“Hey there, beautiful.”
“Hang on,” I say as I cross the living room to retrieve my cell phone. My dad’s picture flashes on the screen, and I answer without hesitation, excited to be hearing from him. My gram may be my best friend, but my dad is a close second. Hell, he may be tied with her for first. “Hey, Pa! What’s up?”
A sigh floats from the other end of the line, and my heart stumbles, all excitement over hearing his voice vanishing. “What is it?” I ask. He never pauses. My dad is an all-in type of guy. Someone who won’t hesitate to tell it like it is no matter the circumstance.
“Your gram—”
My heart jumps into my throat, and I cover my mouth with a shaking hand.
“She’s in the hospital, she, uh…” He sighs. “Macey, she took a bad fall,” he finishes, his voice cracking.
“Is she going to be okay?” Rocks tumble in my gut, my throat tightening with the threat of tears.
“The doctor said she’ll be okay, but she shattered her hip, and they’re needing to do a replacement. She’s in surgery now.”
“Oh my God,” I say, and Jace crosses the room. With his mouth in a tight line, he reaches for me, but I step away, shaking my head. The last thing I need is a shoulder to cry on. “I’ll leave tonight. I’m sure I can get a flight out.”
“Macey—”
“No, Dad. I’m coming. End of story. I love you. Give her a hug for me, and tell her I’m on my way.”
He sighs. “I will, honey. I’ll send someone to the airport to pick you up. See you soon.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I don’t ask who he’s sending because I already know he will send Keith, the cook from my gram’s restaurant, and our family’s closest friend.
I end the call and look at Jace. “I’m sorry, I need to go home.”
He draws his eyebrows together and runs a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “Everything okay?” Sharp jaw tightening, he studies me for any indication I might break. But I won’t give him one.
“It will be,” I say and walk to the door. “I’m sorry about tonight.” I open it and step to the side.
He doesn’t move, just stares at me from across the room, and I can see the argument in his pinning gaze. He’s frustrated at me, irritated that I won’t let him in, but why would I? We aren’t anything more than glorified fuck buddies. I’d made it clear from the very beginning that’s all I wanted. Cracking open that mason jar and letting him see past the physical side of our non-relationship is a mistake I don’t intend to make.
“I need to order my ticket and get ready,” I urge, gesturing to the door.
He shakes his head and walks toward me. Reaching forward, he cups the back of my neck and pulls me closer, rubbing his body against mine.
I stiffen. Surely, he’s not…I mean, I assumed his hesitation was because he cared. Apparently, I majorly misread him.
“We could make it fast,” he whispers, and I shove him. He stumbles back a few steps.
“Get the hell out of my apartment.”
“Macey—”
“Don’t ever call me again,” I say sharply. “My grandmother is in the hospital, and you ask for a quickie? Seriously?”
“It’s not like you can leave this second. You can order your ticket, and I’ll drive you after.”
“Yeah, after I let you fuck me, right? Get the hell out of here, Jace.”
“Macey—”
“Get out before I kick your ass.”
He sighs. “Call me if you need me.”
“Yeah, I won’t need you, ever again. Goodbye.”
He leans down to kiss me, and I shake my head. “If your lips come anywhere near me again, I’m going to rip them off so you can kiss your own ass.”
“We’ll talk later,” he says, obviously not even paying my words any attention. He’s so damn vain he probably doesn’t even realize I’m ending things.
His problem, not mine. I don’t have time to deal with it. Not when my gram is lying in a hospital bed.
“See ya,” he says and steps from the apartment.
I shut the door and immediately head for my laptop. My confrontation with Jace falls to the wayside as my mind rolls through all the thousands of things that could go wrong.
What if she catches something more dangerous while in the hospital?
What if she has a bad reaction to the anesthesia?
She’s in her early eighties, so any surgery is risky. I can’t lose her yet. Dad can’t afford to lose another person, and ever since his accident—when Mom bailed—it has been Gram taking care of both of us. She pushed me to go to college. She promised me that everything would be fine, and now look what happened? Guilt shreds me from the inside out. I could have prevented her fall had I never left for school. I’ve always wanted to run her café—it’s not like I needed a damned master’s degree to do it. I should have stayed home after I got my bachelor’s.
Tears fill my eyes, and I quickly wipe them away as I book a five a.m. flight back to Montana and back home to the small town I never should have left.
Flight confirmed, I shut my computer as the weight of my fear makes it difficult to breathe.
I’ve always prided myself on my ability to handle tragedy. After all, I’ve seen plenty of it in my twenty-six years: my father’s work accident leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, my mother’s betrayal and abandonment, my gramp’s death. All of it within four years of each other.
I took each thing in stride and learned from it before shoving it to the back of my mind.
But the thought of never seeing my gram again, of never being able to laugh with her or sit around a table, drinking her homemade Kahlua that I’m pretty sure isn’t actually legal, is damn near too much for me to handle.
When I arrive, my dad will need me to be strong, so here in the emptiness of my apartment, I let myself be weak. Where there is no one to see my tears, no one to hear my cries.
The mattress is soft beneath me as I lie back onto it, covering my face with both hands as I try to focus on the fact that she is going to be okay and not on the probability that my entire life is about to change.
2
Lincoln
Voices surround me as I stand in the baggage claim area of the airport, waiting on a woman I haven’t seen in ten years. Would I even recognize her? Shit, I can’t imagine her looking any different than she did in high school.
She’d been beautiful then—an enigma I couldn’t wrap my teenage mind around. Beauty, kindness, and brains. My best friend growing up, there for me when no one else was.
The baggage belt starts, and I straighten, my eyes darting to the door. Sweat dampens my palms, and I wipe them on my dark jeans as my heart pounds in my chest. I was up all night, ever since Maax called and asked me to pick her up from the airport.
Seeing her again after so many years, after what I did, I can’t even wrap my mind around what to say to her. I very much doubt a, ‘Hi, Macey, sorry I was such an unbelievable asshole. Can we be friends again?’ would work. I snort. No way in hell that will happen. I’ll be lucky for just minor disdain at this point. The last time I saw her, she’d been crying, pleading with me to choose her over Patricia, and I’d gone with the latter, leaving my best friend alone at a party she’d only come to for me.