“It was you…?” I whispered.
“Oh my gosh, Grace!” she cried. Her hand landed over her mouth to control her sobbing mess, but still, I watched her fall apart in front of me.
It was her.
Not a random woman, but her.
Her.
Autumn.
The woman who’d been through wars with me.
I hadn’t been able to really get in touch with her lately, and when I had, she’d ended our calls fast, always telling me she’d call me back, yet she never had.
I understood now.
What I didn’t understand was how she could have done this to me.
She’d been in my home. We’d laughed together. She’d told me how amazing Finn and I were as a couple. She’d said she envied us. I’d cooked dinner for her and her ex-boyfriend Erik. When Erik had cheated on her, I’d comforted her, telling her she was better off without him and she’d find someone worthy of her love.
I hadn’t meant my husband.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” she said, still crying.
I felt her tears against my cheeks.
Wait, no…
Those were my own tears. The disbelief of it all shook me to my core. How was this a thing? This couldn’t be a thing. I felt as if I were in a nightmare, unable to open my eyes and wake up safely in my warm bed. Was it all a mirage? Autumn would never do that to me. Finn would never hurt me in that way—at least that was what I’d thought. As it turned out, though, my thoughts were wrong, and their hearts were jaded.
I blinked my eyes, but still, I saw her.
My stare scanned up and down her body, taking in every inch of her. I studied her curves. I studied her tears. She was a beautiful crier. I hated that even when she cried, she looked like a goddess. She looked like everything I hadn’t been in so, so long.
Oh.
That hurts.
“Is he here?” I choked out, standing tall yet feeling as if I were crashing down. She just kept crying. He was there. Those were his tennis shoes. I puffed out my chest. “Finley!” I shouted as I darted through her house.
I knew every inch of Autumn’s home. I knew every corner. When she’d moved in, I’d taken a weekend trip back to Chester just to help her organize it. I checked the closets, the bathroom, the corners, under the beds.
When I opened the pantry door, my heart clenched, and those blue eyes stared straight into mine. My husband was hiding beside the garlic powder and sea salt in an attempt to avoid coming face to face with me.
Shirtless.
“Grace—” he started, but he shut up quickly when I slapped my hand against his face. “Shit!” he hollered.
“Oh my God!” I cried, feeling overwhelmed by betrayal, pain, and sadness. My hands flew over my mouth. “Oh my God, oh my God!”
I was an ugly crier. I could only imagine how hideous I looked in that moment.
I looked nothing like her.
There were so many nights of my life I’d wished I looked like her.
“I’m so sorry.” Autumn sobbed, holding her hands over her heart as she continued to fall apart. “I’m so, so sorry, Grace,” she repeated, and every time she spoke, I thought about dying right then and there.
I pushed past her, rushing out the front door. My vision blurred, my mind jumbling. I couldn’t think straight.
“Grace.” I heard him behind me, and I flinched at the sound of his voice. That voice had once filled me with so much happiness. It was what I had fallen in love with—so smooth, so deep—was now so unbelievably hurtful.
“No,” I said adamantly, watching Finn emerge from inside my personal hell and walk toward me. He wasn’t irritated with me like he had been in Atlanta, but the guilt swam in his eyes. “Don’t talk to me.”
“I just…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t know how to tell you. We didn’t know how to—”
“Autumn, really?!” I cried, shoving my hands against his chest. “My Autumn! You-you-you monster!”
He let me hit him, and that made me angry. I wanted him to fight back. I wanted him to lay his hands on my body instead of delivering blows to my heart. I wanted it to hurt. “You said she meant nothing to you. You said she meant nothing! You slept with my best friend!”
“I know. I mean, we…it’s…”
“I swear to God, Finley, if you say it’s complicated, I will rip your head off your body.” I never swore to God unless I truly meant it.
“I still care about you, Grace. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said.
Slap.
I slapped him again, and again, and again. How could he use those words? How could he say that to me? How could a small corner of my heart somehow stupidly believe him?
“How long?” I asked him.
“Grace…”
“How. Long?”
He lowered his head. “Since I moved back here.”
“Wait…so she wasn’t…” I took a breath. “You cheated on me with someone else before her?”
“Gracelyn—”
“Were there more? More than the two of them?”
He went mute.
Ohmygosh.
“I hate you,” I pushed out. “I hate you. I hate you!” I kept hitting him. My hands slammed into his body repeatedly, and he didn’t even try to stop me because he knew he deserved it.
“I was going to tell you. I just…” He swallowed hard. “After everything we went through—”
“No,” I cried. “You didn’t go through it. You didn’t go through it—I did. I went through it,” I shouted, my hands wrapped around my body. I had no one to hold me, so I was in charge of holding myself. “I went through it all, and y-y-you…” Tears blinded me as I stared at a man I’d once thought was mine. The ache in my chest burned throughout me, and I choked out my final words. “You broke me, Finley. You broke me.”
My chest was on fire, each breath more difficult than the last. He reached toward me, and I ripped my arm away from him. He couldn’t touch me. I was no longer his to hold.
