All In (Cedar Mountain University #2) (19 page)

“Doesn’t give him the right to be an asshole.”

Exasperated, Holden tells me, “You have no idea what I was about to
say.”

“Oh, I’ve a pretty good idea. We’ve been down this road before, you
and I, Holden.”

He mutters something under his breath that I don’t quite catch and
my eyes narrow as I watch him. Then I smile brightly, leaning back in my chair.
“He knows whether or not I snore.” I tell him, thinking back to a conversation
Holden and I’d had over a year ago.

Poor Jacob, who had just taken a drink, ends up choking. I pat him
on the back, smiling at Holden’s frown. “Maybe you need a filter to.” Jacob
coughs out. “Let’s not give your brother any more reason to want to kick my
ass.”

The waitress swings around with our pizza, effectively cutting off
the conversation. She drops the pizza on the little metal stand in the middle
of our table, sliding a stack of plates down next to it along with a stack of
napkins.

She gives a cursory glance over the guys at the table, her eyes
finally landing on Robby as the only unattached male sitting there. I’ve
watched Robby work a room before. Robby’s a pretty big guy, solidly built of
muscle, with warm brown eyes that seem flecked with gold, hair the color of
honey, and the most charming smile I’ve ever see on a guy.

Girl’s trip all over themselves when he flashes that smile.

He doesn’t even give the pretty waitress a second glance tonight.
Instead, he keeps playing with his phone, looking down at it nearly every
thirty seconds, and the charming smile is decidedly absent, and something I’ve
hardly ever seen from Robby, a frown, pulls his mouth down.

I don’t get a chance to ask him what’s wrong though. The frown
deepens as he looks at his phone again, and then he gets up and leaves the
table, barely uttering a word as he walks away tapping furiously on his phone.

My gaze meets Cole’s and I raise one eyebrow in question of Robby’s
abrupt departure. Cole gives a barely discernable shake of his head. Frustrated,
I let out a sigh before tuning back into the conversation in time to hear Ally
ask “What are you studying, Jacob?” around a huge bite of pizza, half the
cheese hanging out of her mouth. I shoot her a disgusted look, but she just smiles.

“Economics.” Jacob sets his glass back on the table in front him.
“I’m planning to go to law school.”

Holden’s eye brows go up. “Really? Did Grace tell you our dad is a
lawyer?”

“She did. She also mentioned you’re in your first year.”

And suddenly they’re bonded for life. I watch in awe as the two of
them launch into a conversation about law and politics.

The screams wake me up in the middle of the night.

Loud and shrill, they echo through the entire apartment.

Terror.

They are filled with absolute terror, and as they taper off the
pain soaked sound settles into my head, thumping through my entire body.

They sound like a child’s cry, not like those of the grown woman I
know they are coming from. I won’t ever forget the sound of them.

I roll out of my bed in a tangle of sheets and blankets, landing on
my hands and knees on the floor. It takes me several moments to get my feet
situated on the ground, my legs free, so I can move out of the room and down
the short hall to her room. I know Cole is in there with her, but it doesn’t
keep me from throwing open the door.

My heart breaks. Simply shatters into a thousand pieces inside of
me as I take in the scene.

Delaney is curled up into a ball in the far corner of the room.
Eyes wide as she visibly tightens her arms around her up drawn legs, trying to
make herself even smaller. Her body is shaking, silent tears rolling down her
cheeks.

Cole is standing across the room from her. Dressed in gray sweat
pants and a
T
-shirt, he is leaning against
the wall watching her.

“Cole,” I say, keeping my voice as soft as possible. Delaney makes
a low noise in her throat, and I swear she pulls herself even tighter together.
Trying to make herself as invisible as possible. “Cole.” I say his name again,
trying to get him to focus on me. “What happened?”

Blinking he looks away from her, focusing on me. “She started
crying. In her sleep. I just touched her. Then she was across the room. She
won’t let me touch her.”

He looks back over to Delaney and those shattered pieces of my
heart break even farther apart when he whispers, “I just want to hold her.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” I tell him gently.

“I promised her. I told her I would take care of her.”

