Cruz peaked a brow at me as he carried a handful of bottles to the garbage can. “The last time this door was locked was when Aunt May bought the house back in eighty-eight. I’m not about to break that open-door streak, are you?”
My fingers fell from the lock on the door handle. “Unlocked it is. Good night, Cruz. Thanks for letting the newest member of the Pariah Society hang with you.”
Cruz winked. “Anytime, cupcake. Anytime.”
After closing the door, I started for my car. Now that the adrenaline from the night had worn off, I felt exhausted. The kind that made taking one more step a feat of willpower and strength.
The streets were still quiet, and most of the cars that had been lined up and down the street were gone. A few were still staggered here and there, but The Clink was quiet for once. With the handful of stars just barely showing through the city lights and the hum from the streetlights, it was almost peaceful. Almost.
A place like this could never truly embody peace because too much tragedy had been birthed here.
I could just make out my Toyota up ahead, but it took every last reserve of strength I had to make it that last half block. It didn’t help that I’d hardly slept the night before, too anxious from anticipating what would transpire tonight.
Before I made it to the car, I could tell something was wrong. It was tilting—the side next to the curb was lower than the other. A sigh rumbled in my chest. How many cars with slashed tires had I passed in my years here? Too damn many.
Add one more to that list. So much for that perceived armistice . . . but then again, it was after midnight, so it was officially a new day. On with things in The Clink as usual: gang wars, drug deals, vehicular theft, and tire slashing.
I had a spare in the trunk, but I didn’t have two. Not that I could have changed a tire with the level of exhaustion I’d reached anyway. Just as I was pulling out my phone to find a local, hopefully affordable towing service, I noticed someone move out of the shadows.
This wasn’t the time of night or the zip code a person wanted to experience someone creeping out of the shadows, but this shadow was a familiar one. A shape I’d never feared. A figure I knew I never could fear, no matter what the past contained or where the future went.
“How many times have I reminded you not to take to these streets at night alone?” Grant’s frame loomed just beyond the streetlight’s reach, but I could see him as plain as if it were day. Growing up here, you learned how to see in the dark. It was the only way to survive.
“Probably a thousand,” I answered, trying not to act thrown that Grant was standing ten feet in front of me when I thought he’d stormed away hours ago.
“Make it a thousand and one then.” The faintest of smiles pulled at one side of his mouth. “Don’t walk alone at night here. Don’t go anywhere alone here. It’s not safe. Never has been and never will be.”
The irony of me surviving seventeen years in The Clink hit me then. I’d survived hell only to struggle through the supposed free-land ever since.
“It’s not safe for cars, at least.” I waved at my two flat tires. How much was that going to cost?
“Probably just a couple of young kids trying to prove how tough they are.”
“In The Clink? No. I don’t remember anyone being like that.” I looked at Grant to find he was still doing that almost-smile of his. I could remember him really smiling only a few times. At least the kind of smile that other people did—the type that reached their eyes.
A minute of silence passed between us. After what had been said in the bedroom and how he’d spent most of the night ignoring me, I had no idea what he was doing here now. Seemingly willingly.
“What are you doing here, Grant?” I asked, not quite as eloquently as I’d been planning. I blamed that on the time of night and my waning energy.
The skin between his eyebrows creased for one long moment before his expression cleared. Tilting away from me, he motioned at my car. “I called you a tow truck, but I wasn’t sure where to send it to get new tires. I wanted to make sure it was close to wherever you’re staying, but I wasn’t sure where that was.” He cleared his throat. “Or even if you were staying.”
My chest tightened, hearing the boy I remembered in the man before me. “I’m staying over in the Pearl District. On Carson Street.”
He nodded like he knew where that was, but I wasn’t sure if he did. When we lived here, we rarely left The Clink’s boundaries, then he’d gone to college in College Station to stay close to me, then onto big cities with big teams.
“Thank you for calling a tow truck. You didn’t have to do that though.” I shifted, already owing Grant a debt I could never pay back if I spent the rest of my life trying. A debt that had grown. Again.
“Yes, I did. I wouldn’t leave a stranger alone and abandoned on these streets at this hour. I sure as shit wouldn’t leave someone I used to love in the same condition.” As he said it, his tone changed. It took on that sharp, removed pitch I’d heard for the first time earlier tonight.
The words “used to” hit me. Hard. Not because I hadn’t accepted years ago that Grant used to love me, but because it was the first time I’d heard him say it. The first time he’d confirmed it.
It stung like a son of a bitch.
“I’ll let the tow company know to drop it at an auto shop close by you.” Grant pulled a phone out of his pants pocket and started punching in a text.
“Do you know how much it will be?” I tried to remember how much I had sitting in my checking account, guessing I’d need to transfer some from savings for the check to clear. When Grant’s head turned toward me, his brow lifted, I added, “Just so I can have the check ready when the truck gets here?”
“It’s already taken care of.”
“No, I can’t . . . you couldn’t . . .”
Grant pocketed his phone and turned back to face me. “You can. And I did. So either say thank you or fuck you or whatever you like, but it’s done.”