I headed toward town to try to get some air, to try to come to grips with what had just happened, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I’d made a major mistake by walking through downtown Chester. Everywhere I turned, I ran into the familiar face of someone who wanted to talk to me, wanted to ask me questions, wanted to know why my eyes were flooded with tears.
Each person made my heart crack. Each question singed my skin. I wasn’t in the right mindset to deal with anyone or anything.
I can’t breathe…
I began rushing, trying my best to avoid people on the whole. Everyone in town seemed so happy, and that was hard for me. It hurt more than I thought possible to push my way through a space filled with happiness. Everyone was alive, everyone was filled with life, and my insides felt hollow.
Whenever I blinked, I was certain I was seconds away from falling apart.
How was it possible?
How could one be in the middle of a town, surrounded by people who knew you, yet feel so unbelievably alone?
I took a moment to slow down in front of the pizzeria, leaning against the brick wall and trying to inhale, but the air was still hard to take in.
My body was sweaty, and my vision blurry. Whenever I blinked, I saw him with her. Whenever I breathed, the shards of my heart stabbed my soul.
I was seconds away from a mental breakdown, moments away from losing myself when a hand landed on my shoulder and I flipped around, panicking as I made eye contact with Jackson. The palms of my hands were sweaty, and my heart pounded rapidly against my ribcage.
“Hey,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. The concern on his face was heavy, and I was surprised to find that a man like him could be concerned.
I must’ve looked that bad off.
“I-I-I…” I tried to say I was okay, nodding so he wouldn’t worry. “I’m o-okay. I think I’m j-ju-just…” I couldn’t push the words out, so I started waving my hands toward m
e, trying to collect my next breaths, and Jackson shook his head.
“You’re having a panic attack,” he told me.
I nodded once more. “Yes. That.” My hands fell to my chest, and I swore any second I’d be okay. I had to be okay. There had to be a point when the breaking pieces stopped breaking, right?
“Come here,” Jackson said, holding his hand out toward me.
“I’m…I’m f-fine,” I stuttered, but he just shook his head as people walked past us on the street, whispering and staring.
“Princess,” he said, his voice low. He moved his hand closer and gave me the gentlest stare. “Trust me.”
I didn’t. I didn’t know what trust was anymore. The two people who were supposed to always stand by my side had ruined my idea of trust, but…
I needed to breathe.
Just for a moment.
I took Jackson’s hand, and he walked me around the corner to the alleyway. Stepping back against a mural, we leaned against the brick wall. As I began to fall apart, I tried to apologize to him, but my words came out jumbled and incoherent.
“You’re fine,” he said sternly.
I kept huffing and puffing, but nothing was working. As my body was about to hit the concrete, as I was about to surrender to my pain, I was surprised when I melted into Jackson Emery’s arms.
He caught me.
He held me.
He wouldn’t let me fall.
I yanked on his shirt, pulling him closer as I fell apart against him. I wanted to be brave, wanted to end my meltdown, but for a split second, as Jackson held me, it felt okay to have my moment and fall apart. When my sobbing became too intense, when it felt like anxiety and panic would swallow me whole, he held me closer.
“You’re okay,” he soothed, his voice deep and steady. He let me go as I kept trying to regroup. “Hey, come here,” he said, lowering himself to the ground. “Just sit down for a second. Breathe.”
Easier said than done.
I sat down beside him, leaning my back against the mural of our town.
“Good,” he told me. “Now lower your head between your legs and take deep breaths.”
“I-I ca-can’t…”
“Yes, princess, you can. Just slow down. Lower your head and lace your fingers together on the back of your neck. You can do this.”
I did as he said, and every time I tried to apologize, he told me to stop and just breathe.
Slowly but surely, my heartbeats began to return to a normal pace. Slowly but surely, embarrassment filled me as I raised my head and found Jackson’s intense stare on me.
I wiped my eyes and inhaled. “I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Sorry,” I murmured, making him roll his eyes.
“I said stop saying that.”
“Sor—” I started but then caught myself. “Okay.”
He sighed, his face still hard. “Okay.”
I combed my hands through my hair and shook my head back and forth. “You can go, I swear. I’m just a bit of a hot mess, remember? I should probably get going, too,” I said, moving to stand, but he placed his hand on my forearm.
“Just give it a minute. Let your body calm down. Panic attacks take a second to disappear completely.”
“You’ve had panic attacks before?”
He fiddled with his hands and looked down at the ground. “My mother used to suffer from them.” He kept staring down at his hands before saying, “You’ll be fine. Just give it a minute, all right? Take small breaths.”
Take small breaths.
I can do that.
We sat in silence, both staring forward and letting the warm night air touch our skin.
“What’s your story?” I asked, tilting my head toward him, somewhat confused by his entire existence. He was so mean, so dark, but at the same time, he managed to somehow be gentle…
A gentle monster.
“You know my story, remember? You said you know me. Everyone in this place seems to know me,” he replied, almost growling. “I’m the town asshole, and that’s all there is to it.” He stood and then cleared his throat. “Just give it about five more minutes, all right?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He brushed his hands on the back of his neck and shook his head. “Stop talking. Just breathe.”
