Grace's Redemption, page 9
“Don’t you get tired?” she said softly as we rocked.
“Oh, I had a nap at lunchtime,” I said, shutting my eyes and internalizing my cursing.
“See you in the morning,” she said softly.
“It’s Saturday, no rush,” I said. “All my little monsters will be sleeping in.”
Later on, in the dark, I jolted awake, a feeling of dread blanketing me with a clammy weight. It was late. Or early. Hard to tell which, in the nondescript room with the blinds closed, but something woke me. I raked a hand through my hair, threw off the rough blanket, and pushed the recliner closed with my heels, just as my dad grunted.
A gravelly, angry, tortured sound.
“Dad?”
I clicked on the small light overhead, not wanting to startle him, but I was the one taken aback. He was staring at me, but his eyes were vacant. His lips were moving, but his face was contorted, twisted, his left cheek tugging down like an invisible hand was pulling it from below.
“Da—”
“Oh, my God.”
It was Faith from behind me, answering my curiosity about the time, but the horror in her voice matched the cold chill running through me.
“Yell for Adriana,” I choked out.
There was no great love bond between me and my father. No gut-wrenching feelings to pull me to tears at what he was going through. He’d numbed me to those a long time ago. But—seeing this—seeing him look at me in lost confusion—it hit a soft spot in my heart I didn’t know I had.
His nurse ran in and quickly started assessing him . . . his eyes, his grip, questioning me about how long he’d been like this.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled as Faith put an arm around me. “I just woke up and he was like that.”
She turned back to him and hit a button on the bed. Suddenly a bunch of things started happening at once as other people in scrubs crowded the room. The words massive stroke passed a lot of lips. Faith and I backed up as they checked and adjusted and prepared him to go to a CT scan, but he seemed oblivious. Then he changed. The grunting came back, and his eyes were—wild.
Angry.
Faith grabbed my hand as he lifted his head, zeroing in on me with an amount of vitriol that I could only wish I’d never seen before. I knew what was coming before it happened, and as much as she liked to defend him, it seemed she did, too.
“Pa—” he croaked out, spit spewing, as he clearly had difficulty articulating his speech.
“Reverend, please—” Adriana attempted, trying to calm him.
“Tri-sha!” he finished, his twisted face mottling with the effort. “You cunt!”
It was a gravelly, wet, slurred roar of rage that brought a sob from Faith and a new, hardened cover over my thawing heart. I didn’t realize I’d left until the fresh air of the hospital parking lot hit my face.
I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t go where my childhood memories would wrap around me to try to decipher what I’d just seen. Just heard. My father hated my mother, clearly; I’d always known that. She’d saddled him with me, and then proceeded with another disappointment, until finally giving him Faith. I’d known it, felt it, but never seen his vitriol come directly at her till now. She’d lived with that till the day she died. Why? Why would she stay with such a horrible man? Why didn’t she take us and leave?
Because Redemption wouldn’t have abided by anything else.
My knee bounced in the car and I pressed my fingers just above my knee cap. Blindly, I pulled the car into the small parking lot of the town park and yanked it to a stop.
Count your breaths, Grace.
“I am counting, Mama,” I choked. “But you left us with—”
No.
I would not go back down the path of my childhood pain. I wouldn’t let him have that satisfaction, not all these years later. I was a grown damn woman, in charge of my own damn life, and my breathing was on me.
I got out, swiping the tears from my face as I raced down the sidewalk. I wasn’t a runner by any means, but in that moment, I just wanted to run and sweat the turmoil out of my body.
Speed walking down the winding sidewalk toward the playground, toward the sound of happiness and life and children that weren’t locked inside pulpits as punishment, I rounded a thick grove of flowering crepe myrtles to—
“Oh!” I exclaimed, stopping just inches short of the back of a man standing square in the middle of the sidewalk, arms crossed, facing the playground. “Excuse me, I’m—”
He turned. “Grace?”
