The Redhead Plays Her Hand (Redhead #3)(50)
Author: Alice Clayton

“So . . .” he began, startling me a little bit.

“So,” I responded.

You really should go back to speech writing . . .

“I don’t really know how to start here. Not quite sure where to begin,” he said, fiddling with the saltshaker, head down and not meeting my eyes. The tension was growing in him. I could feel it even with seven feet of polished oak between us.

“Hey, it’s me. Just talk,” I encouraged, wanting so much to go to his side of the table. It would be so very easy to go over to him, to crawl into his lap, to hold him close and feel his breath on my skin and make this okay for him. But I couldn’t. He had a lot to explain, and he needed to get it out. Didn’t mean the temptation wasn’t strong, though, and I clenched the arms of the chair to stop from going over there and doing just that. Especially when he was worrying that saltshaker to death.

He grasped the shaker, held it tightly, then looked at me. “I hate my life,” he said through clenched teeth, and I blanched. Seeing my reaction, he backed up. “No, no, see, that’s the thing—parts of my life are amazing, were amazing, until I just f**ked everything up. Dammit! I can’t even explain this right!” he bit out, his frustration bubbling up. “Everything—it was all getting so close, you know? Everyone wanting something, not being able to make decisions just because they felt right. Everything had to be so calculated, so planned out, and it was just . . . Fuck, I hated it!”

I nodded for him to go on, watching as his fingers turned almost white as he squeezed the little glass bottle.

“And it was so easy to just go out, let loose, check out, and not care, you know? At first, it was just that. But then it became a regular thing, and my God, do you know what it’s like to have people just bend over backward to get things for you? I mean, no one had a bloody clue who I was eighteen months ago, and then suddenly everyone wants to know you, wants to kiss your ass and get you whatever you want, and it’s, like, normal, right? That’s just how it is? How the f**k is that normal?” He yelled now, standing up and pacing around the room.

“And what happens? You f**k it all up, that’s what happens. Christ, what an ass I was—to you, to everyone! It was just . . . God, it was like it was happening underwater, you know? I saw it happening, you saw it happening, but it was just so much easier to not deal with it! Not to admit it was too much, too soon, too fast, and too damned good. Just too much, too damned much.” He continued to pace as he raged.

“And the drinking? That was one thing. I always held my own, but then it’s like, the harder we partied, the easier it was to check out, to forget all the other bullshit. And the other stuff? The coke? I can see how people can let that get inside, get inside and take over. That shit’s amazing. I only did that a few times—too much for me. The last time I did it was that night, the night your show premiered. That was the last night . . .”

I had tears streaming down my face at this point. I couldn’t help it. The raw emotion that poured off him was staggering.

He whirled, saw my tears, and stopped dead cold.

“I can’t even believe you’re here, actually,” he said after a moment, his voice no longer a yell. “After the way I treated you, why in the world are you here? Shit. I wanted to call so much. I wanted to apologize, but Christ, it was so messed up! And I hated the way people were treating you because of me! The things they wrote about you? The awful things that they said just because you maybe were dating a prat like me, because you didn’t have the sense to get as far away from me as you could—”

“Jack!” I ran around the table to stand in front of him. “No way. You don’t get to take that on, not on your own. Anything that was written about me, anything that any idiot on a website wrote, or a reporter gossiped about, nothing could be so bad that I would even think of not being with you. Don’t you know that? How can you not know that?”

He was breathing hard, his own tears now shining in his eyes. “I watched your show, you know. I watched it every week,” he said, his voice rough as he struggled to get control. “I read every article, watched every interview, saw every picture. My God, Grace, do you know how much I wanted to call you, talk to you? You seemed like you were doing so well. You seemed happy, and I was here and so messed up. And so much time had passed. I didn’t think I could come home . . . I didn’t know if you still loved—”

“I was going out of my mind! Are you kidding me?” I cried, slapping at his chest. “I went to bed every night wondering where you were and what you were doing, and I woke up every morning to go online to check and make sure you were okay, to see what kind of trouble you’d gotten yourself in the night before. And the mornings there wasn’t any news, I spent the day trying not to panic, hoping I wouldn’t get a call like the one I did the other night saying something had happened! That you’d been in an accident or any of the other million terrible things I dreamed up in my head because I didn’t know, Jack! I didn’t know what was going on, and the worst thing was, I couldn’t help you! So don’t give me ‘I looked happy’ or ‘I seemed like I was doing well’ when you of all people should know, it’s not always how it looks.” I paused, shaking. “And of course I still love you, Jack. Of course I do.”

We stared at each other, both with the tears and the sniffling.

“I’m so sorry, so damn sorry,” he whispered.

Thank you.

“C’mere,” I whispered, prying the saltshaker out of his hand and tangling my fingers with his own. Slowly I stepped closer to him, and he opened his good arm to me. I pressed myself into him, a new wave of tears showing up as I breathed in his scent and nuzzled my face into his neck.

God. Damn. I had missed this man. I sighed into his skin as he clutched me closer, a deep throaty groan coming from him as he held me as tightly as he could. Tilting my head up, I let my eyes travel the column of his neck to his soft lips, to the strong jaw and the cheekbones for days, which now bore the scars of his troubles. And finally to his eyes, that green that swirled and deepened, forecasting his thoughts.

“I’m so in love with you, Grace.” He looked down at me, my sweet, broken, wonderful boy. “And I’m dying to kiss you.”

I raised up on my tippy toes as he leaned down. “I’m kind of dying for you to kiss me.”

His lips feathered against my own, tentative, gentle, but warm. I smiled against his mouth, knowing this would not be the last conversation we had about everything that had happened, but knowing this wouldn’t be the last kiss either.