We came so close to getting it right.
Grace’s jaw is set firm and the breath she releases is a grunt of anguish. “What did I do wrong?”
Her words slam into me, wrapping a fist around my heart. Fuck this. My chair rolls backwards as I dive up to reach her. I drop to my knees and as her notepad slides from her lap, I take her trembling hands in mine.
“You did everything right, Angel. I was the fuck-up.”
Tears well in her eyes. “Because of the accident?”
It’s painful to swallow. “Because I thought I’d killed my best friend.”
“Maddie told me your family were worried about you,” she says as a rogue tear slips down her cheek.
I untangle my fingers from hers so I can swipe away the tear. “What else did she tell you?”
Grace’s nose wrinkles. “Some line about me being a legend.”
“You are.”
She sniffs back her tears. “Explain.”
This could take a while and the longer I stay kneeling in front of her, the more chance there is of someone walking into the office, especially as Ed isn’t at his desk yet. I’d deliberately kept the door unlocked in an effort to keep us apart. Big fail.
I rise to my feet and keep tight hold of Grace’s hand, taking her with me when I go to lock the door. Neither of usspeak as I lead her to the lounge area at the opposite end of my office.
As I walk, I debate who should sit where. There are two armchairs facing each other, which would be a safe option. But I have another fuck-it moment and when I sit down on the soft leather couch, I pull her onto my lap.
When Grace takes a breath, I speak before she can tell me off. “Don’t want to hear it,” I say gruffly, tucking her into me, an arm around her waist. “Yesterday was a shit show and a weekend without my daily dose of you is looming. Just for one damn minute, I want to hold my girl.”
“Don’t you mean your legend?” she asks, her light words scratching nonetheless as she rests her head on my shoulder.
My heart thuds in my chest. It’s time to share more than vague facts about my accident. Grace needs to know that when she traced my jagged scars, her gentle touch had healed me in ways no doctor or therapist ever could.
“You are my legend,” I tell her. “Not that I knew it when you gatecrashed the opening of the Exemplar.”
“I had an invite,” she huffs.
“It was your attitude that got you in, not some flimsy piece of card with someone else’s name on it,” I correct. “Meanwhile, I had my family name emblazoned across every soft furnishing in the place and I still didn’t know who the fuck I was.”
Grace threads her fingers through mine again. She doesn’t interrupt. She gives me the space to tell my story.
“When you’re the tallest and broadest amongst your peers, you naturally fall into the role of protector and I was good at it. My older brothers came from the same mold and they’d been my role models,” I tell her. “But everything changed the night I lost my best friend and…” I take a breath. “To all intents and purposes, I lost my twin sister too.”
Grace doesn’t look up. “You’re a twin?”
“Not identical.Obviously,” I add because it’s a running joke whenever Meri and I introduce ourselves, or it was when she could bear to be in the same room as me. “We’re not similar at all. She can be moody as fuck. And the quieter Meri is, the more afraid you should be.”
A rumble rises up through Grace’s chest. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like you at all.”
I smile, but it quickly fades. “Meribeth was the other person in the car with me and Ewan that night,” I explain. “We were in Scotland, just the three of us. Meri’s a Moncrief through and through, and she was on a mission to find isolated pockets of the globe where we could create exclusive retreats for our clients. We found ourselves in the Outer Hebrides and were having the time of our lives. Ewan and Meri were in a serious relationship and he’d let me into the secret that he was going to propose. But then…”
I stare out the window at the cityscape. The pink sunrise has long since disappeared and the sky is pewter grey.
“My head injury wiped out most of my memory so I came up with different scenarios to explain what happened, centering myself as the villain in every single one. It was raining and I must have been overconfident about the driving conditions. It was dark and I was probably chatting away to Ewan, who was in the back with Meri resting her head on his lap as she slept. It was late at night, so maybe I was tired and closed my eyes at the wrong time.”
“There was no evidence to substantiate any of my theories. Nor was there anything to disprove them,” I continue. “On balance, it had to be my fault. Meri needed someone toblame and I was happy to oblige. I’d taken on the role of protector, but I failed them both, and Ewan paid with his life. I was useless. Worthless. Hopeless. I fantasized about climbing to the top of some godforsaken mountain and never coming down again.”
Grace strokes her thumb over mine. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
