Page 23 of Saving Grace

“Mack, you haven’t been keeping up with your physio?” Addy’s hands are on her hips. Her face is pulled down with knitted brows, and those big brown eyes that stole my brother’s heart are full of concern.

“I do them enough.”

“Bullshit, Mackinlay, you barely do them.” Grace comes to a stop beside Adds.

Well fuck.Goddamn snitch.

Getting ganged up on by the girls. This is what my miserable existence has come to.

“They just make my body hurt, Adds.” I refuse to look at the little snitch.

“Well, what about something more gentle, like yoga?” the snitch says.

“Not happening.”

Still not lookin’ at her.

“We’ll see if your answer changes in twenty minutes.” Adds narrows her eyes at me.

“Why?” Now my brows sink. “What happens in twenty minutes?”

Addy full-on winks at me. I eye her with the narrowed suspicion she deserves, and she pecks a kiss to my cheek. “Stop being so damn stubborn, or I’ll have to send in reinforcements, Mack.”

Grace snaps her gaze from the two of us and returns to the kitchen as Addy leans in for a hug. A sarcastic laugh slips through my lips, and I shake my head at her. We all know who runs the ship in this family. Our family wouldn’t be the successit is without the matriarch we all love and cherish. So, I grunt and nod. There’s never been a day go by where Ma’s word hasn’t benefited us all.

Addy is Huddo’s captain and Ruby is Reed’s.

You would be hard pressed to find better people than those two girls. I’m grateful for all they have done for my brothers. That kind of happiness is special.

Something smashes to the floor.

I jerk where I sit on the sofa.

Fear snakes through my veins, heating up my skin and swallowing me whole. My breathing crashes and the last of the air in my lungs bottoms out. I grip the crutch with one hand. The other turns to a fist on the sofa beside me.

“Shit,” Grace mutters.

The tinkle of porcelain being swept up fills the space between the ringing in my ears as I sit, too rigid to move. A strangled groan fills my throat.

“Oh, god, Mackinlay.” Grace is in front of me a heartbeat later.

Quick footsteps rush toward the two of us.

“What happened?” Addy’s in my space, hands on my face. She lifts my gaze to hers. “Mack, breathe, buddy.”

Another groan escapes, and I choke on the small amount of air that follows. My body starts to shake. Ruby appears by Grace’s side.

Where the hell did she come from?

Recognition spreads over her pretty features and she’s in motion before I can tell her to stop. A tight hug braces me against whatever triggered the panic that’s rising in my body.

“Tell me what you can hear,” Ruby whispers, rubbing my back with her hand in circles.

“My breathing, ringing in my ears—” I choke on a breath. Dammit, I thought I was past all this trauma bullshit.

“What can you feel?” she continues.

“You wrapped around me, Rubes.”

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