Page 51 of Saving You

Oz: I need a shower and some real food. Can you give me an hour?

Grady: As long as you want. Ridge is on an overnight and won’t be home until tomorrow. I’m keeping an eye on Ina for him.

For a moment, Oz was pissed off. Ina deserved to be with a sitter who spoke her language. But then he remembered Grady wasn’t the problem. Or, well, he was part of the problem, but it wasn’t him creating the language barrier.

Oz: Sounds good. See you in a bit.

He went inside and decided to take his time getting ready. He didn’t put too much effort into it since it wasn’t very likely he was going to see Ridge at all. Thanks to Grady, he knew how upside down his schedule could be, and the fact that Ridge had made it work as a single dad at all was impressive.

Still, he did choose a pair of nice sweats—the kind of sweats that Ridge had peeled off him Sunday night. He also chose a comfortable, oversized sweater so he didn’t look like he was trying too hard. He styled his hair and, at the last minute, threw on his processors because he wanted to know exactly what was going on with Grady, and he knew the man wasn’t fluent enough to relay it all.

He didn’t mind hearing after a long day of silence, and after microwaving a frozen burrito, he climbed back into his car and put on his ’90s grunge playlist, bobbing along as he stuffed his face. He did his best not to hope for the worst when it came to his sister, but he was struggling with that.

He didn’t want that to come back and bite him in the ass, but there was no world where she didn’t deserve a kick in theface. So, yeah, maybe he could hope for the worst as long as he promised not to take too much joy from it when her life fell apart.

Oz pulled up in front of Ridge’s place and left the driveway open in case he came home. Which he wouldn’t. Oz had no business hoping for that. He stared at the faint grease stain on the pale pavement for too long though, then shook himself out of it and walked to the door.

It was strange knowing that Grady was there and Ridge wasn’t. That Oz had seen this place time and time again, but without having had Ridge’s come on his body. Without knowing what he tasted like.

He took a deep breath, then rang the bell and watched as the lights behind the little curtain flickered. He couldn’t hear a noise, and he never did ask if there was one.

A beat passed, and then Grady was there, standing aside so Oz could walk in.

“Hey, Ina’s…oh.” He stopped and lifted his hands. ‘INA-sleep.’

Oz waved him off. “I can hear you. It’s fine.”

‘I know, but—’ Grady started.

Oz pinned him with a stare. “I promise that if I say it’s fine, it is. Your signing is still rough, and I want to know what’s going on. So please use your voice.”

Grady bowed his head and took a breath. “Got it. Sorry. I really am trying not to fuck up here, okay? And I know I owe you years’ worth of apologies.”

That much was true. Grady was a good guy, but he had never stood up for Oz, and it was hard to hear that the man supported him when he’d never shown it.

“Let’s sit.” Oz plopped into his usual spot on the couch and kicked the edge of his foot up on the coffee table. “You and Alora are separated?”

Grady dropped into the recliner, perched on the edge. Oz noticed most of the firefighters sat that way. It was different. And hot when Ridge did it. “Looks like it.”

“She kicked you out?”

“I left,” Grady corrected. “She and I got into a big fight after she had Darcy over for dinner last night.”

Oz felt his stomach hit the floor, and he hated himself for being surprised by that. “I see.”

“I didn’t know she was going to be there,” Grady insisted. He sounded desperate, like he was afraid Oz wasn’t going to believe him. “I don’t—uhg, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with her. I don’t know what happened.”

Oz didn’t have a good answer for him. His sister had been better in the past, but he never felt entirely safe with her. “No offense because you do seem like a good guy, but you’ve known her all of your adult life. How did you not know this was coming?”

Grady’s cheeks flushed. “She wasn’t like this before. I mean, shit, the whole reason she agreed to go out with me was because I knew ASL.”

Oz felt like he’d been smacked upside the head. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah!” Grady said, throwing his hands in the air. “I was working at this shitty-ass burger joint near campus, and there was this old Deaf guy who’d come in every Thursday. I’d always serve him because I was the only one who knew how to communicate. She was in there with some friends when she saw me. She told me all about—well—you, and she said she’d never want to marry a guy who didn’t respect her brother.”

Oz felt like the rug had been ripped out from under him. Alora had met Grady before Oz was in college. Before he’d had a single introduction to ASL. “I couldn’t even sign back then,” he said so quietly he couldn’t hear himself.

But Grady picked up on it. He looked stunned. “What?”

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