Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
And why loss seems to be a way of life around here, so prevalent that it’s already hurting someone so very young.
Still, I hesitate.
I should mind my own business and let Grant get back to his life.
I’m happy I was able to help, and that should be enough for tonight.
I also need to turn in. I need all the rest I can get to brace for tomorrow’s visit to the medical center.
Instead, I find myself nodding, taking a step back. “Let me find my sweater and shoes. I needed to give your jacket back to you anyway.”
“Keep it,” Grant says, looking at me in that strange insightful way he has. “Until you get yourself something warmer. Seems like you forgot what winter’s like around here after all that time in the Miami sun.”
There’s an edge to his words.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it stings.
Whatever.
I won’t let it get under my skin. And I won’t back out of going either, even though I’m already having second thoughts.
I just turn away and head upstairs to fish out the thickest cardigan I have and get dressed, grabbing his loaned jacket last.
I try not to ask myself why I’m getting pulled into Grant Faircross again.
“She’s my cousin.”
I sit at the kitchen table in Grant’s comfortable colonial cottage, waiting on tenterhooks. I remember when this used to be his parents’ house, but then they moved into the Garrisons’ old place when the Garrisons moved and the Faircrosses retired, leaving the cottage to Grant.
It’s the little things, I think.
Almost like Redhaven is its own pocket universe.
All the same planets and stars, but they’re constantly shifting, forming odd new constellations that change how their gravity pulls on your heart.
Grant’s gravity tugs on me tonight as he sets a steaming mug of mint tea in front of me, then settles down with his own mug in the ladderback chair across from me.
In the low golden light of the kitchen, he’s like a wood sculpture, weathered and aged into a work of pure rough mahogany with his lingering summer tan. I swear, the man looks like he was carved from solid oak, and even as he’s grown into a man with deep thought lines around his eyes, there’s also something about him that’s just...
Eternal.
Unchanging.
It’s oddly comforting, especially when being back in Redhaven has me so unsettled.
But I frown, curling my hands around the hot ceramic until it warms them. “Wait... your Uncle Nathan and Aunt Melissa? The kid they had?”
“Yeah,” Grant grunts. Something troubled flickers in his deep hazel eyes, lending a solemn air to the handsome stony crags of his face. He starts to take a sip of tea, then stops, looking down into the mug. “Their house burned down. Nell was barely a year old.”
Oh, God.
My heart plummets.
Oh, I hadn’t realized—my mother never told me.
It’s like there was this secret embargo on Grant talk between us over the years, and now my heart hurts as I realize what I’ve been missing.
Before I can stop myself, I reach across the table, resting my hand on Grant’s wrist.
“You don’t have to say it,” I murmur. “I’m sorry, Grant. I didn’t mean to bring up something painful.”
He looks at me oddly, then down at my hand against the thick, dark hair furring his arm. I suck in a breath and pull my hand back, but that only earns me another unreadable look as he sets the mug down and runs his fingers through his thick, brown beard.
“I ain’t mad, having to talk about them,” he rumbles. “Just haven’t had to tell this story in a good long while. Mice in the walls, I guess. Got through the electrical wiring. Some of the walls in that house were a century old. Brittle as hell. Just damned tinder. All it took was one spark.” He shakes his head gravely. “I was on call that night. Got there before the fire trucks could make it. I wasn’t supposed to go, but when I realized it was my aunt and uncle’s address...”
I almost don’t recognize Grant right now as he trails off.
That taciturn young man I knew has grown into a colder, older man, yes, but there’s also more.
Some deeper, wiser, fuller sense of self.
Something that pulls at me in ways both old and familiar—and new and unsettling, too.
“I don’t remember going in the house,” he continues. “Next thing I know, there’s smoke and fire everywhere, rafters caving in. They’d gotten to Nell’s nursery and covered her with a wet blanket before the smoke got to them.” He pauses, swirling the tea in his mug. “I was too fucking late for them. But little Nell, she was screaming up a storm, scared out of her mind. She was okay ’cause that blanket filtered the smoke, saving her little lungs. I snatched her up and got the hell out of there right before the roof caved in.”