Chapter Twenty-One

Garrett

The sale of his brother’s house happened a lot faster than Marc had expected. Being on set, he’d asked Garrett to oversee the movers, so there he was. Back at the big house, a knot in his throat. He was tired and sweaty, but the work had helped distract himself from everything swirling in his head.

But they’d finished everything a couple of hours ago, and he was sitting in his favorite chair, staring at the pool and wishing he could go back in time. He was still going over the contract he should have signed three days ago.

“I worried about you,” the distinct voice spoke, and he turned around to see his grandmother walk toward him. With her long white hair in a braid over her shoulder, her billowy, bright-colored dress stood out against the landscaping behind her.

“I’m fine.” He shrugged as she sat beside him.

“Are you?” she asked inquisitively. The woman had a talent of sniffing out the truth. Too bad for her. He had the same talent of avoiding shit.

“Yup.” He took the last swig of the now warm water he wished was something stronger. Like whiskey. But he hadn’t had a drink. He’d been tempted, but he hadn’t done it. “Nic—”

“I worried about you when you were gone,” she shared, her usually strong and steady voice giving way to the deep emotion she was obviously feeling.

“Nic—”

“Overseas,” she clarified. He brought up his body and turned to look at her.

“Nic—”

“Grandma.” She squeezed his hand and coughed. “I’m Grandma.”

“Grandma—”

“I’m glad you are okay,” she whispered and sniffled, looking away from him, her chin high as she stared out to the water in front of them. “She helped.” His back went ramrod straight. “But you were already on your way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice sounded rough, and all he could think about was that ‘he doth protest too much’ quote.

“You don’t?” She turned her face and met his gaze head on. “Really, boy?” Her smirk told him more than he needed to know.

“I…” He shook his head. “She’s…”

“She must be something else for you to go back to this shit.” She tapped the contract with unmasked disgust.

“What?” His brow quirked up, and he moved his body in the chair.

“Come on, boy. I’m old, but I’m not dead.”

“I don’t understand what you think you know.”

“I know plenty. But you know I’m not one to talk in circles. It makes me dizzy, so it’s time to lay down some truth.”

“Grand—”

“The truth hurts, and this is going to, well… sting.” She sighed as her weathered hand covered his. “But like I used to tell you boys when you were little, it’s better to rip the Band-Aid off fast. I gotta tell you, honey, I saw the worst of you.” He closed his eyes because she wasn’t lying. “I saw your rock bottom.”

He opened his eyes, and she glanced at him with unshed tears in her wise eyes. “I saw how misplaced you were feeling. I saw the way you didn’t like who you were. How you thought you didn’t fit with us anymore. How lost you were. And I worried.”

“I was fine—”

“Don’t lie to me, Garrett.” She called him on his bullshit like she always did, and he swallowed hard trying to clear away the emotions that were bubbling up. “I was scared for you.” The raw honesty in her voice did something in him. It tightened the knot in his own throat.

“Grandma—” He lifted his hand. She shook her head, her eyes steady even if slightly bleary, and he couldn’t utter another word. His grandmother was a strong woman who hardly ever let anything get to her.

“My age, I’ve seen a lot. I saw the aftermath of more than one war, Garrett.” Her steady voice carried, and he was entranced by her words. “Men who were important to me left and returned.” She looked away, her thoughts lost in her own memories. “They came back changed. One, one very important man…not your grandpa, but before him… Andrew… he never found his way back.”

“Shit,” he muttered, unable to look away. The storm playing behind her eyes was so bright he knew she was reliving the past in her head.

“I was the one who found him after he lost his battle with the demons of war.”

“Grandma—”

“That day at the ranch. Seeing that version of you, hearing you talk to a girl like Grace the way you did. Talk about your brother, your blood, like that. I was worried you were so lost you wouldn’t find your way back.”

“I’m here,” he stressed, and her eyes softened.

“And I can’t tell you how thankful I am you are. My beautiful boy. But like I was saying, you were on your way. After that ugly business at the ranch, you started to get help.” She squeezed his hand, and for being a tiny old lady the strength she held was remarkable. “You were on your way already before you met her.”

“Stefanie and I broke up. It’s done,” he gritted, but he couldn’t ignore the debilitating pain he felt saying it out loud. It was so damn final.

No more sunshine.

Just dark skies.

“Do you really believe that?”

“Nic—” He groaned, running his fingers through his hair. “It’s complicated.”

It wasn’t. He was just a coward.

“Are you going to deny this old woman the truth?”

“No.”

“I bet money she didn’t let you have the last word.” He chuckled.

“Jesus, how do you know these things?”

“You’re don’t get to my age without going around the block a couple of times and observing people,” she shared before her face softened. “I liked her,” she admitted. “I liked her a lot.”

