CHAPTER TWENTY
The knock on the door was so loud that little motes of dust trickled down and the wood frame shuddered and shook under the assault. Grace looked up from where she was studying with a mixture of alarm and excitement painted on her face. Nanna had received more than a few boxes from Amazon, but never once had the delivery men attempted to beat the door down.
Just when she’d finally stopped expecting him to pop up he’d proven her wrong. She instantly endeavored to push down the joyous feelings over seeing Henry again after all this time, labeling herself as weak and pathetic. He was probably just here to yell at her for taking advantage of his grandmother. Would he force her to leave? She didn’t like the feelings of hopelessness that evoked within her. She had nowhere else to go.
She’d been curled up cozily on the couch, studying for her GED exam, but now she couldn’t have answered the question on her flash card for a million bucks. She’d spent the last six months telling herself that she didn’t need him, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t still yearn for him desperately. The surging pregnancy hormones only served to amplify her already erratic emotions. When would she wisen up and stop longing for things she couldn’t have?
“NANNA! You’d better open this door fast or I’m breaking it down!” Henry hollered before delivering another series of violent raps to the shuddering frame. “GRACE!”
When he called her name she was forced to give up any paltry delusions that he might somehow not know she was there. Grace sat up and pulled the afghan up to her chin, shivering as she let loose a shaky breath. But she didn’t move from her spot on the couch. Only an idiot tries to outrun a shifter.
“You break my door and I’ll take you over my knee and whoop you like that time you dug up my asparagus patch, young man!” Nanna shouted as she made her way slowly but determinedly to the front door.
“I know she’s in there!” Henry bellowed, sounding only half as violent and unhinged as he felt.
“I’ve already called your father,” Nanna warned as she unlatched the door. “If you can’t behave yourself, he and half the clan will be here in five minutes to escort you away. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Henry replied, falling back into the patterns of a lifetime of proper manners and good behavior.
Nanna harrumphed loudly before stepping to the side to allow him inside. She shut the door, but she didn’t lock it. She loved her grandson and knew that he was a good man, but there was always the chance that Henry’s bear had been damaged or broken by the extended separation from its mate. There was no reasoning with wild animals and she hoped that wasn’t the case.
When Nanna had caught Grace planning to run away the night of the barbeque she’d known right away that she needed to intervene. When her grandson’s girlfriend had wound up pregnant, it had made it even more imperative that she keep the girl from bolting. For one thing humans weren’t allowed to know about shifters and walk away from the clan, and for another she would have had to be blind not to see that Grace was her grandson’s fated mate. The only thing she couldn’t understand in this big mess was how it had taken her idiot grandson so long to find her!
The darling girl had pretended to be happy, Lord bless her brave soul, but Nanna had heard her screaming during the worst of her nightmares. She knew full well that Grace wasn’t as hunky dory as she pretended to be. When winter had arrived and the second trimester had come to an end Nanna had decided that the two lovesick puppies were in need of a little helping hand, so she’d enlisted Jackson to help carry out her foolproof plan to reunite the stubborn lovebirds.
Nanna quietly removed herself to another room. They didn’t need her old prying eyes in the mix. The situation was tense enough to begin with without adding in an audience. She sent up a quick prayer for the two star-crossed lovers. She cared deeply for both of them, and hoped they wouldn’t let their festering emotional wounds get in the way of the beautiful future she knew they were meant to experience hand-in-hand.
Now that he was inside the house, Henry didn’t know exactly what to do with himself. He wanted to pull her into his arms and squeeze her until she promised to never leave him again, but that didn’t sound like a good idea even to his frazzled mind. So for the moment he was choosing to maintain the distance between the two of them. She sat propped up on the couch, looking like a tiny doll surrounded by swarms of pillows and blankets.
The setting only served to highlight her delicate and petite features. She was so beautiful that he briefly wondered if he’d lost his mind for good and was simply imagining things. Was she really there? Was it all just a dream?
He drew in a ragged breath, letting her scent wash over him and soothe the wild beast within him. She had to be real. But she wasn’t speaking, and he’d yet to utter so much as a hello. They were locked in a stalemate. It took all the strength he had left to verbalize one sad little word.
“Why?”
Grace sucked in a deep breath and tried to figure out how to postpone the inevitable moment where he’d either storm off or demand that she herself be the one to leave. She knew that it was pathetic, but so far vying for more time before she responded was the only plan she had. Her eyes studied the old oak trim instead. Had she missed a bit of dust? What could she possibly say that wouldn’t leave her more exposed and broken than she already was?
The emotions in the room were so thick that they were palpable. Indeed, she felt as though everything left unsaid between the two of them was lodged in her slender throat and choking her. Her mind journeyed back to that horrible day, and she felt the shame and humiliation creep over her once more. She’d tried to run away and escape this very conversation, but it had come for her all the same. Not all pain could be avoided.
