Page 33 of Giving Grace

Hearing me behind him, he flashes me a dimpled grin. “Nope—” he says, letting the ball roll bounce its way across the court. “don’t believe me, ask your sister.”

“Jesus,” I grumble at him. “Why do I bother trying to talk to you?”

“Because, unfortunately for you, I’m your best friend,” he says, laughing out loud while moving toward the towel and water bottle he has piled against the wall. “So, how’d it go?”

“How’d what go?”

“You know—” He stops scrubbing at the sweat on his chest long enough to give me an obscene hand gesture. “Your thirty minutes of self-exploration.”

“Seriously?” I reach up to scrub a rough hand across my jawline. A lot about me has changed—maybe even improved—over the last few months, but I still forget to shave so often that it’s just easier to grow it out and call it a beard. “You do realize that it’s weird of you to ask me that, right? Like, guys don’t generally ask other guys about their masturbation habits—it’s not normal. You know that, don’t you?”

“Most guys don’t have to have jerk-off sessions prescribed to them by their doctors,” he reminds me with a shrug. “And exactly when did you start operating under the assumption that I give a shit about weird or normal?”

Because he’s right and because it’s always easier to just answer his questions in the end, I give up. “It went fine,” I tell him because truthfully it’s not the first time he’s asked me that question and it more than likely won’t be the last. “Is that it?” I say, taking a quick look at the watch strapped to my wrist. I knew I was cutting it close this morning and if I don’t leave soon, I’m going to be late. “Is this fucked-up conversation over? Can I go?”

“Think about Grace?” He gives me another shit-eating grin when he says her name because he knows he just hit the backstop. The place where this conversation comes to a hard and historically violent end. He’s doing it on purpose, I know that. This is Con and he likes fucking with people almost as much as Declan does. But unlike his brother, Con usually has a purpose when he does it, beyond his own fucked-up satisfaction.

That’s how I know he’s testing me. Pushing at my walls to make sure they’ll hold. Preparing me for something.

Looking at my watch again, I drop my hand to my side with a heavy sigh. “You want to stop trying to get yourself killed there, Death Wish, and just tell me what the fuck is going on?”

The grin he’s giving me winks out.

“Jack’s outside.” He says it, quick and decisive, like he’s cauterizing a wound. “He’s waiting for you.” He instinctively blading his body away from me when he says it. Dropping his leg back just enough to absorb my weight when I launch myself at him in an effort to rip his head off his shoulders, even though I haven’t gotten physical with anyone in months. Because he knows that if anything is going to send me into a tailspin, it’s this.

Jack.

My father.

Waiting to ambush me.

Today, of all fucking days.

Con is still talking so I force myself to listen. Pay attention to what he’s telling me.

“…in the parking lot. As far as I can tell, he’s sober. He—”

“Why is he here?” It comes out hard, like an accusation. I can feel the life I’ve spent the last several months building, brick by fucking brick, start to shift and shake. Threaten to come down to bury me alive. “Did you bring him here?”

“No.” Even though we both know it’s exactly the kind of shit he’d pull, Con looks at me like I’m still certifiable. “You realize how much time, not to mention money, I’ve given up for this shit?” he says, like I need a reminder of what’s at stake if I fuck up today. “I’ve got just as much invested in today as you do—so no, I didn’t bring Jack here. Fuck no I didn’t.”

“Then why is he here?” Even as I ask it, I’m mentally running through all the reasons my father would want to talk to me. Looking for money. A place to stay. Someone to give a shit.

If that’s what he’s looking for, he came looking in the wrong fucking place.

“Fuck if I know.” Con reaches up to scrub a rough hand over the back of his neck. “He was here when I rolled up this morning.” Dropping his hand, he gives me a rare, helpless shrug. “I figured he was here for Hen but—”

“Henley?” I don’t know why I feel betrayed but I do. While I haven’t quite worked through all the shit I carry around when it comes to her, my sister and I are on a solid foundation these days. I can feel that foundation start to crumble. “She still talks to him?”

“Not that I know of.” That means no, because Conner knows everything there is to know about Henley. Good, bad and downright ugly, they don’t keep secrets from each other. “Anyway, I told him Hen isn’t here and he said he wasn’t here for her—he was here to see you.”

“No.” I shake my head. A part of re-building myself has been recognizing and acknowledging the things I can’t do. Not what I don’t want to do. Not the things I’m afraid of, but the things I’m not ready for. The things that will stall my progress if I try to tackle them too soon. When too much really is too much. My useless drunk of a father waiting to ambush me in the parking lot is the goddamned definition of too much. “Maybe next week or fuck, even tomorrow—but not today.” I keep shaking my head, my hands clenching themselves into fists. My jaw clenched so tight I can practically hear my teeth crack. “I can’t—”

“So go out the front,” he tells me like he has it all worked out. “I’ll go out back and run interference. Keep him busy until you’re gone.”

“Go out front and what?” I laugh at him because it’s a stupid idea. “Catch a bus? There’s no time for that—”

“You know what,” he says, giving me a grim smile that tightens the back of my neck, right before it shoots down the length of my spine to settle in my groin with a familiar throb that has me looking down to make sure I didn’t just pop a tent in my pants.

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