Page 34 of Grant’s Blaze

Maybe even more than that.

What if this hadn’t just been a temporary slide or a delayed reaction to exhaustion? What if he was suffering something worse, like a seizure or blackout? If something were that seriously wrong, I couldn’t even think of anyone I could call for help. Did the tried-and-true 9-1-1 still work? I thought so…maybe…

But that whole thought process should probably concern me on some level too. How had my own world shrunk down to this one human I currently shared a sofa cushion with? After Sean passed, I swore to myself I wouldn’t keep such an isolated existence. Yet I hadn’t done anything to change my situation. I’d simply swapped men I was utterly dependent upon.

Rio, Rio, Rio. Is this healthy? Are you right enough to be taking care of him now? What if you’re not? What if you screw this up? What if you lose your shit? And if you do, what will happen to the guy you’re supposed to be taking care of?

But now was not the time for my daily self-doubt and flagellation. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, I needed to make sure this incredible friend of mine was okay.

“Grant?” I said his name a bit louder then and put my hand on his forearm.

He startled, jerking away from my touch, but the sequence of actions seemed to shake him from the stupor he’d slipped into.

Sluggishly, the man turned to look at me. Caution filled his eyes, and tension lined his face.

“Hi,” I said and, for some dorky reason, gave a little wave. I wanted to burst out laughing at my own absurdity, but the last thing I wanted was Grant to think I was laughing at him. Instead, I flowed my awkward embarrassment into a small, caring smile. Still keeping my voice gentle, I asked, “Babe, what happened?”

“I’m so sorry, Rio” was his verbal response, but the actual answer came in the gestures that went along with it. Grant’s stress tell was him gripping the back of his neck. Today, it came after he scraped his hand back through his hair—obscenely sexy but also a clear invitation for concern—before I tried to figure where he’d go from there.

His neck rubs usually took one of three paths. Sometimes he squeezed his nape with his whole hand. Others, he’d brush up the back of his head and then briskly rubbed his close-cropped hair—which was rather nonexistent right now. The third entry in the neck language book was the grip-and-hold. To my interested eye, it always looked like his version of breath-holding. When he was tense or angry, this was the go-to move.

Which meant it was the gesture I watched in full now.

I gulped, struggling for composure. The torment etching his normally gregarious face was heartbreaking.

“Will you tell me what happened?” I softly asked. “If I had to guess by the cell phone carnage, maybe you took a call that didn’t end well?”

“Oh, shit,” he blurted. “Let me get that before you cut yourself. I’m pretty sure the screen shattered.” He surged to his feet, but I was right beside him, trying to block his path.

“No. Let me worry about it. Your car is probably waiting downstairs. If they have to wait too long, the doorman will probably make them leave.”

“My what?” He had the most bewildered look on his face, and I couldn’t understand what part of my comment he wasn’t following. “I don’t have a car, baby. That much I know.”

“No, I meant your ride. Have you already called the service?” I waited, but he just continued to stare at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “Grant, why are you just looking at me like I’m—”

But then it made sense. The pieces of this little puzzle clicked into place, and the outburst with the broken cell phone was the final shape. The question now, however, was what was the best way to proceed? Act clueless that he might be experiencing short-term memory loss and couldn’t piece together what to do next in his routine? Or did I reassure him that according to the quick reading I’d been doing on the topic, he would likely be fine in a few weeks, a couple months at the most? Did I go as far as servicing him with platitudes like “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”?

At once, I ruled out the last one. Terrible, horrible idea. Even I could hear that once I repeated it in my head.

The decision was taken from me in the next moment anyway, as the man spun and stalked toward the front door but stopped when he got to the foyer closet. He returned bearing the broom and dustpan, efficiently wielding them on the shards of plastic and glass that had flown to more places in the room than I’d imagined.

I watched him with a terse frown, still attempting to navigate the emotional wreckage of the situation more than his shattered electronics.

Or whatever the hell this was.

Because right now, it appeared Grant’s chosen method of dealing with this was to not deal with it at all. At least not with me. As deeply as that panged, I clung to the bit of comfort in knowing that Elijah had him booked with a doctor sometime soon. Maybe even today.

I would give that asshole a call later and talk to him about what happened here this morning. Maybe if I was extra sweet and gave him lots of compliments to feed his ego, he would agree to keep me in the loop with how the appointment went.

Grant stayed busy with the mess, giving me private space to wring my hands in my lap. What else was there to do besides that? I just had to come to terms with what Grant had decided right now. That for the time being, he was choosing to keep me out of all of it.

But all of it isn’t all of it.

The certainty blared in my brain, steadier than a dropped bassline in a packed nightclub. There was so much more going on here than even my imagination could conjure. I’d had a lot of downtime to think about this. Nothing had been random about what those dickheads did to my man. The arrogance they’d displayed coming aboard our yacht…the way they’d all but known who Grant was even before he’d confirmed their intel…and then the absolute commando act they’d pulled when motoring off into the night…

I suppressed a shudder. I couldn’t relive that horror again. I refused to. But cataloguing those thoughts had definitely led me to another.

There was more to consider here now—namely the phone call I overheard last night. The things that hadn’t been said with Sebastian, in addition to what had been vocalized…