Page 104 of Grace on the Rocks

“Almost fifteen,” she said again, and that’s when he realized.Herquinceañera.Thiswas the reason she’d cancelled.

“I’m so?—”

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”

Bryan frowned. “Ifyou want me to kill them,Iwill.Eventhe nun.”

She laughed, and then her face clouded once more, and she shook her head. “You’vedone an incredible job with the house,MacNeil,” she said, tossing the dress in her suitcase and zipping it closed with such a sense of finality. “Yourinvestor’s going to fall in love with it as much asIhave.Thewhole town will, the minute you let them in.Ifyou need help writing your speech or anything, let me know.Otherwise,I’llsee you around.”

“You don’t have to,” he said, reaching for her hand.

She cupped his face, running her thumb tenderly over his cheek, and he almost melted into the touch. “IthinkIdo.Goinghome was always going to hurt.Maybeit’s time.I’llbe here for the big reveal.”

And like the breath of fresh air that had blown onto the island with her, she left in the same unexpected way she’d come, and he stood there and let her go, still clutching her t-shirt like a lifeline.

Bryan watched through the bedroom window as she hurried down the walk, where a group of neighbors had gathered in front of his garden holding signs that saidNotOnOurBeachandElderlyCitizensforElderlyHomesandNoChangeMeansNo, and when the hell had they started picketing him?

They parted to letGracepass as though expecting her to yell at them, and she looked like she wanted to, but she shook her head and kept going, soBryanyanked the curtains closed and climbed into bed to lick his wounds alone.

ChapterTwenty-Seven

Wes rubbedGrace’sback as she cried snotty tears into a lumpy hotel pillow.

“Explain it to me again.”

“I lost everything.”

“Everything meaning…?”

“Three days’ worth of everything,”Graceamended feeling maybe a little melodramatic.

“Ah, back to the book.It’sa crushing blow,Gray, but you wrote it once.Youcan write it again.”

“You clearly don’t understand,”Gracegrumbled, althoughWesunderstood better than she’d like.

“I don’t understand the part where he renovated an entire bathroom in his own house so that you, who will be leaving in a week, could take a bubble bath and you?—”

Grace groaned. “Ithink maybeIoverreacted.”

“Do you think so?”Wesasked, and only she could manage to sound sincere when they both knew she was being sarcastic.

“I told himIcan’t orgasm,”Graceadmitted in a tiny voice. “Ithought he was taking it as a challenge, andIhad this visceral sort of… panic attack.”

Wes brushedGrace’shair out of her face. “Youmean you can’t reach theOwithPinV?” she asked sympathetically.

God, this was humiliating.Therewas a reasonGracehad never told anyone, including her closest friends. “Imean at all.”

“At all with a man?”Wesrepeated, her voice so gentle you almost couldn’t hear the confusion.

Why was this such a hard thing for people to grasp?Theymust think she was a total freak. “Imean at all,” she said again.

“Well, no wonder your relationships crash and burn,Gray.Howcan you tell them what you like if you don’t have a clue yourself?” she asked, reducing more than a decade of frustration to something so simple it stunnedGraceinto silence.

It made her mad, but it also made a sort of sense, which was doubly infuriating.

“Is it a purity-culture-in-your-head thing because you’re not married?Ormore of a physical vaginismus-type thing?”

“I don’t… know what that means,”Graceadmitted.

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