LITMIR.BIZ

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      Which made her hiding in the trees until it was time to leave clearly not the adult way to handle this mess with Liam.

      Freya wouldn’t notice if she slipped out before face-to-face congratulations, she had so much else going on this evening.

      Grace peeked around her hiding tree again, but no longer saw James or Mila so she darted through the trees and back to the reception.

      Get Liam.

      Get out of there.

      And just get it over with.

      She should’ve stuck with just the one night.

      * * *

      Liam hadn’t expected her to want to leave before the first dance but, then, she probably wouldn’t have let him dance on his ankle. And she’d spent so much time away after dinner it seemed like his plan to make her dump him was working.

      His stomach soured at the thought.

      But if she did the leaving this time, she wouldn’t feel rejected. It would be her turn. And he could take it.

      With her silent and tense at his side, Liam opened the door to their hotel room and held it for her.

      Grace stepped past him and went straight to the minibar. Ten seconds later she’d poured herself a straight vodka and in less time than it took for her to lift the glass to her mouth the clear liquid was gone.

      The drink must’ve burned as she breathed hard, coughed a little, and put the glass down. Pulling her shoulders back first, she turned around to face him.

      “I don’t know how to do this. Never thought it would come to this, but it’s just one more way I’m delusional when it comes to you.” She stopped, rubbed her head and paced away from him, then back.

      Self-comforting. Dispelling tension.

      It was happening. He could smell it in the air like salt by the ocean. His stomach rolled and he stuffed his hands into his pockets, lest she see him shaking.

      Unlike the dinner where he’d brought up the trench coat, she wasn’t hiding her gaze from him tonight. It was all right there, spelled out for him.

      “Whatever stupid idea made me invite you tonight, consider me over it. I thought that things changed between us that night. I thought that you had finally stopped running from this. I thought you felt...” The words dried in her throat, and she looked back at the empty glass. “Something.”

      “It was supposed to be one night,” he said, avoiding all that talk of feelings, because even now, even though this was what had to happen, he wanted to comfort her.

      “I know!” Grace blurted out. “I know that’s what we’d said. But that was before we were together, and one time became one night, became one whole night, became yes to whatever I wanted. That was the perfect example of a situation changing, right? It seemed that way. It seemed like...”

      She stopped facing him and went to the balcony doors and opened them, pulling the drapes back so that the cool night air could blow in, and breathed deeply.

      He didn’t know what to say, aside from the apology clawing at the back of his throat. He shut his mouth so she’d keep going, make it go just as he’d rehearsed in his mind all day.

      “I didn’t ask you to come with me because I was trying to collar you. I haven’t been writing ‘Mrs. Grace Carter’ on my notebooks. I just wanted to be with you and see how things went. I didn’t invite you here as some grand gesture to hint for you to start making commitments. I know that there are extenuating circumstances to be careful of with my family. And I know you’re just out of a relationship.”

      “That relationship has nothing to do with this one.”

      “No? Because you don’t care what people say about you and Simone?”

      “No. I care about what your family could say about us. That would be true. Unless this leads to marriage, then it’s a betrayal of the trust that David and Lucy put in me when they welcomed me into your home.”

      “Why?”

      Damn. She was going off script. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to yell and leave. Demanding explanations meant she saw through his tactics, and there was a danger of this turning into him rejecting her again.

      “Because you’re built for marriage, Grace. You are a cry-through-the-ceremony woman. But I don’t want to be married. Not ever. I don’t want kids. Any of it. I am not your white-picket-fence future. But that’s what you want, or what you’d come to want, because that’s who you are. And you would get hurt.”

      “I’m hurt now! Because you’re lying to yourself and to me. I love you, and I know you love me.”

      Rolling stomach turned to nausea at her words. Ignore it. Ignore them. He drew a deep breath, looked her in the eye, and said, “I don’t love you. Not like that.”

      The words felt like mud in his mouth. Mud and blood. Acidic and wrong.

      She shook her head, tears in her eyes. “Yes, you do. You might not want marriage and children, but you feel more for me than lust. I’m not nothing to you.”

      “I never said you were nothing to me. But even if I did love you, love doesn’t make things magically work out. My parents loved one another. They did. They probably loved me too in some twisted way—why else would my father refuse to grant permission for me to be adopted for so long but to keep from losing me? They were full of love, for each other, for me, and for their heroin. They still spiraled into death and destruction together.”

      How had this gone so far off course? There was no easy way out of it. No one else had forced him to say words he’d never wanted to give voice to, there was no one else he felt compelled to bare his soul to. Another reason to get out now.

      She poured herself another drink.

      “I loved my father, Grace. I loved him and I still couldn’t save him. When Nick went to school and I moved into my own place in LA? Before my acting took off, I sought him out, moved him in with me. I thought maybe if he was there and we had a relationship, if he had someone to count on, someone to talk with about Mom, I thought he could heal. But he didn’t. He died, Grace. He died alone on the living room floor of my run-down little hovel. Love didn’t help him. Not once. Not ever. Love doesn’t fix things, it just makes losing harder.”

      The tears in her eyes spilled over her cheeks and she stepped toward him, her instinct to comfort him. Always to comfort. Even when they were fighting.

      “I’m sorry,” she whispered, stopping before she got to him, lowering the hands that had half reached for his face. “Your love couldn’t fix him. Are you telling me this now because you want me to come around to the notion that my love can’t fix you?”

      “Yes.” He felt his heart hammering against his chest. “I’d ruin you. That’s what I’m built for. That’s the example I have to draw from.”

      “You’re wrong.”

      “I’m not.”

      “Yes, you are, because you don’t need fixing. You didn’t kill your father or your mother. Fate handed you a terrible situation, and you survived it. And you learned to thrive. You didn’t ruin Simone. You didn’t use me and throw me away, even when we were stupid kids and I offered you everything. You tried to do what was honorable at that time, you tried it later. I know you’re trying now, but it just so happens that you’re wrong.” Her voice stayed confident and certain until she got to the end, and then it broke. One aborted sob followed by a short, bitter laugh—a sound nothing like the full-throated laughter he loved to hear from her. “Don’t feel bad about it. I keep screwing up with you too.”

      “You give me too much credit. I agreed to one night with you because I crave you like an addict craves heroin. And you have the same addiction. I didn’t care. Even now, I don’t care. I want

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