My head shook. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Why? Because you broke my heart when we were kids?” He tipped his head at me. “It’s okay. I survived. Now, let’s get out of here before my tires are next.” He started down the sidewalk but stopped after a few steps to wait for me.
“I was just going to call a cab.”
Grant huffed. “Yeah. Good luck getting a cab to show up at this address at this time of night.”
I chewed on my lip, realizing he was right. Cabs didn’t come here at night unless the driver was looking to score. It had been so long, I’d forgotten the rhythm of the land, the unwritten rules.
“I could ask Cruz.” My thumb went over my shoulder as I wondered what the hell I was doing trying to get out of this. I needed to talk to Grant, and the ride home would be the perfect time to do just that.
“Ryan, damn, can we not do this? I’m here. I’m not leaving you alone here, so would you just let me drive you home without having to go ten rounds? I’m beat and would like to crawl into bed sometime tonight.”
Taking another minute, I came up beside him. “Okay.”
“Thank god,” he muttered, giving me a light nudge as we started down the sidewalk.
It was the closest we’d been all night, and being close felt surprisingly easier than keeping our distance. That was probably because that was all we knew. The closer we’d kept to each other, the safer we stayed. The closer we stayed, the lesser the likelihood of us getting ripped apart.
“Thank you, Grant. For all of this. I know I’m the last person you have reason to be charitable to.”
As we passed a burnt-out streetlight, Grant slid closer. Just close enough to have me within arm’s reach, though not as close as he used to.
“Not the last.” His head shook once as he looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “Maybe the second to last though.”
When I noticed him fight a smile, I gave him a shove. It was like trying to move a concrete barricade. That hadn’t changed. ?
??When did you develop a sense of humor?”
His shoulders lifted as he checked over his shoulder. He was the size of a tractor—no one was going to mess with him. People had stopped messing with him when he packed on twenty pounds of muscle the summer he turned fifteen. “When I realized life was too damn tragic not to laugh at it from time to time.”
A wave of sadness hit me, but I was used to them. I’d gotten lots of practice pushing them aside.
There was only one car on the street in front of us. It was a familiar one, though only faintly. It had been a shell the last time I saw it, but that wasn’t the case anymore. “You finished it.”
“Someone had to.” Grant pulled a key out of his pocket and punched a button that turned off the security system.
“It’s beautiful, Grant. Wow.” My pace picked up as we approached the old truck. “I never would have guessed that hunk of junk could become this.”
“Yeah, me either.” He unlocked the doors and swung the passenger one open. “It’s amazing what hard work and stubborn-ass determination can do.”
“It saved this piecer from getting scraped.” I admired the outside of the truck, running my hand against the gleaming black paint.
“Barely.”
“Barely?” I glanced back at Grant, who was staring at the truck like he was seeing something else.
“After my dad died, I arranged to get rid of everything of his. From his boots to his truck. I didn’t want any of it.” Grant shrugged. “Then I realized this truck was the one good memory I had of my old man. The one time he’d tried to do something constructive with me. The one time he’d been interested in bonding with his son instead of alienating him.”
My teeth sank into my lower lip. “You chose to hang on to the good.”
He considered that for a moment before nodding. “I guess I did.”
After he closed the door behind me, I wondered if he’d adopted that policy in other areas of his life. If he had, it would make everything easier.
“You don’t drive this back and forth to New York, do you?” I asked.
“I store it here so I have something to get around in whenever I come back.” As he slid into driver’s seat, he glanced at where I sat on the other end of the bench. “Buckle up.”
I pulled the belt over me and buckled it into place. “Still trying to keep me safe.”
I’d said it teasingly, but it was clear from his expression that my safety wasn’t anything he took lightly. “Old habits.”
“Die hard?” I filled in as he fired on the engine.
His hands curled around the steering wheel. “Die never.”
As Grant pulled away from the curb and set us on the road that would take us out of The Clink, I settled into the seat and took a moment to admire him while his attention was focused on the road.
He looked the same. Older, but the same. Same short brown hair, same dark eyes that could say everything or give away nothing depending on the situation. Even the way he sat stretched out behind the steering wheel was the same. Grant had always been big for his age, never quite fitting into anything, so whenever he was somewhere with space, he stretched out as wide as he could, like he was trying to make up for all of the times his knees had been crammed into the seat in front of him.
He’d gotten bigger since I’d seen him last, but I supposed that was a side effect of playing in the pros. He had a body made for work and power, a body a woman couldn’t help admiring and considering the possibilities that came with it. Grant’s body had been the talk of the female population wherever he roamed, but it was his face I’d grown to appreciate more. The face that was an afterthought to others was the highlight to me.
His face would never walk runways or drop mouths—his nose had been broken too many times, his jaw was too square, his eyes too wide-set. He was more boy-next-door than male model. But when I looked at Grant’s face, I saw beauty and happiness and safety. Looking at him had always felt like home, and this time was no different.
Grant had been my safe place in a world of darkness. As outlandish as it was, he still felt like one of those safe places.
