Give Me Grace (37 page)

“Casey?” she prompted, tilting her head back.

I poured the water, carefully rinsing out the shampoo, and said, “No, Grace.” I filled the jug and ran the water through her hair again. “Not just this week.”

She didn’t respond, so after I finished rinsing, I uncapped the lid on the conditioner and began combing it through her hair with my fingers. “Look,” I began. “I know we haven’t talked about this but—”

Grace cut me off. “No buts, Casey. We had a deal and you promised.”

I lowered my hands, rinsing them in the water. Screw the deal. I wanted Grace to stay. I nudged her backwards, settling her against my chest, and I slid my hands down her belly. “And this,” I said in her ear, my voice dropping to a husky whisper as I reached between her legs. “I could do this every day too.” Grace moaned as I massaged her clit.

“Casey.” She put a hand over mine, stilling me. “Stop. Please.” Her voice cracked and I withdrew my hand, hurt as all fuck and not knowing how to hide it.

“Is the thought of something more permanent that awful? I’m just someone to fuck until you return to your real life?”

Because that played into exactly what Morgan
said when she called me a whore. I didn’t want to be that guy to Grace. That douche from her past that she got over with a stiff drink because she knew he didn’t deserve her. I wanted to be the guy that did. The guy she’d never get over.

“Don’t, Casey. You know it’s more than that.” She pushe
d off me to get out of the bath. I snaked my arm around her waist, pinning her back to my chest. We were far from done with this conversation.

“
Of course it’s more than that,” I snapped. “You think I went against what Henry said just for sex? I had no intention for this to last only eight weeks.”

“
So when we agreed to this deal, you lied.” She turned her head, looking at me.

My chest thumped
with anger. “No, I didn’t fuckin’ lie,” I bit out. “If you want me to walk away, I’ll walk away. I’m just saying that I agreed to the deal hoping you’d change your mind.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, pissed. I hadn’t wanted to play my hand so soon. I wanted time to warm her up to the idea before I went shooting my mouth off.

“Casey
… I’m not going to change my mind. Even if I did, whatever this is, neither of us is ready for it.”

“
I’m not ready? Are you speaking for me now too?”

“You dated Morgan because she ha
d information on a case. Your family’s case. A case I know nothing about because you’re not willing to share.”

“Grace—”

She held up a hand cutting me off. “I’m not saying you have to share anything, Casey. Not if that’s what you don’t want to do. I’m just pointing out that if you were ready for something more, you’d be more open about your life, same as I would.”

“Same as you would?” I cocked my head, locking eyes with hers. “What are you hiding from me, Grace?”

“How has this conversation gone from me saying we’re not ready, to me hiding stuff?” Grace turned back around and went to push up and out of the tub again. “I thought this week away was about both of us having time to recuperate, not argue. I’m getting out, and then I’m getting dressed,” she said calmly, “and then you can drive me back to Sydney.”

My arm locked tighter around her waist, not letting her move, and she sucked in a breath. “Casey that hurts.”

“I’m sorry.” I immediately loosened my arm but didn’t let her go. Grace was definitely hiding something but pushing her on it wasn’t going to work. Maybe Henry knew something I didn’t. After resolving to ring her brother tomorrow, I rubbed her belly, soothing her until she relaxed back against my chest again. “You want to know about my family? About Kelly?”

“Casey—”

“I
want
to tell you, okay?”

After a moment,
she nodded against my chest, so I took a deep breath and forced the words from mouth. “Kelly was my little brother. Younger than me by four years, so I was always looking out for him, you know? I had to. My dad was a mean drunk. He wasn’t too bad otherwise. We just had to watch out for him when he’d been drinking.”

Grace’s tone sounded stiff.
“Did he drink a lot?”

“Every day,” I told her. “But weekends were reserved for getting shitfaced.”

“Why?”

“Why did he drink?”

“Yeah.”

I ran my fingers through her hair as I spoke. It made the words easier to get out somehow. “
I don’t know. It’s not really something that he sat down and talked to me about. Maybe he wasn’t happy with his life. Maybe a wife and kids wasn’t what he signed up for and he drank to forget about us. It’s something I’ll never know. We just knew to stay out of his way when the whiskey bottle was out, but most times it wasn’t that easy. We got beat pretty regular.”

Grace turned, water sloshing in the tu
b and anger blazing in her eyes. It surprised me. Not looking at her when I spoke meant I had no cues to what she was thinking.

“I want to kill him,” she hissed, seeming to forget that my father was already dead.

“Grace.”

“I want to—”

“Grace!”

She stopped
suddenly. I could see her brain ticking over as she stared at me. “This is why you don’t have any good stories, isn’t it?”

“
Pretty much,” I admitted. “I have good ones now though, yeah?”

“That doesn’t absolve all the bad ones, Casey.”

I turned her back around and took my time rinsing the conditioner from her hair.

“See, that’s what you think
.” I hesitated for a moment and then thought, fuck it. “But sitting here with you makes the bad ones easier to bear.”

“Casey
…” Grace tried to turn but I wouldn’t let her. “What about Kelly and your mum?”

