Grace

Seven

Grace

I return home, sniffing at the smell of lingering smoke that's probably soaked into my hair.

No sign of Mom, so that feeling returns too. The uneasiness that seems to never go away because of her. Whether she's around or not. She lingers in the air heavier than cigarette smoke ever has.

"Hey," Reece says on a sigh, glancing back at me as I enter the kitchen.

It smells spicy and flavorful and cleanses the foul burnt smell from my nostrils.

"Did you have fun?"

I briefly think back to the moment Christian's fingers pressed into the soft flesh of my hips as he came. "Yeah, I guess."

He stirs the pot then taps the spoon on its edge before setting it down on the stove.

I cross my arms as he sucks a drop of sauce off his thumb. He looks different than I remember.

He's bigger. Maybe even taller.

Maybe it's just the way he dresses now. The white wife beaters are like a staple to him. Wife beaters, grey sweatpants, white crew socks.

"That'll be another ten minutes." He nods at the pots, wandering off to the tiny table that barely fit two, let alone three.

Not like it ever needed to since Mom never ate with us. She hardly ate at all.

He sits against the arm of one of the chairs, typing something on his phone with quick thumbs.

I don't understand him. He's just okay with this? Like it's normal? Like it's routine? Just casually cooking dinner while she's off getting high probably surrounded by people who could hurt her. Herself included.

I take the seat adjacent to him. "Why did you come back, Reece?"

He looks at me like I just asked him something irrational. I mean maybe it was, but I'd been wondering ever since I opened the door for him, never expecting to see him standing there with a backpack and bulging biceps like all he's been doing the past five years is work out.

I never expected to see him again honestly.

"To her. To us."

"Why wouldn't I. This was my home then. I thought it still would be home now."

"But now that you see what it's become, why are you still here? If I could go, if I could get away from this...I would. In a heartbeat." My lips tremble, but I press them tight to hold back my emotions.

"You don't mean that."

"Yeah, I do."

He dry sniffs, sitting forward with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. My eyes run over the tattoos on his fingers, admiring them.

Venom.

I can barely catch the five letters on his right hand. When I was younger I could never make out the word. The font is way too fancy, and whenever he caught me staring, he'd cover them up.

I never understood why. They're not distasteful. They're immaculate. And not just the words on his knuckles, but the murals on his sleeves. I can tell he put a lot of thought into them, he found someone who could sketch with such attention to detail and now they're a permanent part of his skin.

But he looks at them with disdain. With regret.

Then the look is gone when his eyes are on me.

"Gracie, did I ever tell you about how I met her?Your mom."

I shake my head.

He opens his mouth to speak, but sort of fumbles on his own hesitation before cracking a slight grin.

"Well we were in college, believe it or not." He pulls down at his lips, slightly contorting his smile, but not making it look any less good. "Damn, that was such a long time ago."

"Hard to believe that woman was ever in college." I barely laugh.

"She was. And she was smart as hell. Math major or whatever." He looks at me sternly with a slow nod. "You know someone's smart if they can manage that shit."

I smile, our eyes suddenly stuck on each others.

He looks away. "Well, anyway—long story short, as you know, her name is Leigh Lowe and my twenty-something year old brain thought it was really fucking funny for whatever reason. I made a stupid joke about it." He rubs his eye with a bright smile on his face that makes my thighs tighten. "And that was our first conversation, also our last. Fast forward thirteen years and I run into her at a mutual friends get together or some shit, and we linked back up. Just like that."

He nods solemnly, staring at the yard through the window while bringing his bottle to his lips.

It doesn't scare me when he does it.

"She wasn't like this back then, Gracie. She wasn't even like this six years ago."

"I know."

"I knew things would be different, but not like this."

"Sorry that things aren't what you expected..."

He shakes his head, his brows pulled together as he rises from the arm and drags the seat closer to me. Next to me.

So close, our knees touch and it ignites a bigger version of the flutter in my belly that I'd felt with Christian earlier.

He stares at me hard, studying me, making my breathing come to a halt. Making my stomach tense and nervous.

My heart begins pounding as he brushes his hand over the back of my head, my eyes falling shut only a second. Almost like a blink, but a little bit longer. "You don't have a reason to be sorry, Grace. None of this is your fault."

"None of it's yours either. I didn't mean what I said the other day..."

He leans toward me and kisses the top of my head, and then when I hear him sniffing I sigh, my eyes already rolling before he's spoken a word because I can feel the smart mouth remark coming.

"Were you out there fighting fires, Gracie? You smell like the inside of a chimney."