Page 105 of Graciously His

My eyes sting.

I’ve failed so completely that Grace really did leave me—and she was right to.

My entire body tenses with the impulse to run. To throw my shoulder against the locked door until it breaks, or the door opens. I need Grace. I need her to understand that I know I’ve done wrong. Beyond last night. Beyond everything.

I raise my fist and knock on the door.

“Hey!” I peer through the polycarbonate window. “Hey, Tim? Tim, where the fuck are you?”

I hammer at the door. I’m not sure what I’ll say to make them release me, but something has to be done. If Grace is still with her mother, if she’s in the grip of that bitch after running away from my fucking failures—

“HEY!” I yell, my fist aching as I keep on hammering. I force myself to stop. If I lose my shit right now, I might not get out at all. I might confirm exactly what Tim has started thinking of me.

Exactly what Grace herself might think.

That I’m too volatile to be safe. Too controlling to love.

I close my eyes, willing myself to calm the fuck down. Willing myself to be the man she needs, even at a distance. The man who will let his lawyer handle this. Who will trust his wife with her own safety. And who will let her choose that safety, and then stand by and witness her miraculousness rather than forcing it.

I bow my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. My fingers slip outwards, against my closed eyelids, pressing until it hurts. I breathe. That hurts, too. Especially now that memories are closing on me, the heavy breaths of the only other woman I loved. Mum, lying in a narrow bed, lungs filling with fluid, her breaths rattling. And Nick at my side, crying the tears I couldn’t allow myself. That’s the day we stopped looking the same. He, the crying, better twin. Me, the expressionless, worse one. The tears have been waiting, all these years—for Grace.

Grace, who might be breathing painfully now, her chest heaving in that terrible, beautiful way. Caring for her, even during the tiny moments we had that first day twenty years ago, was enough to let me duck out from under Mum’s death. But loving my Grace so deeply hasn’t been enough. Not even close.

The lock rattles and I jump away from the door, readying myself to talk to Tim. To ask—to fucking beg—for news of my wife.

A jingling of keys, and the door opens. Tim is there, but only for a second. Because Grace brushes past him.

Grace, perfect and beautiful and smiling.

“Hey, big heart,” she whispers, hesitating a little, as if unsure of how I might react. “I’m here to set you free.”

I fall to my knees.

And my wife, my Grace, kneels down with me. She presses her cheek over my heart, wraps me in her arms, and says—

“I love you, Nate.”

Epilogue

Grace

Three Months Later

Isaw him first.

In fact, I’ve spent over an hour watching for him. I’m sitting on the big swing Nate bought for Shep and me. We installed it on the wide concrete slab in front of the house, where it’s a bit incongruous but entirely comfortable. As I watch, Nate’s black Audi pulls up alongside my vintage Range Rover in the his-and-hers carport I designed. He’s clearly on the phone, earbuds in, his voice snapping quick and pissy to someone who can only be Dare. I shift further back in the swing.

“Let’s see how long it takes him to notice us,” I whisper to Shep.

The big dog snuggles his face deeper into my lap, and I grin silently as Nate walks towards the front door, his eyes narrowing as he listens to whatever Dare is saying.

He almost didn’t go to the office today, given the news from Tim a couple of days back.

The toxicology report from Nick’s autopsy confirmed a faint positive for heavy metals. I was tested as soon as we commissioned the report, and Dr Eileen has started me on a detox protocol. The dots are joining up for an arrest for Mother, but it’s something I try not to think about these days. I don’t want to think about how she was poisoning me alongside the consistent exposure to gluten, adding arsenic to my food whenever she felt her control was slipping. She was poisoning Nick, too, though at much lower levels. Not enough to have murdered him, but maybe enough to have slowed him down the morning he died. She’ll go to jail—Watson says that’s for certain.

I just want to be here. With Nate. Court proceedings will force my attention at some point, but for now I’m an almost-graduate architect sitting on a slightly tacky swing in front of the house my man built just for me. For now, that’s enough.

Nate advances, shaking his head at something Dare is saying.