I look back over to Delaney again. Her body is still tense, but
she’s looking at me. Keeping her gaze determinedly off of Cole. I look back to
him. “Go sleep in my room.”

“Grace,”

“Go.” I interrupt him. “I’ll take care of her for you. I promise,”
I add when he hesitates.

It takes him another few moments before he starts to move out of
the room. I hear the soft click of the door as it closes behind him, but I’ve
focused my attention back on Delaney cowering in the corner of the bedroom. I’m
pretty damn positive that I’m going to screw this up somehow.

“Delaney?” I say her name softly, trying not to scare her any more
than she already is. I take a couple of small steps towards her, stopping only
when she lets out a small sound of distress. “Okay.” I say softly. “Okay, I’m
going to stay right here. You stay there and I’ll stay here and we’ll both be
fine.” Sinking to the floor, I cross my legs, rubbing my hands absently along
my thighs.

“All right.” I lick my lips. “Shit, I have no idea what I’m doing.
You know that, right?” She blinks once in response. “Sure you do.”

“I told him not to be here.” Her voice is whisper soft as it slides
across the room toward me.

“Well, now that’s just bullshit.” I tell her, shaking my head.
“We’ve been over this before. You’re stuck with us.”

“I’ve always been alone.”

“Now you’re not.” I shove a hand through my hair, tucking it
absently behind my ear. “So, I think the key is avoidance. I guarantee that’s
not the best way to be handling this, but that’s what we’re going to go for.
Okay?”

Delaney nods her head stiffly.

“Ok. So, what to talk about?” I give her a weak smile. “My mind is
totally blank, which is hilarious since usually I can’t keep the random
thoughts from bouncing around in there.” She’s shivering, I can visibly see her
body shaking. “Do you need a blanket?”

“I’m good.”

“All right, so operation distraction is officially started.” I keep
my voice soft and low, not wanting to startle her in any way. “I think I’m in
love with Jacob.” I let out a whoosh of air. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Why?”

“Why didn’t I mean to say that?”

She shakes her head. “No, why do you think you’re in love with
him?”

“Now that’s a question.”

Why
do
I think I’m in
love with him?

It might be because he made me smile when all I wanted to do was
crawl inside myself. Or because I feel more complete standing next to him in
silence, than I ever did while planning a future with Grant. I know I won’t be
able to explain the difference of how I feel for Jacob versus how I felt with
Grant. Not in a way that anyone would really understand. Grant had made me feel
safe, but Jacob makes me feel free, when I hadn’t even known I’d felt trapped.

How was I supposed to explain something to everyone else that I
couldn’t fully understand myself? I’d told my mother that Jacob made me feel. I
hadn’t explained that when I was with him I felt like every nerve ending in my
body was splayed open and vulnerable. I couldn’t tell them how I felt like if I
were to have to walk away from Jacob now I knew that nothing would ever be as
beautiful as the last few weeks that we had spent together.

I had let myself become wrapped up in a guy again. But this time I
knew, I understood, loving Jacob didn’t define who I was. I was Grace Marsh. I
was just lucky enough to be in love with Jacob Ross.

“He makes me happy.” I say simply. “I don’t know how to explain it
other than that.”

“I think that’s good enough.” Her voice is still whisper soft, as
if she’s afraid to speak any louder. “He watches you. When you aren’t looking.
It’s sweet.”

Her body isn’t quite as tense and she’s dropped her arms from
around her legs. Her eyes are still wide, the pupils dilated to the point where
the iris is barely visible at all. She’s rubbing absently at her stomach with
one hand, and I know there is a scar there from where that monster had tried to
kill her before ditching her in a dumpster like she was nothing but trash.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Her face pales even more and I instantly regret the question. Of
course she doesn’t want to talk about it. I can’t imagine that I’d want to talk
about it either. Shoving my hair behind my ears, I shift on my bottom, trying
to get comfortable on the floor.

I don’t know who’s more surprised, her or I, when she tells me, “I
was hoping it would be better this year. Because he’s dead.”

“But it’s not.”

She shakes her head. “Not really. I still see him when I close my
eyes. Still feel him touching me. Cole asked me not to take the sleeping pills.
I told him I’d try.”

