Page 108 of Built to Fall
“Yeah…” I trail off.
Grant says something that shocks me, though: “I’m sorry about your mom, Lina.”
“I thought you said no pitying?” I joke, trying to make light of the brutal situation.
“It’s not pity. I’m being real, pretty girl. You lost someone important to you. Don’t think I don’t recognize that.”
“Does it get better?” That question has been eating away at me, but I never found an appropriate time to ask. “Or easier?”
“Yeah. Before I got this tattoo, I was a wreck every day after my mom died. But then, it was like the storm cleared for a moment, and there was this overwhelming sense of clarity.” He clears his throat. “It only lasted for a moment, but that’s when I decided to get the tattoo. I think once you find some type of meaning in the way you cope, that’s when it gets easier.”
The tears I had been trying so hard to hold back finally breach past the surface. I don’t want to cry. I really don’t.
I see Grant’s hand move off the gear shift and into my lap. He holds my hand for a moment before giving it a gentle squeeze.
“The storm will pass eventually, Lina. You will get your moment of clarity.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LINA
Ihave no clue where we are, and despite having lived in Boston almost my entire life, I still can’t identify the long strip of wooded road that we have been driving on for nearly the entire ride.
“Can you tell me where you’re taking me yet?” I ask.
Grant stays silent for a moment, leaving me with no idea what to expect. Until he says, “Take a look for yourself,” as he turns into what looks to be a giant parking lot, with only a few objects in the distance that I can’t quite make out.
The Mercedes gets closer to the giant thing that looked like a white blob a few moments ago.
My eyes widen. “Is that a plane?” I look over at Grant in shock, and he’s grinning like the village idiot.
He stops the car a ways away from what I confirm to be aprivate fucking jet.Grant gets out of the car, but I feel like a statue.
Looking back at me, Grant crosses his arms over his chest, making his sweatshirtwaymore form-fitting to his biceps than it once was. He tilts his head at me, silently asking why I’m not following him, and the look on his face makes my cheeks heat in a way I can’t explain.
He is dangerously attractive in a way that words cannot do justice—the kind of good-looking that makes everything around him fade. In fact, if I didn’t already have a photographic memory, I would have a Polaroid camera implanted in my brain, just to capture the way he’s looking at meright now.
I don’t want tolikeGrant in the ways my brain is suggesting to me. But he’s making that really hard.
I’ve only known him a couple of months, but in that time, we’ve becomefriends. I’ve been left trying to bury these feelings of attraction ever since.
Yet somehow they always resurface.
It’s the way his presence seems to fill up every space without effort. The way his confidence practically radiates off of him in waves. He doesn’t need to say much to make an impact. Every move he makes—from the way he walks to the way he talks—feels intentional. Like he knows exactly how to keep everyone, including me, on the very edge of his orbit without even trying. And Ihatehow much I like it.
Grant Vandenberg is exactly the kind of guy I should stay away from. But the way he looks at me now, like he’s daring me to take a step closer, makes it feel like that might be impossible.
Eventually, Grant notices my frozen state inside the car and comes to the passenger-side door.
I’m still stuck in my thoughts, though, and for a moment I wonder:Is this Grant’s attempt at seducing me?
He opens it and deadpans, “What am I? Your chauffeur?” before his straight face becomes laced with another cocky grin.
I snap out of my gaze, looking at him as he leans on the open door of the car.
“Youbrought me here. The least you can do is be a gentleman.” I step out and fall into step behind him.
He glances over his shoulder, eyes dragging over me like he already knows he’s won. “Well, with a face like yours, maybe I’m feeling generous.”
