Give Me Grace (3 page)

“Evie, honey, you okay?” Freeing one hand from my paintball gun, I rubbed her back in warm, soothing circles.

She shook her head, moaning a loud, “No.”

Her l
egs were shaking so I handed my gun over to Tim and picked her up, noting her entire face under the war paint was green. She burrowed into my chest, and leaving Travis to deal with Mac, I carried her off the paintball field.

“I can’t be sick or Mac will murder me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we have to play at that awards ceremony tomorrow night,” she reminded me.

I brushed the hair out of her eyes with care. Evie and I were close, and she’d always held a little piece of my heart. “You leave Mac to me, sweetheart. I’ll charm her into a good mood.”

She managed a weak nod. “Hey, you’re still coming to our barbecue tomorrow aren’t you?”

Jared’s face lost all colour when he saw me walking off the field with Evie in my arms.

“Sure,” I murmured before he reached us. “I’ll be there.”

Kicking the front door of my loft shut with my foot, I tossed my wallet, phone
, and keys on the kitchen counter. Next to that I set a bright yellow plastic bag with the well-known lettering,
Naughty But Nice,
printed gaily on the side in flowing, pink letters. Thank you very much, sex store, for your casual approach to discretion. There was nothing more liberating than shouting to the members of the public that you were a big, fat
pervert.

My business partner and roommate,
Coby, sauntered out of the second bedroom in nothing but a pair of boxer-briefs, hair mussed and scratching idly at his chest.

The loft we shared
was a converted warehouse slash revolving bachelor pad. The ceilings were high with exposed red brick lining the wall of the open kitchen, living and dining area. Neither of us were cooks, so the stainless steel appliances, marble bench tops and saucepan racks were entirely wasted, but the huge outdoor deck with slight views of Sydney Harbour made it a valuable investment.

The space was owned originally by Jared and Travis, but
I bought Jared’s share when he and Evie bought a house in Bondi; Jared was the only one who didn’t think the house should’ve been condemned by the local council. His intention had been for them to live in it while undertaking the renovations, but a year after completion something went wrong every other week. Last week, it was blocked pipes. Jared blamed it on Evie’s long hair clogging the drains but after spending an entire day digging up the front yard, he found a collapsed section of pipe out near the road. That made it a council issue, and there was more likelihood of God stopping by their house for a beer than the council venturing out to fix it. The week before that it was five exploding outlets in two days, the last one almost setting Jared’s laptop on fire. The only advice I could offer was to either cut their losses and move or take out better life insurance.

Then it was Travis’s tu
rn, only he was marginally smarter. Travis and Quinn lived in Coby’s house while they did their renovations and Coby moved into the loft with me. Six months later, their Manly Vale house was beautifully restored and they moved in. Then Travis had the gardens and lawn dug up before finding out it was easier getting a ticket to the moon than getting someone out to do their retaining wall. Combine that with three weeks of torrential rain and their entire yard was now a mud pit, and not the good kind that featured naked women wrestling.

Considering
the revolving bachelor pad status of our loft, Coby would be up soon. I smirked as he wandered into the kitchen.

“You’re next
.”

He paused, eyebrows going up. “For what?”

“True love, Disney-style.”

“Fuck that,” he muttered, running a hand over the tufts of messy brown hair sticking up on his head.
“I only just got Evie married off. She’s Jared’s problem now. Let me enjoy the moment for a good couple of years at least.” He continued towards the fridge. “Besides, if the curse on this loft is anything to go by,
you’re
the one that’s up next.”

I w
inced. “Yeah, that’s not funny. Speaking of not funny… How did you get out of paintball today when I got called out, mid-sex, like it was a life or death operation?”

Coby
shrugged, opening up the fridge door. “You brought someone home last night?” he said to the barren shelves.

“
Just some girl,” I said casually with the words that were somehow becoming my new mantra. Coby would also pitch a shit fit if he knew it was Morgan.

He
dangled a beer over his shoulder that I didn’t really want but took anyway. Getting his own beer, Coby shut the door and turned. With the simultaneous grace of ballet, we both twisted off the tops and flicked the caps towards the vicinity of the sink. Lips poised to take a sip, Coby’s eyes fell on the pansy-ass yellow bag and froze. He looked from it, to me. “Just some girl, huh?”

Whipping out his phone from nowhere, Coby snapped a photo of the bag and start
ed tapping like his fingers were on fire.

“What are you doing?”

Walking over to the couch, he flopped down and tossed his phone at the coffee table. “Informing the Twitterverse of your new predilection for dildos.” He gave me a grin.

Snatching up my phone, I opened Twitter
to read Coby’s post.
Casey’s new acquisitions. I had no idea butt plugs came in extra large
sat next to a photo of the damning yellow bag sitting on our kitchen counter.

There was
no hiding when your sex life was exposed on social media, so instead I shrugged and retweeted his tweet.
Any willing females up for being experimented on?

Done, I picked up my beer and wandered over to the couch
where Coby was channel flicking. It was Saturday night, and with two missed calls from Morgan already today, I could only conclude she was trying to get something arranged for later. The thought of returning her call made me twitchy. Instead, I sat in the navy leather recliner with a heavy sigh. Tossing my phone on the coffee table, I flicked up the footrest and settled in.

“Anything on?”

“Nope,” he replied, doing another round of the channels just to be sure. Then he sniffed. “Dude. You stink. You went into a sex shop like that?”

I looked down at my grimy, sweat
-stained shirt and I knew that if I rubbed at my face, a layer of war paint would transfer to my fingers. I shrugged. “I didn’t go there to pick up, asshole.”

My phone vibrated, the sound loud against
the thick timber of the table. Coby picked it up, reading the screen with widening eyes.

