Page 43 of Giving Grace

A dance.

I think about it. His arms around me. My cheek pressed to his shoulder. His hand resting on the small of my back…

This is the most important day of my sister’s life and here I am, obsessing over the fact that some guy wants to dance with me for the last hour and a half, heart pounding in my chest because I’m going to see him again. It’s like I’m fourteen again, for Christ sake.

But it’s not just some guy.

It’s Ryan and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since he showed up on our doorstep, Friday morning.

Now every time I close my eyes, I can see him. I can feel his hands on me. Feel him moving inside me. His harsh, uneven breath against my—

“Kathrine Grace.”

My mom’s voice snaps out at me and I jerk my head up, face flushed, to find her standing a few feet away from me, hands on her hips, a look of pure exasperation on her face. The past three days have been a chore, if I’m being honest. Between her power trip over Molly needing a haircut (Molly, Gran’s going to take you for a haircut while she’s here—how would you like that?) and her passive-aggressive remarks about the fact that I’m working in Patrick’s bar (you didn’t have to drag Molly away from the only home she’s ever known to work in a bar, Kathrine Grace) I’ve been ready to crawl under a rock since I picked them up from the airport. Thankfully, due to my father’s schedule at the factory, they’ll be flying home tomorrow.

“I’m sorry, I –” I look over her shoulder to find Cari standing in the middle of the bedroom and I let out a soft gasp at how beautiful she looks.

“How do I look?” she asks, giving me a slow turn so I can see the dress from every angle. “Do you think Patrick will like it?”

I leave my mom where she’s standing, skirting around, her to cross the room so I can get a better look at my sister. “I think…” The dress fits her perfectly, the deep V of its simple, halter-style bodice hugging the swell of her breasts and the curves of her torso before flaring slightly into a full, floor-length skirt. “I think Anton is a fucking genius,” I say, earning myself another exasperated sigh from my mother. I don’t care and to prove it, I double down on the F-bombs. “And I think Patrick is going to lose his fucking mind when he sees you.”

“Now you’re just trying to upset me,” my mother says, pushing past me to fuss over Cari’s hair. I make a face behind her back and Cari snorts, pressing her hand to her mouth in an effort to keep herself from laughing out loud. “I saw that,” Mom says, a hint of her old self laced between her words. Things have been strained between us since I packed up Molly and moved here from Ohio. We haven’t seen each other since she basically told me I was making a mistake in coming here and that by doing so, I was going to ruin Molly’s life. I think she was hoping to come back here to find me failing so she would feel vindicated somehow. Convince me to come back home.

She never expected to find us thriving. Molly loves her new school. She has friends. A family who loves her—and the same can be said for me. It’s hard. My life is nuts—between working at the bar and my school schedule, I barely have time to feed Molly dinner before I have to either rush downstairs for a shift or sit down to tackle the mountain of homework I seem to always be behind on. The program I’m in is intense. Competitive. Only the top three percent of its graduates will be given the opportunity to move on to join their nursing program.

Without Mary Gilroy’s help with Molly, picking her up from school and keeping her until I can pick her up after class, I have serious doubts I’d be able to keep up, especially since I have every intention of moving out of Patrick and Cari’s place before they come home from their honeymoon.

“The veil?” My mom says to me, still fussing with Cari’s hair. When I don’t answer her, she stops what she’s doing to look at me. “Please tell me you didn’t—” She’s cut off by a brisk knock on the closed bedroom door.

Please be Ryan.

Please be Ryan.

Please be Ryan.

“I’ll get it,” I say, shooting past her when she turns toward the door, intent on answering it. Before either of us can get there, the door opens just a crack, creating just enough space for Ryan’s wide shoulder.

“Is it safe to come in?”

“Yes,” Cari answers him before either our mother or I can get a word out. “You can come in, Ryan.”

“Are you sure…” He eases himself into the room slowly, hand still on the doorknob, gaze averted, like he isn’t sure if he’s supposed to look or not. “I don’t want to interrupt anything.”

“You’re not interrupting,” Cari tells him, rushing forward to pull him the rest of the way through the door before shutting it behind him. “Actually, we could use a male point of view.” Dropping her hand away from his arm, she takes a step back and lifts her layers of long, lace skirts to give him the same kind of twirl she just gave me. “What do you think?”

Five months ago, Ryan would’ve given her one of his flat, uncomfortable smiles and grumbled you look nice. Hell, he might’ve even walked away without even answering her. Now, the grin he gives her genuine, the flash of teeth lighting up his entire face. “I think Cap’n’s gonna shit when he sees you.”

While the rest of us laugh, my mother gives the lot of us the same exasperated sigh she’s been passing around all morning. “I certainly hope you don’t talk like that in front of my granddaughter,” she huffs like she isn’t married to an ex-marine whose every other word is a curse.

“I can’t afford to, ma’am,” Ryan says with a smirk that has Cari snorting into her hand again. “Anyway,” he says, his arm coming up to bring the box I left on the washing room into view. “I just got here and happened to see this in the back seat of Grace’s car and it looked important so…” He flicks a quick look in my direction and a whisper of the old Ryan comes back, the smile on his face dimming just a bit. “I—uhhh…here.” He takes a step in my direction and pushed the box into my hands. “I’ll let you ladies get back to… whatever it was you were doing,” he says, turning toward the door. “You really do look beautiful, Cari.” He gives her one last smile before making his escape.

Before I can think about what I’m doing, I turn to look at my mother, just long enough to shove the box Ryan gave me into her hands before I follow him out the door.

“Ryan,” I call after him quietly, the sound of my voice behind him pulling him to a quick stop.

Turning around to look at me, he looks worried, like maybe he missed a step. Forgot to do or say something important. “That was it, right?” His brow collapses into a frown as he watches me move down the hall. “You said the washer. That’s the only box—”

“No—I mean yes. That was it, I just…” Still not sure what I’m going to say to him, I close the space between us. “I just wanted to thank you.” I wave a nervous hand behind me and roll my eyes. “My mom’s been waiting for me to screw up since she got here and—” I let me arm drop with a sigh because the last thing I need to do is start unpacking my personal family issues in front of him, thirty minutes before my sister’s wedding. “Thank you.”

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