Playing For Her Heart - Megan Erickson Page 0,50

even though she could barely taste it. She’d been so motivated by her conversation with Grant that it had been easier to talk to Ethan than she expected. But now, facing her parents, she was grasping at her waning strength, barely remembering the reason she’d come.

Maybe she wasn’t ready to let go, to give up on fixing her family. So she extended her heart again, hoping her parents didn’t crush it. “Would you want to come visit me?” she asked. “We could go out to dinner…with Ethan.”

Her mother looked at her with the same pale blue eyes she’d given to her son. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

Chloe tried to sound firm, but instead her voice rose in a whine, wobbling on each word. “He’s suffering, Mom. I know he is and maybe if—”

“And we’re not suffering?” her mom asked.

Chloe looked at her mother. Really looked her. Celeste Talley had always been a beautiful woman. Maybe a little regal. And now her hair was streaked with gray. Her face lined, the skin of her neck wrinkled and loose. Her hands—it was always the hands that showed age first—were lined with veins.

Her father, Martin Talley, was the same—wrinkled face, bifocals resting on the tip of his nose as he eyed Chloe from across the table. He walked stiffer now, his back bothering him.

They were good parents, if not a little strict. But they were still their own people. They weren’t perfect and they held grudges. And sometimes those grudges were against their own children.

She wanted to yell at them, to tell them they weren’t following the script. That they should be gathering their remaining children close and cherishing them. That they were slowly killing Ethan. She hadn’t done any of that. She hadn’t told them the truth. She’d tried to shove Ethan at them, force-feed them a new relationship. And that wasn’t working at all. All she was doing was breaking her own heart in the process.

She dropped her fork onto her plate and willed the tears to stay at bay. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her parents in that moment.

The doorbell rang.

Her father frowned and stood up. “I’ll get it.”

Chloe watched her mother, who took a sip of her water, then touched her hair as if to compose herself.

There was the sound of the front door. A murmur of male voices. Then her father poked his head into the kitchen. “Visitor here. For Chloe.”

Chloe frowned. No one knew she was here. No one but Ethan…

“Who is it?” she asked, wiping her mouth and standing up.

“One of Ethan’s friends. But he says he’s here to see you.”

Chloe tripped on the chair leg and had to grab the table to steady herself. Ethan had about two friends. Grant and Austin. And she doubted Austin was here to see her…

When she walked into the living room, Grant was standing with his back to her, peering at the pictures on the fireplace mantel. She stopped abruptly and stared.

She felt like a teenager whose prom date had just shown up.

Except she was wearing a pair of cutoff jean shorts and an oversize T-shirt, he was wearing a pair of cargo shorts, and they’d previously had dirty sex in a nightclub supply closet.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t like the prom-date thing at all.

She stood there frozen as Grant turned around to face her.

Her parents were in the kitchen behind her, talking quietly, which was nice because it gave her a chance to greet Grant without an audience.

It’d only been a couple of days since she’d seen him, but yet seeing his face made her want to leap into his arms. And it kind of hit her like a brick wall how much she wanted to do that as Chloe. Not in any sort of role, but as herself. She wanted to leap to see if he’d catch her.

It’d been Grant who’d called her beautiful and Grant that made her come so hard she saw stars. And it was Grant who’d asked her for more. For a chance to try.

It’d been a long time since she trusted her own instincts, before she allowed herself to do what was in her heart and not worry about everyone else. A minute ago, she’d wanted to cry. But just the sight of Grant was enough to flip her emotions to the other extreme. She didn’t know why he was here, but it didn’t matter because he was.

And in that moment, her instinct was to