CHAPTER 18
Grace
After a tense rehearsal which consisted of Tess moping and quarreling with Finlay over every minor thing—the stage’s lighting, the late hour, her coffee-stained manuscript, and even the dang weather (“It’s too hot, can’t we continue tomorrow?”) I made my way to my pickup, emotionally drained.
I was so exhausted that I resorted to texting West the good news about my role, which I was growing more and more excited about. I didn’t have it in me to pick up when he called. I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm that the conversation deserved. I promised myself I’d bring him a hearty sandwich tomorrow, made from scratch, and tell him about what had happened with Professor McGraw at length.
I parked in front of my house, walking in to the sound of a commotion upstairs. My back stiffened. Marla was yelling, and the persistent rattle of a wooden door echoed through the house.
“Open up, you old bat. I ain’t asking again. I’ll call Sheriff Jones and have him kick this thing down. You’re puttin’ yourself in real danger here!”
Lord, what now?
I dumped my backpack at the landing, racing up the stairs. Rounding the corner to the hallway, I spotted Marla pounding her fists on the bathroom door, her face flushed and hair a mess. Her fists were pink and swollen.
“Savannah!” Her roar almost blew the roof to the sky. “Open up right this second!”
The sound of water whooshing from the other side of the door filled my ears.
“No!” Grams’ voice jangled like a coin in an empty piggybank, hollow and screeching. “You ain’t fooling me no more. You want to lure my sweet, sweet Courtney back to drugs. I’m not opening up. I don’t know you, miss. If anything, I’m going to call Sheriff Jones and have him come arrest you. This is my property! I may be old, but I sure know my rights.”
It wasn’t the first or even fifth time Grams didn’t recognize Marla, but it was the first time she’d actively resisted her.
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked, placing my hand on her shoulder.
Marla wiped the sweat from her face, shaking her head. When she turned around to face me, I could tell she’d been crying. Her eyes were shiny and puffy.
“I can’t do this anymore, honey pie. I’m so sorry. I just can’t. Your grandmomma is …” She shook her head, pursing her lips to stop herself from bawling. “She’s not doing well. And keeping her here, undiagnosed, is not doing her any favors. You sending her to a nursing home is not about doing what’s convenient for you, sweetheart. It is not a selfish act. I wish you’d understand this. At this point, you’re doing the poor woman a disservice by keeping her here. She is no longer in a position to make her own choices. She ain’t lucid, and she belongs in a place that can accommodate her needs twenty-four seven. Grace …” She choked, her chin wobbling with the impending burst of a wail. “No one is going to accept this job. And that is something you must accept.”
I gave Marla a quick hug and sent her off, then hiked up my sleeves to pound on the door.
The water had begun to leak through the door crack. My breath hitched as I watched the thin sheet of water sliding down beneath my FILAs, making its way to the hallway. Was she filling up the bathtub?
I didn’t know how she managed to lock Marla outside. She wasn’t supposed to be there alone. Ever.
You were supposed to swap out the doorknobs that could be picked from the outside, a little voice inside me fumed. You kept telling yourself Grams was incapable of being so reckless. Of doing something so dangerous. Another lie you fed yourself about her.
“Grams,” I called out in my softest voice. “It’s me, Gracie-Mae, your grandchild. Please open the door so I can help you.”
“Gracie who?” she asked with a suspicious huff. “I don’t know any Gracie-Mae. The only family I have is Freddie and my Courtney, and she’s in trouble, because riffraff like yourself are trying to sell her drugs. But I’m not going to let it happen anymore. It ends now. Right, Courtney, baby?”
Who was she talking to?
Dear God, how bad was she?
But I already knew the answer to that question. I just pretended it wasn’t so.
I grabbed the door handle, giving it a shake. When that didn’t work, I slammed my palms flat against the wood desperately.
The water kept pouring, slithering down the stairs now. Just like the night of the fire, but in reverse. She was going to drown. I couldn’t let it happen. I feared even if I called West or Sheriff Jones, by the time they got here, something bad would have happened.
“I’m comin’ in!” I announced, angling my shoulder toward the door and taking a step back. I used all the momentum I could muster and crashed into the door with the side of my shoulder.
Other than possibly dislocating it, nothing happened.
Crap. Crap. Triple crap.
“Grams!” I hit the door, gasping. No answer.
I thrust my shoulder against the door again, trying to pick at the door handle, the sting of tears coating my eyes. I fumbled to take out my phone, calling West while continuing my attempts to open the door.
“Tex,” he answered after the first ring. “What’s up?”
“I need you to come here. Grams locked herself in the bathroom, and the water’s runnin’. It’s everywhere, West.”
“On my way.”
I heard him getting up and the sound of his wallet chain, the jingle of his keys as he scooped them up, and the crunching of his boots on loose gravel.
“I worry you are going to be too late …” I choked on my words. I should have never left her alone. Marla couldn’t take care of her on her own.
Then, what? Do you want to drop out of college and dedicate your life to taking care of someone who you make miserable and doesn’t even remember you half the time?
