Page 142 of Built to Fall
I think he’s expecting me to sit next to him, but standing between his legs makes the need to be as close as I can get to him overwhelm me.
So I end up straddling his lap in a much more compromising position than I mean for it to be. Grant’s hands find my hips, but they don’t do anything to will me closer. All he does is rest his forehead against my collarbone for a long moment before looking back up at me.
“You talked to Sav?” he asks.
“Yeah. I think we’re friends now.”
“Yeah?” He doesn’t look shocked, but there’s amusement in his voice.
I nod.
“Sav’s a good friend to have,” he tells me, sounding sincere.
Her words ring through my head: “I’m an exceptional friend, Everhart.”
“Well,Iwon’t be having sex with her.” I mean it as a joke, but when Grant stiffens completely beneath me, I sense my mistake. “I was only kidding.”
I watch his Adam’s apple work as he swallows, nodding like he’s coming to terms with it. “I know, I know.”
There’s a beat of silence, and I hesitate to ask him what’s been on my mind all week. “Will you tell me what happened to your mom?”
His head snaps up, clearly not expecting it, like I just pushed open a door he usually keeps locked.
“I just—” I take a long breath, thinking of the proper way to say what I want to say. “I’m not trying to intrude, but I’ve gotten the sense that your fear of commitment has something to do with her. That’s all.”
I want to make sense ofwhy. Why he doesn’t do anything other than hookups. Why he hasn’t offered me anything more, even when Savannah is telling me he feels it. Why he’s making it so damn difficult for me to allow myself towantsomeone in the way I want him.
My entire life has revolved around facts. The only thing I’ve ever wanted with the same intensity that I want Grant is knowledge—to learn.
And he’s what I want to understand most. What I want to understandbest.
Very quietly he says, “She had a drug addiction.”
“Oh…” My eyes blow wide, stunned. “Is that how she?—”
“Yeah.”
My mind reels with all the ways I should have known. How, when I mentioned girls doing lines of coke on his front porch, he told me he doesn’t mess with people who do drugs. Or the time he grilled me about whether I was taking drugs for my sleep issues.
Grant exhales hard, like the words themselves weigh a thousand pounds.
“She overdosed when I was seventeen,” he says quietly, like if he says it too loud it might tear him apart. “I found her.”
My heart splinters. Without thinking, I thread my fingers through his hair, anchoring him to me the way he’s done for me countless times.
“I’m so sorry, Grant,” I whisper.
He leans into my touch, his eyes closing for a moment, giving himself permission to justfeel.
“She wasn’t a bad person,” he says hoarsely. “She loved me and my sisters so much. She just… she couldn’t beat it. And part of me—" His voice catches, breaking. “Part of me knows how much it fucked me up—finding her like that and having to see my dad break down. My sisters having to live the rest of their lives without the most important figure in their lives…”
Tears burn the back of my throat as I lean in, not wanting him to see me cry when this isn’t even about me.
“For her, her addiction was just a bump in the road.” His voice croaks with the emotions he’s trying to conceal, and itbreaksmy heart. “But for me, her addiction became the reason I no longer had a mother.”
“It’s made me paranoid to the point where I’m terrified of finding stability in people. Because what if they’re not really stable? What if I can’t keep them from falling off the deep end? I can’t…” He scrubs a hand over his face, his voice breaking. “I can’t survive getting it wrong again. Loving someone and letting them slip through my fingers.”
That’s when I feel it: the tear that lands on my hand that’s gripping his jaw. I meet his eyes to find tears rolling from them, drenching his cheeks.