“Shit,” I muttered, looking up into the same eyes that had driven me over the edge in my lunchtime rendezvous.
“What’s wrong?”
With one glance over his shoulder toward the playground, Mateo focused back on me, genuine concern etching his face.
I shook my head. “Nothing.” I averted my gaze, looking everywhere for a way around this guy that wouldn’t result in him following me. I’d learned enough to know he would. “I’m—I’m just—”
“Walking through the park, crying,” he said.
I swiped quickly at my face. “I’m not.”
His thumb brushed my cheek. “You missed one,” he said softly.
The touch radiated through me, my bones going weak. I had to be pregnant. That was the only explanation. I didn’t go weak in the knees over men. I didn’t turn into puddles at small kindnesses or feel like bursting into tears over one touch. I wasn’t the emotional damsel type.
But I must have looked the part.
“Sit,” he said, leading me to a bench.
“No, I need to—”
“What? It’s Saturday.” He pushed me to sit and settled next to me. “Sit down and breathe a second and watch Olivia play.” He turned his gaze to her and I followed it. Olivia was playing with two other little girls on the monkey bars, a red towel safety pinned to the back of her Frozen t-shirt. “I shit you not when I say it will cure most anything.”
The smile radiating off that little girl was brilliant. That’s what happiness—no, that’s what joy looked like. Pure, innocent, unstoppable joy.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I let it leave me slowly. “You’re right.”
“I know.”
A chuckle bubbled up and escaped my chest as I elbowed him. “You’re arrogant, too.”
“No,” he said, scoffing. “Not anymore. Nothing humbles you more than carrying a Disney princess backpack through the grocery store.”
I raised an eyebrow as I pictured all the moms at the school pickup line and what they wouldn’t give to witness him carrying Olivia’s backpack. God help him.
“Don’t underestimate the power of that.”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug and smirked. “Have to admit, I’m learning about that, too.” I laughed and felt some of the tension drain. “So, what’s wrong?”
I closed my eyes and let the laughter fade. “My father.”
“Is he worse?”
Tears stung my eyes, and I couldn’t even say that they were for the right reason. “He had a stroke,” I whispered.
“Oh, shit, Grace, I’m sorry.” He laid a warm hand on my knee. “Is he . . .”
A bitter snort preceded my thoughts and words. “Alive? Sure.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said.
“Is it?” My chest seized up on the words and I felt the surprise coming from him. “God, I’m going to hell.” I shook my head and covered my face as new tears trickled over my fingers. “I’m sorry. He just said some really awful—hateful—things, and I’m having trouble playing the grieving daughter. I had to get away.”
“Illness does that sometimes,” he said. “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
“Oh, no, this isn’t new,” I said on a chuckle. “I mean this morning’s was, but he’s pretty much been a world class dick my whole life. To me and my sister, Hope. Not to Faith, he adores her, but me and Hope . . .we were Mama’s, I guess.”
There was the requisite long pause after my babbling rant. “I’m sorry.”
I sucked in a deep breath and wiped off tears. Again. “Don’t be. It is what it is.”
Olivia ran up, face split in a huge grin, cape flapping behind her. “Miss M.!”
All of her four years of energy hurtled into my arms, and all I could do was catch her. “Olivia! Hi, sweetheart! I love your cape!”
“Thanks!” she said. “It’s my superpower cape when I do things extra good, and Daddy said I brushed my teeth so white they glowed, so that is superpower.”
I felt Mateo laughing next to me, and the warmth between them was almost too much to bear. Too good. Too real. “Let me see.”
Olivia bared her teeth and I gasped, pretending to cover my eyes. “Wow, they are almost blinding!”
“I know!” she said breathlessly. “So, I’m Super Princess Olivia and Daddy is Superman.”
My heart.
“Well, of course,” I said with a shrug. And off she went. “She is quite the character. Kind of quiet the first couple of days, but she’s really finding her footing.”