I heard him revving the Ducati, but he didn’t hang up.
“Do you have your debit card handy?”
“Ah, I don’t have a card,” I mumbled, blushing.
“Any cards in your wallet? Costco? Health insurance?”
“I have my library card,” I swallowed.
“Is it plastic?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to walk you through unlocking the door. Get the card.”
“Okay.”
I ran back downstairs, holding the phone while he was on speaker, and hunted for my wallet in my JanSport. It took me three times before I managed to produce the library card, my fingers shook so badly. I sprinted up the stairs again, positioning myself in front of the bathroom door. The water reached the ground floor, and terror flooded through me.
I could hear West riding, the wind blowing about. His phone was tucked inside his helmet, the way I saw him doing dozens of times.
“Got it?” he asked.
“Got it.”
“Slide the card between the door and the frame, just above the lock.”
I did as I was told, my breath stuck in my throat.
“Now, tilt the card toward the door handle and try to bend it between the lock and the frame.”
“On it.”
I wiggled the card back and forth, feeling the lock latching and unlatching, but not all the way. My raw nerves shot a signal to the rest of my body, making me tremble. The heavy swishing of water in the bathtub on the other side of the door made me want to throw up. And then …
The door clicked, sliding open, just an inch. I flattened my hand on it, bursting in. Grams was in the bathtub, completely clothed, the water at her chin-level. She stared me down, awake, her eyes murky.
She looked like she wanted to shoot me.
“It’s open!” I cried into the phone with relief, dropping the device in the dry sink. I launched toward Grams. She swatted me away, her hand heavy with water. I turned off the water immediately.
“Get out of here, you Devil’s child! Get out of my house! Out of my life!”
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Look at your face!” she hissed. “Monster.”
I patted my face, realizing that sometime during my efforts to unlock the bathroom door, I’d discarded my ball cap. “The Devil has touched you, and now you are marked. Ugly and tainted, inside and out. You’re here to take my Courtney, aren’t you?”
“Grams, no. You don’t know—”
“I do know.” Her voice was low. Eerily calm all of a sudden. “Grace. Gracie-Mae. Quite the nuisance you are, Gracie. You were the reason she ran away. Did you know that? You were too much. Too loud, too whiny, too demanding. When she gave you to me, I looked at you and all I thought about was that I’d got myself a raw deal. A granddaughter for a daughter. I never wanted you. You took her away from me. You.” She pointed a shaky finger at me, her nostrils flaring, her lips turning blue, along with her ever-paling skin in the cold water. She was going to catch pneumonia, and I needed to get her out of there, but I couldn’t stop her stream of words. “You no-good Devil’s daughter! My only consolation is, God has already done the work for me. Punished you with this face. Paid you back for all your sins!”
She tilted her head up to the ceiling, smiling, as if touched by an invisible ray of sun. She pressed her eyes shut, a bitter chuckle leaving her mouth. “They all think that you did it. All of them. No one knows our little secret, Gracie-Mae. No one knows what I did that night.”
There was a loaded pause before she went in for the kill.
“I did it on purpose. Left the cigarette next to my nightcap and let it catch. I didn’t want to live anymore. Didn’t want you to either.”
A feral scream tore through my throat. I launched at the old lady, gripping the hem of her dress and hurling her out of the bathtub, dragging her out to the hallway and into her room to dry her up. I dumped her onto the flowery linen of her bed like a sack of potatoes, throwing a towel over her and patting her dry. She fought me, but I still took care of her.
Me and my ugly face.
Me and my dead mother.
The broken flame ring seared my skin, and I wanted to dump it on the floor and stomp on it a thousand times. Grandmomma was wrong. It never granted me any wishes. It just reminded me that I was an unwanted child.
Grandma Savannah blamed me for all of this. For Courtney crumbling down. For the Shaw household following in her footsteps. I was the responsibility Grams had been saddled with, a dead weight, someone she wanted to get rid of.
We wrestled on her bed, me on top, tears blurring my vision. I was almost done drying her up when I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.
“Go, Tex. I’m taking over.”
“But I …”
“Go.”
I turned around, running away, not daring to look him in the eye and see what was there. Everything about me was complicated and disheartening, and I wondered, for the millionth time, why West had stuck around when he could have had something so much better with any of the beauties who worshipped the ground he walked upon.
Selfishly—oh, so selfishly—I locked the bathroom door and took a shower, ignoring the filled bathtub not a foot away from me. There were soaked towels on the floor, toothbrushes, and soap scattered everywhere.
I focused on scrubbing every inch of myself clean under the scorching water, shedding the god-awful day from my body—my ugly, scarred face included.
Then I tiptoed to the hallway. I heard West behind Grams’ door, soothing her quietly to sleep, an unwarranted arrow of jealousy ripping through my heart.
I should be the one being comforted in his arms. He is mine.
I slinked into my room before the urge to start a catfight with my elderly, Alzheimer-suffering grandmother overtook me.
I put my jammies on and collapsed on my bed, staring at the ceiling. The tears ran freely down my cheeks. For the first time in years, I didn’t try to stop them.