“But you had a dream earlier.”

“He touched me. Cole,” she clarifies. “He touched me but I was
still caught up in the dream and I thought it was
him
. Then I couldn’t think at all. I just wanted to get away. This
is why I didn’t want anyone here. Why I didn’t want him here. I hurt his
feelings.”

“He’ll get over that, Grace. You’re what’s important to him. Right
now he’s more concerned about helping you through this than whether or not you
hurt his feelings.”

She absently nods her head. “I’m not ready to have him come back
in. Not yet.”

“Okay. I’m here as long as you need me.”

She doesn’t move from her spot against the wall, so I don’t leave
my spot on the floor either. We sit there in silence as the sun starts to come
up, the light spreading through the slats of her blinds over the window,
causing spindly patches of sun across the floor.

At some point during the night I grab her blanket off the bed,
wrapping it around myself before leaning up against her mattress. I struggle to
keep my eyes open, but I wanted to be awake in case she needs me again, and she
wasn’t sleeping either.

I can faintly hear Cole moving around the apartment, the sounds
indicating that he is making himself a cup of coffee, which I’m pretty sure I’d
do just about anything for right now. I hear his voice every once in a while,
so I know he isn’t alone out there, which is good. The murmured voice that
answers him is too low for me to distinguish who it belongs to. But it becomes
a fun little game I play in my head, trying to pin point who is with him.

I try not to watch Delaney, because I can only imagine that having
me stare at her constantly would be all kinds of creepy, so I study the carpet,
which seriously needs to be shampooed, and the walls which could use a fresh
coat of paint, and the dust
particles
that
circle through the air, dancing in the sunlight.

“You don’t have to stay here with me.”

My head jerks up at the sound of her voice. She’s still braced
against the wall, eyes rimmed red with fatigue, the struggle to stay awake
clearly visible. “Yeah I do.”

“Every time I close my eyes I see him.” Her voice breaks, and I
listen as she tries to muffle her tears.

I know Cole asked her not to take the pills. I even understand why
he had asked her. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and watch her cry
and fight sleep for the next three days.

“Where are the sleeping pills?” Her eyes clash with mine, and I see
the hesitancy there. “You told him you would try, Del, but he doesn’t want to
see you in this much pain. Not sleeping is not the fucking answer here. Where
are they?”

She licks her lips. “My nightstand.”

I scramble up, walking on my knees across the dirty carpet. I yank
open the nightstand, figuring I’m going to have to shuffle through a lot of crap
to find the bottle of pills.

Of course, I should have remembered this was Delaney and her drawer
would be neat as a pin, like everything else in her room was. You’d have to dig
for days to find anything in mine, but there was the bottle of pills, a notepad
of paper, a pen, and a flashlight and nothing else bouncing around in there.

Snagging the pills I move to go get her a glass of water from the
bathroom before I remember she won’t drink it unless it’s in a sealed bottle. I
reroute quickly, hoping like hell that Cole won’t try and stop me when I go out
to get her a bottle.

“I’ll be right back.” I toss the words over my shoulder as I hurry
out of the room. The low sound of the TV is coming from the living room, and I
let out a hiss of air when I see Grant’s blond head sitting next to Cole on the
couch.
Shit
. I so do not need this
today.

I move quickly, grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge and
hurrying back down the hall, listening to Cole call my name once he hears me. I
just lift a hand in the air in response, picking up the pace so I can get back
to Delaney and give her the sleeping pills before he questions me too much.

I can hear him coming up the hall as I hand everything over to her.
“Take it quick, and let’s get you tucked back in to bed.”

I watch her closely as she tucks the pill on her tongue, snapping
the cap off the bottle of water as she chases it down. She crawls into the bed
and I toss the cover back on top of her, studying her for a moment longer as
she rolls to one side, wrapping her arms around her stomach.

I just barely make it out of the room and into the hallway before
the first tear falls. Cole is standing there, watching me silently. I launch
myself at him, needing the physical contact between us. His arms have just
barely wrapped around me when the first and only sob escapes. I muffle the rest
against his shoulder.