His hazel eyes locked with mine, and we spent a moment taking one another in. It was as if we truly saw each other for the first time. As I looked into his eyes, I recognized something I saw in my own soul: loneliness.
The way he stared made me think he recognized it, too.
He glanced my way one last time. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown, and somehow, that felt like a small victory.
As he left, I silently thanked him again. After an evening of drowning, the town’s bad seed was the one who’d helped me come up for a small breath of air.
6
Jackson
“I see we’re out and about, making new friends,” Alex remarked as I walked back into the shop with a pizza a while later. I tossed it in the break room then came back out, arching an eyebrow in his direction.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as he stood under the hood of that disgustingly pink automobile.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m working on Grace’s car.”
“I said take it to the scrapyard, not here.”
“Oh? Did you? I must’ve missed that,” he lied. Alex was a great listener; he never missed a word anyone said. “Well, since it’s here…” He smirked at me, and I rolled my eyes, making him laugh. “Come on, man. It could be our newest passion project. We’ve been looking for the perfect new toy to play with.”
I walked around the car, kicking one of the tires. “There’s nothing about this thing that makes me passionate. It’s a piece of shit. It’s seriously a piece of actual shit. If it were an animal’s shit, it would be a monkey’s. If it were a person’s shit, it would be yours. It’s the worst piece of shit that ever existed.”
“Hmm…” Alex whistled low. “I’m glad to see you’ve been working on watching your language, and really? You think monkey shit is worse than hippo shit?”
“Well, I guess it depends on the size of the monkey.”
“No, Jackson”—he shook his head—“it doesn’t.”
“I’m serious, man. Get this out of the shop.”
“Listen, kiddo, you know I love you like you’re my own son, but I think it’s childish that you are refusing a perfectly good learning experience on this pink hot mama because of the hate you have for the family it belongs to.”
“That family is nothing but shit,” I barked. “You should hate them, too.”
“Yes, sure, of course. But this”—Alex hugged the car—“this is a precious baby. It didn’t choose its family. It had no say in who owned it. It’s just sitting in our shop, looking for a little love. Can’t we give it a little love, Jack-Jack?”
He gave me his best puppy-dog eyes, and he knew how much I hated when he did that.
Alex was my uncle, my mother’s older brother, and he’d moved to Chester a few years back when Dad wasn’t in any shape to take care of the shop or me. He was pretty much the only person in the whole town I gave a damn about.
We were close, at least as close as I allowed people to get, which wasn’t saying too much.
His body was coated in tattoos, and if you found a spot that wasn’t, he’d be quick to fix that issue. He spent all his free time working at a tattoo parlor right outside of town. He had dark black and gray hair that he always combed back and piercings all over. If you passed him on the street, you might jump out of your skin in fear until he started talking to you about the latest avocado mask he’d discovered.
He was one of the most positive people in the world, and I was the complete opposite. But, at the same time, our connection made sense—we balanced each other out.
“My dad’s going to throw a fit if he finds out a Harris’s car is in his shop,” I warne
d. If anyone hated the church more than I did, it was my father.
“He won’t even know,” Alex said, shaking his head back and forth. “I promise I’ll keep our dirty little secret.”
“Your dirty secret. I’m not working on that car. I want nothing to do with it or that family.” The only reason I agreed to let the car stay was because I knew he wouldn’t give it up until he got his way. “But just to be clear, I’m not happy about this.”
“Just to be clear, you’re never happy, so I’ll take that as a good thing. Anyway, I know you and your pops got your issues with that family, but I liked her.”
“You like everyone,” I remarked.
“Yeah, but you gotta admit, she was beautiful in a way—even with the puffy eyes.”
He wasn’t wrong; Grace Harris was beautiful. She had long blond hair and wide blue doe eyes that were filled with fear and wonderment all at once. I’d have been lying if I’d said I hadn’t noticed that her curves fell in all the right places, but that wasn’t shocking. All the Harris females were easy on the eyes. They walked and talked as properly as a Southern belle could—except for Grace when she was falling apart. For the most part, they stood for beauty, charm, and elegance—on the outside, at least. On the inside, they had the ugliest souls, and I wanted nothing to do with them or their piece-of-shit cars.
I still wasn’t sure why I’d stopped to help her in front of the pizza place.
It made no sense whatsoever except for the fact that her breakdown reminded me of my mother.
“Hey, Jack-Jack?” Alex called out, and this time when I looked over at him, I saw the worry in his eyes. It was the same worried look he always gave me when he thought I would fall overboard. “How are you doing? Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. That was what I always said when Alex asked me that question.
Even after I overdosed and almost lost my life over a year ago, I replied in the same fashion. I’m fine.
I was always fine, even when I wasn’t.
“All right. Well, hey, if you don’t want this car to be your new project, you should still find yourself a hobby or something to keep your head on straight. You still doing art and stuff? Maybe you should pick that up again. Are you dating? Maybe go out on some dates, or hell, knit a sweater—anything, really.”