After Grandmomma’s soft snores filled the hallway, I listened as West stomped about the floor. I heard him cleaning up the bathroom, mopping the hallway and the stairs, and going down to the kitchen to brew some coffee.
Listening to him living, breathing, existing in my realm by my side, was reassuring. He was a godsend. I couldn’t have handled Grams on my own tonight.
Eventually, it sounded like he ascended the stairs, put the two mugs of coffee down on the floor outside my room, and pressed his forehead against the door from the other side.
It scared me how well I knew his body language. The way he carried himself around my house. I could practically envision him doing all that.
“Open the door, Texas.”
In my haze, I’d forgotten to reapply my makeup. I didn’t want to face him. Not when I knew he’d heard all the ugly things Grams had said about me while the phone was on. It was bad enough that I was atrocious, without anyone seeing me.
I’d been broken many a times, but never quite like I had been today.
I didn’t answer him.
“I want to see your face.”
The urgency in his voice startled me. He sounded choked up, on the brink of something I didn’t want him to go through.
“Okay. Give me five!” I swung my legs sideways on my bed.
“Bare.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, halfway to my desk to pull out my makeup kit.
Fear glided up my spine like a deadly snake, wrapping its length around my neck, choking my breath.
“You don’t know what you’re askin’,” I said thickly, throwing his words back at him. I still remembered how he thought I wouldn’t be able to forgive him had I known what he did to make him the way he was.
“Fucking try me.”
“You heard her. I’m ugly. The Devil’s daughter.”
“You’re beautiful. My girlfriend,” he countered.
“She wanted to kill us …” I broke down, sobbing, still standing in my room aimlessly. It took him a moment to answer me.
“No. She was confused and vindictive. She wanted to hurt you. She never wanted to kill you. The fire was an accident.”
But there was no way either of us could know. The truth of the matter was that I was never going to be able to ask lucid Grams this question. It was too painful for everyone involved.
I stepped toward the mirror on my study and blinked back at myself, catching a glimpse of what West was about to see in a few seconds. There wasn’t a lick of makeup on my face. My history—my tragedy—was written all over it, like a scream.
The melted complexion of my left side. My slightly crooked left eye, a tad smaller than my right one due to the scar tissue pulled around it after the reconstructive surgery. The missing eyebrow. The purple … everything.
Gingerly, I moved toward the door. I put my hand on the handle and threw it open before I lost my nerve.
West and I stood in front of one another silently.
I watched him watching me. He took it all in, gulping every inch of me. His eyes ran the length of my left side, inking it to memory.
He cannot unsee what he is seeing, I reminded myself. From now on,every time he looks at you, with or without makeup, this is what he will see.
West’s expression didn’t give away what he was thinking. I felt my insides collapsing like a demolished skyscraper imploding and knew that if he chose to walk away from me, my phoenix wasn’t going to be able to fight its way past the ruins.
But he didn’t walk away.
He took a step into my room, raising his hand. He traced his fingers over my scars so gently that I wanted to cry, staring into my eyes, gazing at my naked soul. His fingers were trembling. I snatched his hand and kissed it. One of my tears caught between his index and middle finger.
“Listen to me carefully, Grace Shaw. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life. When I look at you, I see a fighter. I see resilience and strength and defiance that no one can touch. You take my breath away, and no one—and nothing—will change that.”
I closed my eyes and opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again, searching for my own voice. I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth.
The truth, I supposed. The most vulnerable secret a person could tell.
“I love you. I’m terrified of loving you, but I do, nonetheless,” I admitted gruffly. “Have since the moment you helped me find Grams that terrible night, not letting me refuse the help I so obviously needed. My heart is in your fist.”
He kicked the door shut behind him, diving in for the kiss to end all kisses.
It was the kiss that rewrote our history.
A kiss that made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.
A kiss that tasted like victory.
“I won’t break it.”
WEST
The kiss tasted like a lie.
I’d said I wouldn’t break Grace’s heart, but I could already see myself doing it.
As I undressed her.
Made love to her.
I needed to put some distance between us. Kade Appleton had been watching me, I knew. And almost living at her house put a target on her.
When dawn broke, I grabbed my stuff and made my way home.
I was waiting at an intersection when a helmeted man on a Harley came out of nowhere and crashed into me. I was thrown off my bike, hurled onto the middle of the road. Luckily, there weren’t any other vehicles at butt-crack o’clock.
I twisted on the gravel, hissing as I held one of my hands tightly with the other. I’d landed wrong and could already tell I’d broken at least two fingers. The sound of heavy boots on concrete came thudding toward me, and I looked up to see who wore them.
When he reached me, the man leaned down, crouching to my eye level, bracing himself on his knees. There was nothing I wanted more than to tear the helmet from his face and introduce his nose to my fist, but I couldn’t move.
“Nice little girlfriend you have there. Shame if somethin’ happened to her, eh?”
He turned around and walked away, back to his Harley.
I had to keep Grace safe, no matter the cost.
Even if it meant losing her.