Page 66 of Safe With Me
Until Elizabeth came home from Southern, anyway.
Lord, we were amess.
“I did online classes and took care of him and the apartment. He was good to me, went to all my OB appointments and was with me when Raley was born.” Gracie lifted both hands, palm up, and sighed over a rueful shrug. “I fell for him.”
That little statement made my heart hurt. Imagine falling for someone who saw you only as a friend, someone you planned to divorce.
“I was miserable because we’d said we’d wait six months after Raley was born and then separate. I loved him–”
Huh. More reason not to fall in love with someone. It damn wellhurtwhen they didn’t feel the same way.
“–and he was acting funny the closer it got. Finally, he came home from a training trip, dropped his bags by the door, glared at me, and said ‘I love you and the baby and I want us to stay together.’”
I melted where I stood, my whole body like a big, soft-centered caramel wanting to puddle on the floor. “Okay, that is the most romantic thing I ever heard.”
For real. My sister’s secret romance was better than a Hallmark movie.
“One of us had to be the brave one. It wasn’t going to be me because I didn’t want to be a burden. I’d had enough of that with Mama and Daddy.”
I knew where she was going with this, but nope. Nuh-uh. I cast a desperate glance through the doorway to the living room, about the time Tate looked up from the screen. He caught me watching him, and a slow grin curved his mouth, affection lighting up his gaze.
Affection.
He liked me. He wanted me. He felt affection for me.
I could live with that. I knew what it was like to want more from the people who were supposed to love you, to want everything and not receive it. I couldn’t ask more of him and then live with not having it.
He winked at me, and I forgot to breathe.
Gracie’s gentle touch on my arm brought my attention back to her. She smiled, love glowing deep in her gaze. “You’ve always been brave, Hannah.”
I swallowed a scoff and forced a smile for her.
Sure.
I was absolutely the farthest thing from brave.
Andy was brave enough to jump out of planes and to go overseas on a deployment. Brave enough to drop everything – his pride and his safety – at Gracie’s feet and ask for her love.
I was so brave I was settling for the safety oflike.
Chapter Nineteen
Tate
Fuck, this party was a dud. For the last five or six years, all I’d heard around town the weekend after Thanksgiving was how great Scott Barlow’s holiday kick-off party was – good music, awesome food, fun people. If this was people’s idea of great, I wondered what bad looked like.
Sure the yard, kinda lit up with trendy string lights and dotted with tall standing tables holding a candle and some greenery, was crowded, but the dull instrumental Christmas music kinda felt like a funeral home. The food tables were full, too, but it was standard, mediocre catered stuff. I could buy those ham pinwheels in the frozen section at Sam’s if I wanted to.
My immediate company was good, though, hot as hell in tight jeans and a pretty, drapey tank-thing with skinny straps and a flowy sweater over it. I couldn’t wait to get her home and strip her down, love all over her.
Maybe.
Because she didn’t act like herself, hadn’t since we’d left that uncomfortable-as-fuck family gathering at Grace’s. Not having Elizabeth around hurt her, still, even after everything Elizabeth had done. I’d hoped being out at this shindig would calm her down, but she was like a cat on a hot tin room – clingy, holding on to my arm, then dropping her hands when she got nervous and jumpy.
It scared the fuck out of me.
I passed her a plastic flute of flat champagne. “What are you worried about?”