“What?”

He tossed it at me. Catching it in one hand, I checked the screen. Four notifications of replies to my retweet sat on the screen, all willing females seemingly happy to sacrifice their own ass for the greater good. Huh.

“I didn’t even buy butt plugs,” I told Coby
.

He grabbed the phone out of my hand and started skimming.
“Maybe you should have. Hell, get some for me when you go back.”

“Buy your own butt plugs.”

Handing me back the phone, he asked, “How do you even know that many people on Twitter?”

“I don’t. I don’t even know how to use it. Tim set it all up and now I’m stuck with it.”

“Figures. There are hardly any guys following you on there, you know. Tim probably deletes them all so he can stay the number one man in your life.”

“Tim’s a good kid,” I muttered, knowing Tim would be pissed if he
heard me calling him a kid. He
was
only five years younger than I was, but sometimes it felt like fifty years when he let his personality fly. His ability to create drama out of thin air was legendary, and it often came back to bite me on the ass by default. Take his ongoing feud with the local barista near our office. This barista was the
Rain Man
of coffee. He made an espresso you’d give your left nut for, but when he slept with Tim’s boyfriend’s brother’s cousin or what-the-fuck-ever and didn’t call him back, Tim stopped leaving money in his tip jar. Now the usual miracle elixir Tim bought for me wouldn’t revive a fucking flea, yet he still insisted on going there because the gospel according to Tim was that the man was hot. Now
I
was the one stuck with piss-weak coffee.

T
he loft intercom buzzed announcing a visitor. Coby flinched, the sharp sound waking him from a doze. “Who’s that?” he asked, knowing we weren’t expecting anyone.

“How should I know? My superpowers don’t include seeing through walls.”

I flicked the footrest back down and stood. Stretching my arms high, I felt joints pop with a satisfying crack. Coby stumbled off to his room, likely to find some pants, while I went to answer the door. Without flicking on the video monitor, I pressed the answer button with a, “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Travis announced.

I shook my head. Travis had big balls stopping by after dragging me from bed for paintball this morning. Still feeling the need to hold a grudge, I replied, “I’m busy rubbing one out. Come back later.”

A strangled cough came through the speaker, followed by
his wife, Quinn, saying politely, “Sorry to interrupt, Casey. We’ll um … leave you to it. Is half an hour okay?”

I didn’t fight th
e grin. I’d missed Quinn at paintball today. She was one of my closest friends, not just because she kept Travis in line, but because she’d gone through the kind of hell that would’ve broken a lesser person and came out of it stronger. I admired her for that. Pressing the button again to speak, I replied, “Half an hour? Is that how long it takes your husband to get himself off?”

I heard Quinn say faintly, “Travis?”

“Are we really going to have this conversation,” he growled, “or are you going to let us in?”

I laughed and hit
the buzzer to let them up. Scratching idly at the stubble on my jaw, I thought about having a shower and a shave as I flicked open the locks and walked into the kitchen.

I was in the kitchen
getting drinks by the time they came through the front door. Pale hair pinned up, Quinn was wearing some kind of navy thing that sparkled. She smiled.

“Casey!”

“Damn, I missed you,” I told her, kissing her on the cheek as Travis followed her into the kitchen, “but you didn’t have to dress up for me. I like you in anything, or nothing at all if you prefer.”

Travis grabbed the glass of wine I’d just poured, slapped me up the back of the head, and handed the drink to his wife
, who was busy laughing at my exaggerated wink.

If I wasn’t so damn tired, I’d put him in a headlock
and get his dressy clothes all dirty. I gave Quinn my best puppy dog eyes instead. “You’re not going to let him beat me up, are you?”

“Of co
urse she will,” Travis interjected. “In the order of men in her life, I outrank you by a mile.”

“Oh yeah?” My eyebrows went up
as I looked from Travis to Quinn. “Where am I on this list?”

“
Dude. You’re so low on the list, you’re not even
on
the list.” He took the two beers I’d uncapped with him into the living room and handed one to Coby. “And really … butt plugs?” He sank into the perfectly worn groove of my recliner and smirked.

Ignoring him, I put
the wine bottle back in the fridge and said to Quinn, “If you ever get tired of Mr Vanilla, you know where to— Oh hey!” My eyes caught the little cherub peeking out from behind Quinn. Mussed blond curls and brown eyes so wide it made you hurt just to look at him. Sam, the three year old foster kid I rescued almost two weeks ago, watched his mother overdose and die, and now he couldn’t speak from the resulting trauma. What made the entire situation so fucked-up was that people like Travis and Quinn couldn’t have kids. She was so badly beaten as a pregnant teen, she’d not only lost her baby, she’d lost the ability to have more. The bright side was that they were given the opportunity to be foster parents. To me, that alone made the world a better place. If they managed to adopt him, Sam would grow up with a future.

Crouching down to eye level
, I gave him my best grin. “You came all the way over here just to see me, bud?” My eyes shifted to the big piece of paper clutched so tightly in his hands it was a wrinkled mess. “And what’s this?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Quinn b
egan. I glanced up at her nervous tone. “We have dinner reservations at Mr Chow’s, and really, we’d forgotten about them with … everything going on.” She eyed Sam pointedly. “And obviously we weren’t going to go because we don’t want to leave Sam with just anyone, or leave him at all really, but then …” Quinn took hold of Sam’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Show him your drawing, Sam.”

My heart swelled a little at the
tentative trust in Sam’s eyes when he looked at me. He offered up the crumpled bit of paper.

Taking it from him
with care, I smoothed the edges out and held it up. My name was etched all over it in a chaotic scramble of colours. Nothing else. Just … Casey. My eyes burned and I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat. “Dude,” I said affectionately. “You did this for me?”