He caught me staring at him, so I angled forward in my seat and focused out the window. “Did you hear about my mom?”
His head bobbed. “Yeah, I was at her funeral.”
My brows pulled together. “She didn’t have a funeral.” There hadn’t been money for one, not to mention a lack of people who’d actually show up to mourn her passing.
“Actually, there was.” Grant shifted in his seat. “It was just a small one. Nothing big.”
I exhaled sharply. A year later, and I still couldn’t think about my mom without getting pissed. So much for letting the dead rest in peace. “Who paid for that?”
When he took a moment to speak, I knew the answer before he said it. “I did.” One of his shoulders lifted. “We would have invited you, if anyone knew where you were. Which nobody did.”
There was enough accusation in his voice to be detected. Not too much, but just enough.
“I can’t believe you actually spent money to give that woman a funeral.” My pulse picked up, my stomach twisting just thinking about the woman who’d birthed me. “You despised her even more than I did, and I was the one she gave a boy’s name to since she didn’t figure out I was a girl until I was a month old. I was the one she made sleep on the floor on top of newspapers for a week after I wet the bed because I’d heard her getting the shit beat out of her by a drug dealer she was in the hole with. I was the one she slapped instead of hugged, the one she forgot about for days when she was on a serious bender, the one she kicked out when she caught me making out with you and accused me of being a whore . . . by a woman who exchanged sex for drugs.” The floodgates had opened, and I couldn’t seem to stop my words now that they’d started.
Beside me, Grant didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even flinch as I grew louder.
“The same woman who invited the kind of men into the house who should not have been let close to a little girl. The kind of men like the one you saved me—”
“Ryan, enough,” Grant suddenly interjected. “I know.”
I took a few breaths to cool the fire burning in my veins. “Then why did you go out of your way to do that for her?”
His grip tightened on the steering wheel, his massive hands looking almost capable of ripping it right off. “I didn’t do it for her,” he said around a heavy exhale. “I did it for you. Because I thought that’s what you would have wanted.” He gave me a sideways look, then looked back at the road. “I did it because as messed up as your mom was, she brought you into the world. And that was enough of a reason to go a little out of my way to make sure she left this world with some dignity.”
His confession left me speechless. One part of me wanted to snort over the idea of dignity applying to my mom. Another part of me wanted to melt into a puddle. He’d done it for me. Because she was my mom, the person who’d brought me into the world. Forget how she had, who she had with, or what had come after. For Grant, the fact that she was my mother was enough for him to want to pay her the respect I wasn’t sure she deserved. Not after what she’d done. Not after what had almost happened because of her. Not now, with the knowledge that would forever impact my life . . . and others.
My stomach twisted as my mind started to get lost in that maze. I couldn’t think about this. It never led to anything constructive. I needed to change the subject before everything I needed to tell Grant came out wrong and I ruined any chance of getting him to understand.
“So, football . . .” I started.
“I’ve heard of it,” he teased.
“You made it.”
“You sound surprised.” Grant looked at me while we were stopped at a red light.
“Not surprised. I always knew you’d make it big one day.”
A single chuckle came from him. “You and no one else.”
I wanted to tell him me and everyone else, but I didn’t want to get into another po
intless argument. Not when we were getting closer to the Pearl District and I’d still gotten nowhere telling him what I needed to. “Do you love it?”
“Yes,” he answered right away, then tipped his head. “And no.”
My forehead folded. There were few things Grant had ever loved, and football had been one of them. “Why no?”
He was quiet. Then he cleared his throat. “What about you? What do you do to pay the bills?”
I wanted to laugh. What the rest of the world did to pay their bills was very different from what Grant Turner did to pay his. He could probably pay his monthly bills with the change rolling around in his truck.
“Well, after finishing my GED, I went to dental hygienist school.” I continued to stare out the window, mindlessly playing with a loose thread on my sweater sleeve. Talking with Grant about the person I was today was so surreal. We’d gone from wild teens to responsible adults seemingly overnight, and this adult conversation was hard to wrap my head around.
“Nice job. But I never would have guessed you’d want to become a dental hygienist. Not in a hundred years.”
“What did you think I would have become?”
He didn’t hesitate. “An actress.”
An actress. God, I’d almost forgotten about that dream, that’s how distant it felt. It seemed like the dream of a girl from another lifetime.
“I was on my own. I had to take care of myself and be responsible. I couldn’t take a chance on making it as an actress when I had rent to pay and groceries to buy. Someone at a career fair told me about the demand for dental hygienists, the salary and benefits, and that I wouldn’t have to be in school forever. That was all I needed to know for it to become my new dream career.”
Grant rolled down his window an inch, just enough to let a little cool air into the cab. Grant had always driven with the window down or cracked, just like he’d always left his bedroom window, even in the dead of winter. Back then it had been to air out the scent of filth or cigarette smoke, but the inside of his cab smelled perfectly nice now. Like conditioned leather and the same soap I remembered him using. Another one of those old habits dying never, I guessed.