Touching Down(10)

“After my dad died, I arranged to get rid of everything of his. From his boots to his truck. I didn’t want any of it.” Grant shrugged. “Then I realized this truck was the one good memory I had of my old man. The one time he’d tried to do something constructive with me. The one time he’d been interested in bonding with his son instead of alienating him.”

My teeth sank into my lower lip. “You chose to hang on to the good.”

He considered that for a moment before nodding. “I guess I did.”

After he closed the door behind me, I wondered if he’d adopted that policy in other areas of his life. If he had, it would make everything easier.

“You don’t drive this back and forth to New York, do you?” I asked.

“I store it here so I have something to get around in whenever I come back.” As he slid into driver’s seat, he glanced at where I sat on the other end of the bench. “Buckle up.”

I pulled the belt over me and buckled it into place. “Still trying to keep me safe.”

I’d said it teasingly, but it was clear from his expression that my safety wasn’t anything he took lightly. “Old habits.”

“Die hard?” I filled in as he fired on the engine.

His hands curled around the steering wheel. “Die never.”

As Grant pulled away from the curb and set us on the road that would take us out of The Clink, I settled into the seat and took a moment to admire him while his attention was focused on the road.

He looked the same. Older, but the same. Same short brown hair, same dark eyes that could say everything or give away nothing depending on the situation. Even the way he sat stretched out behind the steering wheel was the same. Grant had always been big for his age, never quite fitting into anything, so whenever he was somewhere with space, he stretched out as wide as he could, like he was trying to make up for all of the times his knees had been crammed into the seat in front of him.

He’d gotten bigger since I’d seen him last, but I supposed that was a side effect of playing in the pros. He had a body made for work and power, a body a woman couldn’t help admiring and considering the possibilities that came with it. Grant’s body had been the talk of the female population wherever he roamed, but it was his face I’d grown to appreciate more. The face that was an afterthought to others was the highlight to me.

His face would never walk runways or drop mouths—his nose had been broken too many times, his jaw was too square, his eyes too wide-set. He was more boy-next-door than male model. But when I looked at Grant’s face, I saw beauty and happiness and safety. Looking at him had always felt like home, and this time was no different.

Grant had been my safe place in a world of darkness. As outlandish as it was, he still felt like one of those safe places.

He caught me staring at him, so I angled forward in my seat and focused out the window. “Did you hear about my mom?”

His head bobbed. “Yeah, I was at her funeral.”

My brows pulled together. “She didn’t have a funeral.” There hadn’t been money for one, not to mention a lack of people who’d actually show up to mourn her passing.

“Actually, there was.” Grant shifted in his seat. “It was just a small one. Nothing big.”

I exhaled sharply. A year later, and I still couldn’t think about my mom without getting pissed. So much for letting the dead rest in peace. “Who paid for that?”

When he took a moment to speak, I knew the answer before he said it. “I did.” One of his shoulders lifted. “We would have invited you, if anyone knew where you were. Which nobody did.”

There was enough accusation in his voice to be detected. Not too much, but just enough.

“I can’t believe you actually spent money to give that woman a funeral.” My pulse picked up, my stomach twisting just thinking about the woman who’d birthed me. “You despised her even more than I did, and I was the one she gave a boy’s name to since she didn’t figure out I was a girl until I was a month old. I was the one she made sleep on the floor on top of newspapers for a week after I wet the bed because I’d heard her getting the shit beat out of her by a drug dealer she was in the hole with. I was the one she slapped instead of hugged, the one she forgot about for days when she was on a serious bender, the one she kicked out when she caught me making out with you and accused me of being a whore . . . by a woman who exchanged sex for drugs.” The floodgates had opened, and I couldn’t seem to stop my words now that they’d started.

Beside me, Grant didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even flinch as I grew louder.