“Wish I could say the same about her dad,” Mateo said, swigging from a water bottle. “I feel like I’m going in circles.” He eyed me sideways. “Starting with you.”
“Me?” I crossed my legs. “There’s no circles with me. I’m about the most boring, stay in one place and take no risks woman there is.”
“Right,” he said.
“Not counting Vegas,” I amended.
“Oh—Vegas counts for a lot,” he said, facing forward, crossing his arms again. “We can never count that out.”
“Awesome,” I whispered, crossing my arms as well.
“So, tell me more.”
I looked at his profile. Lord, he was beautiful, in a chiseled hunk of art kind of way. I could totally see why I fell for him in a bar.
Fell for—wait, no—fell for his charms. Fell for his looks, fell for a gorgeous guy coming on to me because since when was that my life? But no, I didn’t fall for him. And I wasn’t. Not now, and not ever, because no.
Shit. Damn. Hell.
“Grace?”
“More about what?” I blurted, coming back to my life. “Oh, is this the getting to know you thing again?”
“Want more than Vegas as a base read?” He met my eyes with a challenge. “Give me more.”
I blinked. “Now?”
“Have something else to do?” he asked. “I mean, I’m watching a four-year-old manage a better social life than I’ve ever had, so I’m free.” He glanced my way again when I laughed. “Nothing earth-shattering, maybe just one thing each time we see each other.”
“You’d run for the hills by my second confession,” I said. “The date would be over.” My face flushed hot. “I didn’t mean date, just—”
But his eyes had locked on mine and weren’t letting go. “We could get a drink.”
I licked my lips and then clenched my legs tighter as that gaze dropped to watch. “Um, that didn’t work so well last time,” I said.
He chuckled. “True enough. Plus, you probably shouldn’t drink right now, just in—”
“Yep, got it,” I said, fighting the urge to add, way to kill a mood, buddy. “Coffee?”
“You can have caffeine?”
I gave him one raised eyebrow. “Coffee?” I repeated.
He smirked. “Noted.” We took a few beats to breathe, watching families come and go. “You said you have another sister? Hope? Any more?”
“Nope, that’s it,” I said.
“Hope, Faith, and Grace?” he said slowly.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, nodding. “We’re a Hallmark card. And you?”
“No Hallmark cards,” he said. “One brother, but we don’t talk. Haven’t in years.”
“Complicated?”
“Understatement.” He cleared his throat. “Alright, one thing you like about yourself and one thing you hate.”
I couldn’t help but smile as Olivia jumped up and down, hugging another girl. I didn’t remember ever being that carefree. “I think we’re past our one question for the day.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, I am Superman, so that gives me an extra one.”
My insides went molten. “Hmm, with that logic I guess I get one, too, because Faith deemed me Wonder Woman the other day.”
He held out a fist. “Here’s to being superheroes.” We bumped knuckles. “You first.”
I blew out a breath. “I don’t know—like is too hard to come up with right now. Hate—I guess would be my eyes.”
He blinked in surprise. “Why? You have gorgeous eyes.”
A whole new heat flooded my face and then traveled south, lighting up everything in its path.
“Because they suck,” I said, looking back at the playground. “I need glasses or contacts and I hate those things in my eyes so . . .” I wiggled my frames. “Plus, I have my mother’s eyes and—” I stopped short, remembering my father’s horrible yell, followed by a speed reel of so many similar moments.
“That’s a bad thing?”
I nodded. “Usually. Your turn.”
He sighed. “My knees.”
I gave him a look. “Really?”
“I’m not kidding, they’re knobby.”
“I don’t remember being repulsed by them.”
Even my palms broke out in a sweat as those eyes of his darkened, and the look between us traveled into ominous territory.
“Well, we were . . . distracted.”
“Daddy!”
We both jumped as Olivia pounced, sand and hair and sticky hands flying. Mateo pulled out a wet wipe from the Disney backpack, mauling her face with it, and I could swear I felt the collective nipple hardening of every woman at that playground. Shit. This guy. Or my hormones. I didn’t know which to hope for anymore.
