Page 76 of Good Graces

“I knew you wouldn’t forgive me. You never even gave me a real chance to explain myself.”

“Explain what?” His head snaps toward me, voice sharp. “That you stole from my family and then lied to me about it?”

“I know what I did,” I say. “I’m not excusing it.”

He exhales hard, dragging a hand down his face. “I texted you. Once. I wanted to know why, Quinn. I needed to know why. And when you didn’t answer, I just . . .”

“You just gave up.”

His gaze hardens. “I didn’t give up. I got the message. You weren’t gonna say a damn thing. What was I supposed to do? Chase you down? Beg you to make it make sense?”

“Maybe!” My voice breaks. “Maybe you were supposed to give me more than one text. Maybe you were supposed to try.”

“I did try,” Warren snaps. “I spent weeks trying to make sense of it. Trying to believe it wasn’t what it looked like. I thought maybe you took it for Wesley—maybe you were desperate, or scared, or something. But no.” He lets out a cold laugh. “It wasn’t for your brother. It was just you being selfish.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” He stares at me, like he’s daring me to argue. “Because I trusted you. I let you in. I let myself believe that you were—” He breaks off, dragging a hand through his hair. “I thought you were different.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Then why?” His voice cracks, raw and open in a way that makes my chest ache.

I take a breath. It shakes on the way in. “There was this submission fee,” I say. “For a writing contest. A big one. The kind that could’ve actually led to something.”

His face goes blank, like the words don’t make sense to him. “A writing contest.”

“I know how it sounds,” I say quickly. “I know it was silly and selfish and—and ridiculous. But I’d been eyeing it for months. I didn’t have the money, and I knew I couldn’t ask my parents.”

It wasn’t some astronomical amount, just out of reach. And I knew—really knew—that if I asked my parents, they would look at me like I was being impractical. Not because they were cruel but because they wouldn’t see it as important. Not compared to Wesley’s medical appointments, his therapy, his tutoring.

Dad might’ve tried to make it work, but they wouldn’t have understood. It would have just been another thing for them to worry about, another dollar they didn’t have to spare.

And I got that. I really did.

“So, you stole from me.”

“FromDaniel,” I correct quietly. “I didn’t plan it. It just . . . it just happened. You made some joke—something careless about how he wouldn’t even notice the money missing, and I thought—”

“And you thought what?” His voice sharpens, rising with disbelief. “That it wouldn’t matter? That when I covered for you like you knew I would, he’d still look at me the same? Because guess what, Quinn—he didn’t.”

I flinch. “I know.”

“No, you don’t,” he says, and this time, it’s a low burn. “You don’t know what it took for me to convince my mom I wasn’t just like my dad. You don’t know what it felt like to have my stepfather look at me like I was some lying, thieving screwup, too.”

I stare down at my lap, my fingers knotting in the fabric of my jeans. “I didn’t know,” I whisper. “I didn’t know it would fall on you like that.”

“You didn’t think,” he says flatly. “You didn’t think about me at all.”

“That’s not true,” I say, too fast, too sharp. “I thought about you constantly. About how you probably hated me. How you’d never want to see me again. How I’d ruined the one good thing I had, and there was no way to fix it.”

“You could have tried. You could have explained, or apologized, or—something. But instead, you just disappeared. You didn’t even give me the chance to understand.”

“I thought you wouldn’t forgive me, anyway,” I say. “I thought—”

“You thought it’d be easier if I really did hate you.”

I press my fingers hard against my temples, trying to push back the burn rising behind my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to lose you. But I didn’t know how to keep you, either.”

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