Something softens in her features as her gaze pins me in place.“Grace said she wasn’t going anywhere.Everything she ever needed was right here.”
The words lodge under my ribs like a knife sinking into flesh.I already know I fucked up, but this drives it home.
Mom’s lips thin.“I called Patsy after I saw the note to make sure she’s there.”
I’m already at the door when Mom hollers, “You make it right with her, Maddox Raymond Hartley.”
I get in the truck and check the time on the dash.There’s enough of it to talk to Grace and make it to school for first bell when the game starts.The varsity basketball team made it to the semi-finals.I have time.
I take the inn’s front steps with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, swallowing against the knot sitting low in my throat.I can’t let her leave.I don’t know how to fix what I broke or whether there’s even a right thing to say anymore.
All I know is the idea of Grace Buchanan packing up, getting in her car, and driving out of Winslow Grove feels like something vital being stripped out of me, cell by cell.
The lobby is quiet when I push through the door.Grace is her only guest right now, and it should be easy to figure out which room is hers.My heart picks up with every step to the second floor.She could see this as an ambush.But I’m hoping she’ll see it for what it is.One door is ajar at the end of the hall.
I stop outside of it and listen.Nothing.She must have stepped out, or she’s in the bathroom.Either way, I push the door open enough to see inside.
The room smells like her.Fresh citrus and something warmer underneath it, something that reaches into my chest and makes it harder to breathe.I step inside, meaning only to wait, and call her name once into the quiet.The bathroom door hangs wide open.That, too, is empty.
I sit on the edge of the bed and pull in a slow breath.That’s when I see her laptop is open on the desk, screen glowing softly in the dim room.A document fills the page, and I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to move, crossing the room in a few steps.
It’s the feature, or one article of it, at least.
Grace wouldn’t want me reading this.It’s her work, her boundary, and I know better.I straighten and start to turn away until a name catches my eye, rooting me to the floor.
Beto Varón.
My breath stutters.Beto was part of my pit crew—a handsome kid, barely twenty-two, always smiling, always the first to volunteer for whatever needed doing.He’d only been with the team two years before everything fell apart.
He took an immediate liking to Erica.The poor guy never stood a chance with her.I don’t know who made the first move, only that I still remember him coming to me, making sure Erica and I were well and truly over before he let himself go there.He was that kind of person—considerate, careful, decent in the ways that mattered.
They became inseparable fast, and it didn’t take long after for the signs to show.Sloppy work.Not coming in.He was becoming a liability and already halfway out the door when the incident happened.
The words on the screen pull me back, and I look again despite myself, closer now, pulse already climbing.His name isn’t buried or mentioned in passing.It’s woven right into the opening paragraphs.Context.Facts.Consequences.The truth of my retirement laid out in clean, careful sentences that leave nowhere to hide.
The room tilts and sweat beads at the back of my neck.I lean in closer without touching anything and read.Every word lands a blow and a confession at once.All of it is there—the breakup and why, the downward spiral, the overdose, the ultimatum, the choice, the lie the world swallowed whole and called a retirement.
Grace built a career and tragedy into something that would hold up under scrutiny, under publication.The sick, dizzying mix that moves through me has no clean name.Betrayal and grief and rage and something that feels uncomfortably close to understanding, because I hurt her.
I know what it cost her to tell me about her brother, about the story she lost, to crack herself open and lay all of that at my feet.That was the moment I should’ve trusted her back.That was the moment I should’ve chosen differently.
But I didn’t.I walked out the door and handed her a reason.
I wanted to believe she wouldn’t do this, but how can I argue with what’s right in front of me?A sharp and relentless ache rips into my chest.I was an idiot who couldn’t extend the same kindness she’d extended to me, and now, I’m standing in her room reading the consequence of it.
Is this how she’s dealing with it?Turning us into copy, turning me into a story she can shape and control when I made her feel like she had no control at all?
Everything I sacrificed, everything I walked away from, all the quiet months I spent rebuilding something small and manageable in this town—if this gets out, all of it will have been for nothing.
I don’t know how long I stand there staring at the screen like the words might rearrange themselves if I wait long enough when I hear footsteps sound in the hallway.I turn as Grace walks through the door, a small paper bowl of popcorn in her hands.
The moment she sees me, her whole body halts.Her eyes lift to mine, then drop to the open laptop before coming back to me.And in the space of a single breath, I watch her understand exactly what I’ve done.
Chapter37
Grace
I’m halfway through a fistful of popcorn when I step into my room and stop cold.Maddox is there, and my heart surges, wanting to break free and go to him.