“Our lives aren’t a game.”
“No, you’re right. Your lives are mine.” He took another step back and meticulously straightened the cuffs on his jacket. “You have two weeks to come to your senses, Grace. Two weeks to end this stupidity.”
He started to walk away before he turned around, pointing at me. “Two weeks.” Then he jumped into the dark gray Jaguar sitting at the curb on the opposite side of the street.
Frozen, I watched as he started his car and jumped out onto the small side road. Not a single car had passed in all that time, not a single soul to witness our altercation.
Even if they had, it wouldn’t have looked like anything more than a lover’s spat, anyway.
No one would know my world was crumbling under me.
Time was running out.
I slumped into the driver’s seat of my car, clinging to the steering wheel for dear life, as if it were a buoy, a life raft.
I refused to buckle. To surrender.
I was going to race time.
And I was going to beat it.
Hands shaking, I finally got the key into the ignition and started my car. I drove back through Charleston and to the quiet neighborhood where I had been raised. I pulled into the narrow drive and stared at the little house that always seemed to radiate emptiness when my children were away.
I forced myself to kill the engine and stepped out, the adrenaline that had been lining my bones draining, making me weak.
I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. I went right for the comfortable living room, which was decorated exactly the same as it had been when I was a child. The only difference were the pictures of my children that had been added to the walls.
Their toys scattered about.
It only made the lack of their presence seem all that more profound.
The second she caught the expression on my face, Gramma frowned and set aside the quilting project she was working on. She patted her lap as if I were four and just her holding me could chase all the demons away.
I moved across the room and curled up on the couch, hugging that stupid bag to my chest and resting my head on the top of her thigh.
She gentled her fingers through my hair. “I take it your meeting didn’t go well.”
There was no stopping it. The dam that burst.
Mostly, it was a result of the showdown with Reed. Hopelessness trying to find its way inside. To seed and plant and take root until nothing was left but weeds that had snuffed out beauty and life.
But I’d gone and let a piece of my heart get broken, too.
I’d opened myself up and made myself vulnerable.
I might as well have stretched my arms out to the sides and welcomed the pain.
A sob erupted from my chest, and I curled deeper into my grandmother’s hold. “No, Gramma. It didn’t go well. I was told again that only a fool would take my case.”
Ian being the one who’d said it only made it all the worse.
“Well, good thing there are a whole lot of fools out there,” she almost chuckled, my grandmother gifting comfort in a way that only she could.
I smiled through my tears. “They run rampant, don’t they?”
“Sure do. Whole world is nothing but a bunch of blundering idiots who don’t know their heads from their asses. I’m sure we can find one attorney with their head shoved up there somewhere.”
Silence filled the room. Our spirits’ quick acknowledgement that this wasn’t a joking matter. Sometimes, the only thing a person could do was laugh their way through it.
My voice tripped into sorrow. “I think it was me who was the fool.”
She softly brushed her fingers through the hair at the top of my head. “Shh . . . don’t say that. You think with your heart, not with only two brain cells. Big difference.”
“But I thought Reed was a good man.”
Even though I was facing out, I could feel her give a sharp shake of her head. “You married Reed because that’s what his parents pressured you into doing. You went along with it because you thought it was the right thing to do.”
“And what did you think?” I breathed.
“I thought you were settling.”
“I tried to love Reed with all of me. I did. I thought . . . in time . . . together we’d create a home. I thought it’d be a good choice,” I admitted. “You and Grandpa took care of me my whole life. The last thing I wanted to do was burden you with the issues I’d created for myself.”
Reed and I had been married in a flash, and I’d been pregnant a month later. It wasn’t until I had a ring on my finger that I’d seen the true side of the man he was. Of course, I hadn’t given myself any amount of time to really get to know him before I’d gotten myself into that situation.