bailey, soaring Sophie through the air as if she were flying since she now was “it.”
As if the man was her champion.
Her hero.
She kicked and flapped her arms and laughed.
“That much is plenty obvious,” I said, looking over at her, my lips pressing into a grim line. “But he also might be the most transparent man I’ve ever met. He’s so fundamentally good, but all the fear and regret he carries around makes him believe he’s someone bad.”
Faith nodded slightly, contemplating, not sure what she wanted to confide in me. Her voice dropped, so low I had to struggle to listen. “The first time I saw Ian, he was stuffing a sandwich into his mouth, crying because it hurt to eat since it’d been so long since the last time he had.”