“Tiara who is friends with Emily who is cousins with Charissa is having a birthday party in just a minute and she’s turning five!” Olivia blurted, talking faster than I could process the names, and I knew them.
“O—kay,” he said slowly.
“Her aunt is right over there with Charissa’s mom,” she said, whirling to point. “She invited me; it’s at her house, and she gots a jumpy castle and cookie cake, Daddy, please can I go, it’s at eleven?”
Oh, shit. Charissa’s mom. We both head-pivoted to see Kat waving.
“Eleven?” he said. “Doodlebug, that’s in like thirty minutes. We—we don’t have a present, or—”
“Miss Kat said it’s okay. Please, Daddy, pleasepleaseplease can I go?”
Mateo looked stuck. Then he looked at me. And little fires lit everywhere. “Coffee at eleven?”
I swallowed. “Sure.”
The walk back to the cars was intense. Quiet. Laced with . . . something I didn’t dare name after the emotional upheaval of my morning. Mateo got Olivia into Kat’s vehicle, expertly diverted her advances while she threw me a few daggered looks, then he watched them all drive away as I leaned against my car.
Then he turned back to me.
He walked in my direction, his eyes dark. Unreadable. Taking his time.
I wanted to slap myself for how my body automatically responded to his approach. Slow, methodical, and powerful. Speeding up my heart and my breathing with every step. His eyes never left mine, his gaze thoughtful—sizzling—as he stopped just inches away, close enough to touch, our breath mingling.
“Coffee?” he asked, his voice low and deep.
I had to tip my head back to stare up into his face, my gaze sliding from his chiseled chin to his kissable lips, his nose, back to those eyes—mossy, flecked with gold and a hint of danger.
Everything in my life had always told me to be careful. To play it safe. To keep my distance and not get hurt . . . but with Mateo, my traitorous body wouldn’t listen. It certainly hadn’t that night in Vegas. And now . . .
I ran my hands up his chest like I’d done it all my life. “Yes, please.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mateo
The way she touched me . . . it sparked so many long-dead nerve endings to life. And as I stared into those unreal dark eyes, so many other feelings fought for top billing in my mind.
Sympathy. Peace. A bit of frustration. Lust. Definitely lust.
Happiness, I realized with a jolt as I cupped her jaw in one hand.
Against all logic, being around quirky, anxious, bolt-out-the-door Grace McMasters made me happy, and that was the scariest feeling of all because the last time I’d felt that way, I’d sunk my whole being into the emotion—into her—and losing her had crushed me. Only Olivia had kept me going.
Grace slid her hand up over mine, her gaze knowing, as if she’d sensed where my wayward thoughts were going. “You okay?”
A half laugh huffed past my lips. “I’m good. Just . . . tired,” I finished lamely.
“Me, too.” She smiled wryly as she drew away, and I felt the moment passing. The dart of her eyes to take in her surroundings told me she was getting ready to bolt again.
“Not sleeping?”
“Badly,” she said with a tiny shrug. “In the chair from hell in my dad’s hospital room, waking up every hour, having weird dreams about you, then I go and fall asleep in my car during lunch, which I never do, mind you . . .” Her dark eyes flashed to mine as she rambled on. “Then Felicity comes to get me and casually mentions that her pregnant sister does that all the time, and I’m just like . . .” She stopped and narrowed her eyes. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“You’re having dreams about me?”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes fluttered closed. “I said that out loud.”
I tilted my head in amusement. “You did.”
She shook her head. “Stop enjoying this.”
I stepped closer. “It’s really . . . unavoidable.”
She chuckled, opening her eyes and immediately averting them toward the park. “Men.” I lifted a brow. “Oh, Jesus.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Yes, alright? I’ve had . . . a couple of dreams. Does that soothe your male ego?”
I bit back a grin. “Possibly. What were they about?”
She rolled her eyes, but there was no missing the blush that crept up her ivory cheeks.