The pain hit sharp and swift
then. Because I’d failed them. It was that simple. “I tried to bear the brunt of it, but I couldn’t always be there. Kelly was a good kid, Grace. The complete opposite of our dad. So sweet and kind. I tried to keep him that way. I really did. And most of the time we were okay, but …”

Grace tried turning again and this time I let her. She straddled my lap, taking care to keep her cast dry
. Then she looked at me. “But what?”

“But when it wasn’t okay, it was bad.”
All my childhood fears came rushing back and I didn’t hide it. I wanted Grace to see it because I wanted her to see
me
, not some guy she fucked to pass the time. “It was really, really bad.”

Grace
gripped my forearm and squeezed. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” Her eyes searched my face. “How bad?”

“
You want another shitty story? Because I’ve got a few of those.”

“Just one. Give me one, Casey. I need to know how bad.”

I shrugged as if it were okay, but speaking this shit out loud was hard. “There was one afternoon when I got caught up late after school. I told Kelly to go on ahead because I didn’t think dad would be home. It was a Friday. He liked to celebrate the start of the weekend at the pub,” I explained. “But it turns out he didn’t go that day. And what I came home to scared the shit out of me.”

I tilted my head back against the lip of the bath and closed my eyes, seeing it all in my head as though it happened yesterday.
“I came home through the side door from force of habit. It was easier to fly under Dad’s radar by sneaking inside that way rather than walking in through the front door. It opened to the kitchen and Kelly was standing there in the centre of it. Blood poured down the side of his face from a split brow, and …
Jesus
,” I muttered, swallowing hard, “he had a knife. My sweet little brother who was only twelve had a knife pulled on our dad.” I opened my eyes, looking at Grace. “He’d just had enough, you know? I grabbed for it, worried he was going to hurt himself. That was a mistake. He hadn’t realised I was there and the move freaked him out. He cut my arm, slicing it wide open from here…” I twisted my right forearm and pointed to the scar that began at my inner elbow “…to here,” I said, trailing my finger down the long, thin line where it finished near my wrist.

Grace paled. “Kelly did that?”

“He didn’t mean it,” I told her, defending my brother. “He wasn’t thinking straight. It wasn’t until after the knife sliced through that he realised who it was, but by then it was too late.”

“What do you mean it was too late?”
Even though it happened over fourteen years ago and I was right here and okay, Grace’s eyes were round with fear. “Casey?”

“Dad grabbed the knife during the commotion and he came at Kelly. He ca
me at his own son with a knife,” I bit out.

“What did you do?”

“I stood in front of my little brother,” I said simply, “and I took the hit. Just like I always did.”

Grace stared
at me, her jaw quivering and tears filling her eyes. Suddenly she stood up, water sloshing everywhere. “I have to get out. I don’t feel well.” She tripped getting out and I grabbed for her. “Oh God, I can’t breathe,” she choked out, sobbing.

I stepped out of the bath and took
her shoulders in my hands. “Look at me, Grace.”

“Show me.” She pulled from my grip, trying to push me away. “Show me what he did!” she shouted, her breathing heavy and erratic.

“Grace! Stop. Just breathe.”

“I can’t.”
Her legs gave out and I sank to the mat right along with her, holding her shaking body in my arms. I rocked her slowly, hating that my past was hurting her now too. It was hurting both of us, and that was the one thing I didn’t want to do but I didn’t know how else to let her in.

“S
how me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. She turned her head into my neck, pressing a kiss right where I could feel my pulse thumping.

“I can’t show you, Grace
. I covered the scar with a tattoo because I couldn’t stand looking at it anymore.”

“This one?” Grace pulled back slightly and pointed to the tattoo of an ancient sword that covered the left side of my torso. A dragon curled around the blade, his head resting above the handle.

“That one,” I confirmed.

She covered it with her hand, letting her fingers trail over it, feeling the long, raised scar hidden beneath. Peering closer, Grace read the script I had inked into the sword’s handle. “Glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” She looked up at me, horror clear in her eyes. “This almost killed you, didn’t it? He almost killed you.”

I nodded.

“Can you
…” She paused, her breath shaky as I wiped tears from her face. “Can you kiss me, Casey? I know it sounds stupid because you’re right here, but I need to feel that you’re okay.”

“I can do that.”

I took her face in my hands and kissed her. She opened her mouth and I took everything she was willing to give. Using it. Letting it soothe the ache in my heart.

When I pulled back, I kept her face cupped in my hands. She watched me carefully, hesitating before she asked the question. “How did they die?”

I shook my head, letting my hands fall away. Getting to my feet, I reached for a thick, fluffy towel and helped her stand. “Not today.” I wrapped it around her first before meeting her eyes. “Just … not today, okay?”

When she was dry, I put her back in bed
. My stomach growled, letting me know it was nearing lunchtime, but I couldn’t think about food. Instead, I lay beside her, spooning her. She put a hand over the arm I tucked around her, but even then I couldn’t find sleep.

The rest of the week followed much the same. We slept, watched movies, walked along the beach
, and traded more stories. We laughed and teased each other, and we fucked—sometimes slow and sometimes hard, and sometimes it was explosive and other times calm, but every single time, it was fucking perfect. We got time just to be together.

We went to the local GP
for our post hospital check-up, and once while Grace was sleeping and I was horny, I got to jack off to her photo and it was awesome. I wasn’t looking forward to having that deleted from my phone.