“You could have fooled me with how quiet you were.”

“I was… Can I be completely honest, honey?”

“When haven’t you been?” Her lips twitched at his comment, and he turned to focus on the pool before rolling his eyes.

“I was blown away,” she whispered. He flinched in surprise.

“By what?” He turned to look at her blue stare.

“Seeing you,” she said, and he stilled. “You just were with her. The man I thought was gone was right there.” She patted his hand. “You were there, smiling and laughing easily, and it was this tiny, little, young thing that was bringing you back. I had to make sure it was real. That she was real. Because if she was just in it for your money or your brother’s fame, I didn’t want to know what it could do to you.”

“Gram—”

“I didn’t want to lose you if she was playing you.”

“She isn’t like that,” he responded, fighting to grit his teeth. Stefanie wasn’t like that at all.

“I know that, too. I just had to make sure.”

“Jesus, what did you say to her?” He frowned. Surprise flashed through her wise eyes.

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask?” She raised a challenging brow toward him, and he sighed.

“I didn’t push.”

“I was honest with her. I might have…” Her voice drifted off, and he sat up.

“You might have what?”

“Insinuated if she was a gold digger, she had no place here.” He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Nicola,” he groaned. His poor sunshine. Why didn’t she say anything to me?

“If it makes you feel any better, she put me in my place.”

“She’s the farthest thing possible from a gold digger.” Hell, she had just sent back an envelope with the pieces of a ripped-up check he had sent to replace all the things he had damaged.

“Then why the hell are you leaving?” she asked.

“I—” He scrubbed his face, wondering the same fucking thing. “I don’t know. One moment, everything was great. Perfect, really.”

“Perfection isn’t real.”

“But it was,” he argued. “With her…” But then a knot formed in his throat.

“Talk to me, child.”

“With her, I slept,” he admitted. He rested. His mind shut off and didn’t gorge itself on the memories. “I was me. But I kept choking on my words. I couldn’t get it out, but I made sure there were other ways she would get I love her, and then… I fell asleep.”

“Okay.”

“One moment, everything was perfect in my life, then I fall asleep and wake up to it ruined,” he admitted, the water in the pool glittering as the sun set behind them. “I fucked up. I hurt her. I—”

“Tell me you didn’t lay a hand on that girl.” His eyes met his grandmother’s.

“No! Jesus, no. I… I had a nightmare and woke up, but I wasn’t there. I—” He took a deep breath and fought the urge to look away from the woman who’d known him since birth. “I broke shit. At her place. I ruined her place.”

“Replace it.”

“I tried.”

“What happened?” his grandma asked in a soft tone he didn’t know she was capable of.

“She sent me the check back, ripped in tiny pieces.”

“I like her.” Her lips twitched. “I really, really like her.”

“That’s good, because I love her,” he said out loud and let the words and sentiment sit between them.

No prickling fear or panic struck. He loved her.

“Let me ask you something, did you try to replace everything before or after you told her you were leaving?”

“How do you know about that?” he asked. He was going to talk to her and his parents the moment his signature was on the contract.

“Don’t you think it’s time to stop asking stupid questions?”

“After,” he muttered.

“Hmm.” She took her hand away from his and settled into the lounger by the pool, sprawling her legs in front of her.

“She came from unsteady shit, Grams. Her whole childhood was fucked up. She didn’t have anyone to count on. Why the hell would I want to give her a lifetime of that?”

“What about after?”

“After what?” he asked.

“What did she do when she saw her place after the nightmare? After you broke shit.”

“She held me. Gave me water and something to relax. Called Donnie and Bryan and made me go back to bed.” His elbows rested on his knees, and he rubbed his temples.

“She trusted in you,” Nicola clarified, and he shook his head.

“Stupid.”

“No, she isn’t the one who is stupid. You are.”

“Nic—”

“Grandma, boy.” She knocked him upside the head playfully. “She trusted you after she saw that, and that freaked you out. It scared you that someone would have that kind of trust and faith in you.”

“I just…” Damn it, he hated it when she was right. “I had men who trusted me and…” His voice cracked, and his chin touched his chest.

“And things happened, Garrett. They weren’t your fault,” she gently told him. He knew she was right. Rationally, he knew.

Doc had told him the same thing.

The widows of his fallen brothers had said them, too.

Why couldn’t he believe them?

“Donnie told me about her,” she disclosed, and he shook his head.

“Donnie and his fucking files about everyone,” he muttered under his breath.

“I can’t even imagine. That poor girl.”

“She’d hate you saying that, Grandma. Stef…” His voice cracked. “She is everything good and bright about the world and—”

“And you walked away.”

He had and he hadn’t.

The truth was, he had no idea what he was doing because the moment he’d stepped out of her apartment without her, he’d been lost.

