foot of his bed, while socks and underwear were scattered across the comforter. They’d even looked through his bathroom: toothpaste tubes and his toothbrush and razor and aftershave all dumped into the sink, some of it leaking down the drain. He tightened the cap on a few items.
Sitting back down on the couch, he heard a vague buzzing in his ears. His house didn’t seem like his house anymore. He took out his phone—thanking God they hadn’t taken that, too—and texted Grace before he realized what he was even doing.
Where are you?
He waited. Then the reply: I’m at Joy’s. I couldn’t stay at home right now. Why?
He didn’t really want to be around Joy right now, but where else could he go? He could get a room at the one inn in Heron’s Landing, but he didn’t want to alert the entire town that something was wrong. He couldn’t stay at Adam’s, either.
Can I come by tonight? I can’t stay here at home.
His phone rang, and picking it up, he heard Grace ask, “Jaime, what happened? Are you all right?”
“I can’t explain right now. Would Joy mind if I came by?”
Silence, before Grace said in a soft voice, “She’s not here. She’s with Adam. She said I could stay here tonight, though.”
“I’ll be there in a bit.”
Parking in front of Mike’s general store, he took the back stairs up to the apartments. He’d never been to Joy’s, but everyone pretty much knew where everyone else lived in a small town like this. He realized, though, that he didn’t know the apartment number. Staring down the hallway, he was about to call for Grace when a door at the end of the hall opened.
Grace came out, her face drawn, wearing yoga pants and a fuzzy sweater.
His heart clenched in his chest. He walked down the hallway and before either of them said a word, he took her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he hugged her so hard he knew he was probably making it hard for her to breathe. But she didn’t protest. She just said his name, over and over again, touching his back and his hair and his face.
He walked her backward into the apartment, kicking the door shut behind them. His hands roved down her back and grabbed her ass, his mouth trailing kisses across her cheeks, her nose, down her pale throat. He’d never experienced anything this intense, this desperate. It was like they couldn’t stop touching each other. He never wanted to let her go.
“Kiss me, Jaime. Kiss me,” she breathed, and he wondered why he’d been waiting to kiss her. Maybe because it meant making this real, realer than it had been up until this point. Maybe because once he kissed her he’d never, ever stop, and that thrilled him as much as it scared him.
“God, Graciela.” He kissed her, and she tasted so sweet and so much like home that it was almost unbearable. She made little noises in the back of her throat as they kissed. He kissed her until he’d pushed her up against a wall, unzipping her jacket-sweater-thing and pulling it off of her, needing to feel her skin. She wore a t-shirt underneath, and he stroked her waist through the thin cotton.
“Are we going to do this?” he asked, because he had to know. He had to make sure she wanted this, because he knew he’d reached his limit.
Grace gazed at him, her eyes wide and shining. The moment slowed as she stroked his cheek, her fingers soft and light. She smelled like flowers and innocence. She seemed like she needed to see something in him, needed to ascertain some quality that he couldn’t begin to comprehend, and he let her. He waited. He’d wait eternity for her, he realized.
“I love you,” she said, a slight flush brushing across her freckled cheeks. “I’ve loved you for years. Did you know that?”
He had known. He hadn’t want to acknowledge that he’d known, and he’d initially dismissed it as a young girl’s crush. But gazing into her eyes, seeing the love shining on her face, all he could feel now was humility at someone like her loving someone like him. He didn’t deserve it. It almost sent him to his knees.
He almost blurted something stupid—thank you or even worse, I know, like Han Solo—so instead, he pressed his forehead to hers, trying to catch his breath.
When the words came, he hadn’t known they were even in