Chapter 11
Frank heldGrace as she fell asleep. He dozed off, too, but not for long.
It had been too long since he’d slept next to another body, and the last few times had been agonizing. This—not the sex, but this quiet period after it—was the unexpected trauma he hadn’t seen coming.
After a while, he got up and carefully dressed, then stepped outside.
He didn’t go into his own cabin. He wouldn’t be able to sleep if he did, and he had had enough of lying miserably awake for a whole lifetime.
He sat on the step.
Their step.
In a few short days, it had become a place where a lot had happened. Now he let those memories wash over him. Not just things that had happened at the cabin, but up on the mountain. On the lake. And then something she’d said after he’d helped her get back in her kayak. When they’d taken their drinks to the sunny patch of grass behind the main lodge and learned a bit more about each other.
The start of their friendship in a lot of ways.
“Better something than nothing.”
She’d been talking about travel. About grabbing what you can afford, what was available, rather than bemoaning that it wasn’t exactly what you wanted.
But it felt hollow inside to think of grabbing a person, knowing they were only something, and not everything.
Bianca had been his everything.
Grace could never—
Frank groaned, a loud, guttural wounded sound. He was the worst kind of monster for even having that thought.
Grace was amazing. On every level, she was a fantastic woman. She deserved more than sharing space in his head and his heart with the ghost of a wife he’d adored for three decades.
“Can’t sleep?”
He jerked his head around and saw Grace in her doorway. She was in her oversized pyjamas again and looked cute as hell. She’d dressed herself before coming to find him.
He’d left her naked in her bed, and she’d had to put on clothes because he’d snuck out. Sure, he hadn’t gone far, but still…
Guilt swam in his gut. “Yeah.”
“Do you want company? Or would you prefer privacy?”
“Company,” he said without hesitation. But then he winced. God, he couldn’t keep his shit straight. After two days of being fine, now was not the time to fall apart.
She didn’t react to his facial expression. Maybe she couldn’t see it in the shadows. “‘Kay.”
He swallowed hard. “You should go to sleep, actually.”
A beat went by, then another, before she softly said, “Are you feeling guilty?”
“You don’t really believe in personal boundaries much, do you?”
“Highly overrated. Unless they’re mine, in which case they’re sacrosanct. It’s a weird thing of mine.”
“You have a lot of weird things that are actually pretty sound. I’ll trust this one, too.” He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m feeling guilty. A bit.”
“I know you miss your wife. That’s okay. I’ve been with widowers before.”
He laughed and groaned at the same time.
