and Karen, and her grandchildren, Dina, Sarah, Kari, Carl, and Chadwick.”
At the realization of who the sweet older woman was on my journey from New York—Chadwick’s grandmother—I end the phone call. He’d told me once he wasn’t close to his family—only his grandma on his father’s side. “Kira?” I call out. “Kira?” I yell louder.
Kira comes running out with Jared on her heels. “What? Are you okay?” Kira asks.
They haven’t turned to the television yet, and their stares are still on me. “It’s not me. It’s Jo.” It’s all I say when they spin around.
I point at the television, Jared closing the space between him and me. His eyes fall on the screen, and his face whitens. “Ah, shit,” he says, pulling out his phone. I have no idea how he has it in just a pair of boxers, but he’s pushing numbers like crazy. “Gio, where’s Chad?”
“Fuck, yeah, I’ll have a car waiting for you.” He runs back into Kira’s room as I run to mine. I meet him back in the foyer, and his face sours. “What are you doing, Eve?”
“I’m going with you. I want to be there for Chadwick.” I’m standing by him, not halted by his actions, the glower growing on his face.
He turns his head back to Kira, and she shrugs her shoulders. “No offense, Eve, but I spoke to him yesterday. I’ve never heard him more broken than when he came back to his room to find your Dear John letter. I know your father did a number on you, and you don’t want to be controlled. He was willing to give so much up for you. He wanted you as a partner, but he’d never had the chance to get it out. I’m not sure if you know this, but his grams was everything to him. He had a piece of shit for a dad and a useless mom. They were always chasing the next big thing, and because they had the money, they left Chadwick to us, to the servants’ families. He doesn’t trust, so he has the two worst losses back to back. I can’t let you see him.” He leaves without another word, and I fall to my knees because his grandmother’s advice, I understand she was wise beyond her years and fucking right. I can’t see myself without him as my future.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chadwick
She wasn’t young, not for a while, but I never looked at Grams any other way than youthful at heart. The woman could make me more mad than any woman I’d ever known in my life, well before Eve, that is. And now with the reflections of the only other woman I’d ever loved, besides my kitten, the memories of my grandmother bring both tears to my eyes and a smile to my face.
Gio tried to fly back to Chicago with me, but I didn’t need an escort. Maybe a couple of hours in the air would get my mind wrapped around losing the two women I loved in only twenty-four hours.
I both hated and loved summers at Grams’ horse farm. I had the love I never got from my own parents—poor excuses for a mother and father—but I missed my boys during the summers. One day at the age of thirteen, Grams caught me smoking in the hay loft. Yeah, Jared got me hooked on that a couple of months before, and all Grams said to me was, “I hate that you’re smoking out here alone.” She picked up a cigarette, and we shared my last smoke ever together.
“Tell me what’s got you so glum, bud.” It was her name for me. She never called Carl or any of my girl cousins this. I was her favorite, it was as obvious as the hay in the barn.
“I love it here, Grams, but I miss the guys.” She didn’t need me to explain who the guys were. She was so involved in my life that she knew their names and sent them birthday cards each year with a hundred-dollar bill in them. For the boys whose families lived hand to mouth, it gave them the most joy. And when they were happy, I was, too.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, why don’t we go out for the day, just you and me?” My grandmother took me down to the Navy Pier to my favorite burger place in the city. It was then I knew I wanted to live in Chicago. I could never move from my beloved