“I saw the look of disgust in your eyes,” she accused. “You stared at me like I was garbage, like I was nothing.” She lifted her head, meeting his eyes full on for the first time since he’d arrived, and all the pain, all the frustration she’d weathered made her tone crisp and hard. “You have no idea the horrors I’ve had to endure.”
Henry’s mind replayed all the occasions where he’d crept into her room to sing to her and offer her comfort when her nightmares had made her cry out helplessly in despair. He didn’t know what she’d survived, but he knew it hadn’t been good. He thought of her sad rundown apartment and all he wanted to do was keep her from returning to such an awful place. He wanted so badly to offer her a better life, but he couldn’t do that if she kept shutting him down and running away.
“So, tell me,” he whispered raggedly. He took a couple more steps into the room, but no more because he didn’t trust his bear not to grab her up, toss her over his shoulder, and abscond with her, consequences be damned.
Grace spoke so softly that if it hadn’t been for his superior shifter hearing he wouldn’t have been able to comprehend a fraction of the words. Her eyes were scrunched up tight, and whether it was to block out images of the past horrors she was revealing or so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction he couldn’t have said.
It seemed as though she had an endless well of pain to draw from. One story of abuse and neglect led to another. If someone had raked their claws across his gut and eviscerated him he couldn’t have felt any worse than he did standing there and listening to the atrocities her own family, foster parents, and supposed friends had committed against her in her short life.
She’d been misused in every way imaginable. His eyes grew wild as his inner beast fought against the urge to annihilate anyone and everyone who’d ever harmed her. When she moved on to the part of her life where she’d turned to drugs he could understand why she’d done it. He’d have acted no better, and honestly he was only surprised that she hadn’t taken up the vice sooner.
“And then you saved me from the tiger shifters . . .” Grace trailed off finally dredging up enough guts to open her eyes and look at him in order to gauge his reaction. He hadn’t walked out and he wasn’t looking at her like she was garbage yet, but she didn’t trust it to last.
Somehow, she felt lighter. Everything was out there on the table now. She wasn’t perfect. She was about as far from that as a human being could be. But now that he knew all of her deepest darkest secrets she felt terrified and exposed. But strangely enough this felt better. Before she’d always tried to hide her past, afraid that it would scare him away. But now she had nothing left to hide, no more transgressions to bring forth.
“Is that all?” he asked tentatively, not wanting to cut her off before she’d finished saying her piece.
She nodded her head yes, and Henry took the last four steps across the room and dropped to the ground before her on his knees. He pulled her hands down from where they were clutching the afghan and gazed earnestly into her eyes.
“Grace, I love you.”
“I . . .” she started to speak but he pressed a finger to her lips to silence her.
“Please, let me finish,” he implored. “Thank you for trusting me enough to share your past with me. I’m so, so sorry that you’ve been hurt. If I could go back in time I would love nothing more than to slay all your dragons for you. You are strong in ways I could never be. You are a survivor. You never stopped fighting and I feel nothing for you but love, and a tremendous amount of respect. Understand that I have zero judgement for you over having a substance abuse problem or anything else you’ve had to do in order to survive.”
Grace had never heard such beautiful words, and as the man continued to speak, piece after piece of the wall she’d built around her stone cold heart liquefied, melting into a big, warm, mushy puddle at her feet.
“But I still don’t understand why you left. When you ran away you took everything I cared about with you, and I’ve been stuck in place ever since. Food doesn’t taste right if you aren’t there to share it with me. I don’t know how to sleep if you aren’t curled up beside me. And I can’t make myself go to work when I know you won’t be there to welcome me back home.”
“Oh.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts into words, saying simply, “I didn’t think you’d want me once you knew. I figured it would be better if I just left. I thought it might hurt less that way, but I’ve been just as miserable without you.”
“I will never stop wanting you. No one else will do, Grace Hubbard. You are my mate. You are my other half. Please tell me that you will marry me, and be my mate, and that you will never ever leave me alone again. I can’t live in that big empty house without you. I can’t endure one more day, hour, or minute without you.”
It pained him immensely when Grace pried her hands out of his and motioned for him to scoot back, but he complied.
“Before I give you an answer to that incredibly beautiful proposal, I have just one more thing to tell you,” she said sheepishly. “And I really hope it’s not a deal breaker, because it’s not something I’m willing to walk away from.”
Grace stood, and the afghan fell away, revealing her obviously pregnant belly. When Henry didn’t say anything for an awkward stretch of time Grace began to grow nervous. Was it possible that he didn’t want to be a father as he’d claimed he did? Would she be forced to raise their child alone after all? It just didn’t seem fair.