“First things first, you need to make sure you keep seeing your doctor, because you’re not useful to anyone if you can’t help yourself.”

To anyone else, her words might have sounded harsh, but at that moment, Garrett took them like a blessing. She was giving him direction he desperately needed.

“You need to decide what it is you want out of life. This training facility Bryan told me wants to hire you is obviously smart because they want the best. But is it really the only thing that will give you a sense of purpose? Of belonging?”

“It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I thought my life was going to be.”

“Funny thing about life, it’s always changing. Just like dreams,” she wisely shared. “Marc mentioned you were good on set, too. That you seemed to like it.”

“They all talk more than a bunch of girls.” He shook his head. “That was just to kill time.”

“But you enjoyed it,” she stated like a fact. She wasn’t wrong. Her hand covered his as she turned her body, her legs now bent, her feet touching the ground as she sat on the edge of the chair and looked at him. “You know what I find beautiful about forks in a road, Garrett?” She paused for dramatic purposes. “Anything is possible. It’s a blank canvas.”

A blank canvas. He mulled over her words.

“At the end of the day, it’s up to you what you want to do with it. If you want to be bold with color or minimalist with neutrals. The thing is to do something with it because at the end of the day when we close our eyes before taking our last breath, Garrett, it’s not the purpose a job gave us that we hold on to as we pass, but the purpose we had with those around us.”

“Nicola.”

“She has a softness to her, Garrett”, she told him, and he tilted his head toward her. He felt like he was sitting on the edge of his seat, waiting for her to impart some of her wisdom on him. “Take care of that softness. Protect it.” She sighed, and she suddenly looked older to him. Tired. “She is going to be a great partner to someone, an amazing momma to someone’s babies one day. Either way, whoever it is she ends up with, you need to protect that softness, honey. You need to make a decision and make the right one. She’s lived too hard of a life already. It’s shocking that she has that left in her to give. It’s too beautiful not to shelter the little she has left.”

“So, you’re telling me to shit or get off the pot?” He tried to lighten the mood as the idea of Stefanie with someone else burned through him.

“Someone like her only has so much forgiveness to give. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I can always count on you to remind me,” he told her, and she turned to look at him. He knew what she meant with that one look, and stark reality hit.

She wasn’t going to be around forever. She was losing her own battle against time, and he had done a great job of ignoring it, but he knew he had to face life head on.

“I’ll remind you. Always. In whatever ways I can,” she promised, her hand squeezing his.

“Good.” His voice was like gravel, and he swallowed the tears he couldn’t shed.

His grandmother had always been this larger than life figurehead in his life. The head of his family, she had always been there, and the possibility of her leaving hit hard

He stood and extended his hand to take her weathered one in his.

“So…” she broke the ice as they walked toward the house, “you signing that paper, or should I get you a paper shredder?”

Stefanie

I’d received a promotion and then been laid off in the span of two weeks.

Fired.

Dumped and fired.

“Girl, you here?” Kip called, and I looked over my shoulder.

Sitting in his office at the bar, I tried to smile, but I couldn’t hack it. I probably looked like a lunatic, but it was Kip. He was used to me. Plus, I was too exhausted to care.

Exhausted and worried and sad.

When had I become pathetic?

“What’s wrong?”

“You looking for someone to do your books?” I tried to smile brightly, but it didn’t work.

“What happened?” he asked, scowling so deep the lines on his forehead grooved inward.

“I got laid off.”

“What? Why? I thought they gave you a promotion?”

“They did, but in moving up I lost my seniority, and I… I don’t know.” My bottom lip wobbled, and he stepped in and sat in his chair.

“Hey, kid. What’s that?” He leaned forward. “You don’t cry. What’s going on?”

“I’m just tired.” I shrugged.

“How about we try that again but without the side of bullshit this time.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just bummed I have to look for a new job.”

“So, we’re just gonna ignore the fact your shadow’s gone?”

“Exactly.” I swallowed hard. “It’s not worth mentioning,” I coolly answered. Something flashed behind Kip’s eyes.

“Okay, then,” he mumbled as he scratched the snowy scruff at his jaw. “Let me talk to a couple people. I think I have an idea of where you can apply or at least get you some leads for a new gig.”

“Thanks, Kip.”

“In the meantime, get a rag and go to the bar. You always had a knack at making great tips,” he mumbled, moving his attention to his ancient computer. He was obviously done talking, so I stood and headed out of the small space but turned to face him when I made it to the door.

“Thank you.” My voice was hardly above a whisper, and if it hadn’t been for his silent nod, I would have guessed he hadn’t heard me.

Walking out to the bar, I took a breath and ignored the way the memory of Garrett infiltrated even this space. My home away from home before I knew what home meant.

With a small shake to my head, I smiled.

Tomorrow would be better.