Page 18 of Giving Grace

“Through and through—bullet went in the front and came out the back,” I tell her, crippling relief and an odd sort of disappointment chasing themselves around in my gut.

“You were shot.” I can hear fear in her voice when she says it. Like it happened minutes ago, not years. Like it could happen again at any moment. “Someone shot you.”

“Yeah.” I reach up and run a self-conscious hand over the lump. “I was doing a thing and caught a bullet for my trouble.”

“Doing a thing?” I can hear a slight smile in her voice. Feel her lift her head to look up at me in the dark. “Is that your way of saying you were on a top-secret mission for the president?”

“I could tell you, Grace—but then I’ll have to kill you,” I say, the clench in my stomach loosening a little when she laughs. Finally figuring out what to do with my hands, I shift my free arm across the mattress. Taking her hand in mine, I lift it off my hip, dragging it up my stomach to its center. “Yemin,” I whisper, running her fingertips along the thin, diagonal scar that climbs the ladder of my ribcage, from my navel to nearly my armpit. “Guy caught me with the business end of his KA-BAR. Sliced me pretty good.” My breath catches at the back of my throat when her hand slips out from under mine. Her fingertips start to move on their own, skimming across my collarbone. The base of my throat. Dipping down to trace the line of my pec. Squeezing my eyes shut in the dark, I force myself to concentrate. “A KA-BAR is a—”

“It’s a knife,” she says, her fingers tracing down the center of my chest, over the thick plate of my sternum. “I know what it is—my dad’s a Marine, remember?” She finds another scar, this one shorter. Fatter, somewhere between my sternum and lower abdomen. Brushes her fingertips along the length of it. “This one?”

“Got stabbed.” I want to catch her hand. Stop her before she goes any further. Moves any lower. But I don’t. I can’t because as much as I don’t want her to touch me, I need her to. I might fucking die if she doesn’t. “Libya.” I croak it out on a harsh breath when she lifts her hand back to my shoulder, relief and disappoint churning together even faster, the splash of it like acid against the back of my throat.

But then she moves.

Braces her hand against my shoulder. Shifts herself against me. Over me. Slides her leg over my hip until she’s straddling me. It all happens so fast I don’t even realize it’s done until her hand slides down the width of my shoulder to find my hand, resting on the bed. Lifting it, she brings it up, her hands guiding my rough, blunt fingertips over the soft skin of her belly. Again, it happens too fast for me to track. So quick I can’t breathe. My heart’s hammering against my Adam’s apple so hard and fast I feel dizzy. Like I’m being choked out. Like I might actually die from this. Like I might want to, because dying this way, with Grace, soft and naked under my hands is so much better than anything I ever thought I’d get to have.

Her hand and mine stop their downward trajectory and then I feel it, the thick, hard rope of scar tissue slashed into the soft patch of skin above her pubic bone. “C-section,” She says with a quiet laugh. “Ohio.” Laying her fingers gently across the back of my wrist, she lets me feel it. Opens herself up to me. “It’s not like I fought a war or anything, but—”

“Yes you did.” I murmur it, letting my gaze travel over her in the gloom. I can make out the soft curve of her breasts. The gentle flare of her hips. “You fought the best kind of war,” I tell her, thinking briefly of Molly. “And you won.”

“So did you,” she says. I can tell by her tone she’s not talking about the bullet holes and stab wounds that could’ve killed me but didn’t. She’s talking about the wound that did. Killed the person I was. Made me into the person that I am. “I have to tell you something,” she whispers. “About me. About—”

It doesn’t matter.

I almost say it, because it’s true. Whatever she’s about to tell me doesn’t matter. Not to me. But I can tell by the way she says it that it matters to her. Whatever it is, it’s something she needs to say out loud. So I don’t say anything. I just wait.

“I don’t know who Molly’s father is,” She finally says in a rush, shoving the words out of her mouth on a harsh push of breath. “Cari, my parents—they all think I won’t name him because I’m protecting him. There were a lot of rumors going around town while I was pregnant—still going, actually. That he’s married or that he’s one of my teachers in high school. One rumor even had me getting knocked up by the pastor at our church, but the truth is that I don’t name him because I don’t know who he is. I was young and stupid and I—”

“Good.”

“Good?” Something about her tone tells me it isn’t good. That it bothers her. “Why is that good?”

Because it means I don’t have to worry about some asshole strolling into the picture, trying to take what’s mine. Because you don’t need anyone else. Just me. No one else but me.

It’s insane.

Completely crazy to feel that way. The only thing crazier would be if I actually said it out loud. But crazy or not, it’s how I feel. “Because no father is better than a shitty one—trust me on that,” I tell her because she asked me a question and expects an answer. “Whoever he is, he’s the one who fucked up, Grace. He’s the one who should regret it. Not you.”

There’s more. I can feel it. More to it than she’s telling me but I suddenly don’t care. I don’t want to think about it anymore—her past and mine.

In an instant, all that matters is now.

The press of her knees, bent and bracketing my ribcage. The inside of her thighs, hugged against my hips. The juncture of them hovering over the base of my cock, so close I can feel the heat of her. How much she wants me, the feel of it kicking up a familiar answering throb in my groin.

Pushed by instinct, I lift my hands to her hips. Fingertips digging in with the need to pull her closer. To get inside her.

Fuck her.

I need to fuck her.

Make her mine.

“Grace…” Her name comes out on a rough breath, anxiety spiking through my veins because I need something I can’t have. Something I’m too afraid to take. Shame and humiliation slice through me, tightening my grip on her. Get me ready to push her off of me so I can get away from her. “I—”

I can’t.

That’s what I’m about to say but then, like she seems to have a habit of doing, Grace changes everything.

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