Chapter 28

Grant

I can’t tell you how beautiful she looked on that drive into the city. It was like the old days again. Lacey’s hair had an almost metallic sheen. She was wearing one of her little black dresses.

She hadn’t bothered with all the shit Rob had been giving her, and she looked like the natural beauty she was. She was even wearing the same perfume she used to wear back when she was in high school. I wondered if that was a coincidence or not. It drove me wild.

For a few hours, we were friends again. All the awkwardness of our frolic in the hayloft was forgotten. She played her music on the radio and I drove, winding through the valleys and vineyards she loved, skirting cliffs that looked down on the Pacific Ocean from precarious heights.

“So,” I said, “you’re really going ahead with this?”

“With what? The wedding?”

“Yeah, and your relationship with Rob.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said.

I shrugged. I didn’t want to argue with her so I dropped it. It felt so good to be friends again and I wasn’t willing to ruin the morning just to tell her what I thought of her fiancé.

“Just seems to be moving fast, is all,” I said.

She nodded. She was thinking about that. I’m not sure what she felt about Rob, but from the look on her face, she had some doubts about the relationship. I changed the subject.

“Turn this song up,” I said.

“You hate pop.”

“I like it when I’m with you,” I said. “It’s more fun. It reminds me of when we were kids.”

“You always hated my music back then.”

“I didn’t.”

“You always made me turn it off and put on your stuff.”

“I was just being a jerk,” I said. “You’ve always had cool taste in music. Secretly, I liked your songs.”

She smiled and turned up the volume. I drove along, entering the edge of the city.

“So where is this flower market?” I said.

She typed into her phone and found the address. Then she entered it into the car’s GPS. It was down near the port. I guess they exported and imported a lot of plants. As we drove toward it, we passed through some of the most rundown neighborhoods of the city.

“We’re very lucky,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we live in a beautiful, big house, surrounded by some of the finest vineyards in the country.”

“We do live in luxury,” I said.

“And now I’m going to marry a rich, plastic surgeon.”

“Living the dream,” I said.

She shook her head. “We’ve done some good things though, haven’t we?”

“Sure we have,” I said.

“I hope I’ve lived a good life,” she said.

I looked at her. There was an expression of seriousness on her face I hadn’t seen before.

“What’s got you feeling so melancholy?” I asked.

“I don’t feel melancholy.”

“You’re talking as if your life is already over, Lacey.”

“Well,” she said, “I guess getting married to Rob has got me thinking like that. It definitely means my youth is over. Once I’m married, I’ll be a woman. Anything I wanted to achieve on my own will be over. I’ll be with him from now on, helping him pursue his goals and dreams.”

“Well, ideally, you’d both be helping each other pursue both of your goals.”

She nodded.

“What are Rob’s goals, anyway?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

I turned off the freeway even though it wasn’t our exit. I had an instinct she wanted to drive through a few real neighborhoods. She always liked doing that. We passed rows of brick residential buildings. They were mostly African American or Hispanic, clearly rundown.

“Pull over here,” she said, outside a big old mansion that looked like it had been the grandest house on the street a century ago. Now it looked more like an abandoned, haunted house.

I pulled to the curb and looked up and down the street, making sure it was safe. Lacey opened her door and got out. I watched from my window as she walked up to the gate of the house. There were some kids on the front porch, six boys, all of them in their teens. I opened the passenger window to hear what she wanted to say to them.

“What is this place?” she said.

“Who’s asking?” one of the kids said back to her.

“I am,” she said, and smiled at the kid, taking the charm approach.

The kid who’d spoken to her climbed down from the porch. His friends watched.

“It’s a house.”

“Your house?” Lacey said.

“Yeah.”

“Are those boys your brothers?”

“Yeah, they’re my brothers.”

“You must be all twins,” Lacey said.

“They’re my brothers from other mothers, lady,” the kid said.

“I see. And I suppose you all live in this house together?”

“Yeah, until the city kicks us out. Then they’ll take us to child services.”

“What about your parents?”

“Lady, eight boys live in this house. If any of us had parents, we wouldn’t be here.”

“I see,” Lacey said.

One of the other boys pointed at me. “Who’s the stiff?” he said.

Lacey looked back at me. “Oh, him. He’s my brother.”

“Your real brother?”

Lacey laughed. “No. He’s my brother from another mother.”

The boys looked at each other. “Not so different from us then?”

“Not so different,” Lacey agreed.

Then she came back to the car.

“Let’s go,” she said.

I looked at her. She’d always been a thoughtful person, but I hadn’t seen her in a mood like this in quite a while. It was as if she was questioning her life, and her role in the world.

“You like those kids?” I asked as we rounded the corner. I mostly said it to break the silence.

“My father went looking for boys like that,” she said. “After my mother died, and it was just me and him, he decided he had to find a new purpose in his life.”

“I know it,” I said. “If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead now. Or in prison.”

“He found you, Grady, Forrester, and Jackson. Four boys.”

“He saved our lives,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “And in the process, he saved his own life, and mine. Who knows how things would have ended up for him if it hadn’t been for you and the brothers coming to join us? It was the four of you that completed our family.”

I nodded. “Do you feel like you should do something similar?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’ll start a family.” Her hand was on her belly as she said it.

The image flashed across my mind of the night in the hayloft. What had I been thinking? I’d made her let me do it without a condom. It was crazy. It was almost as if I’d wanted to create a situation that would force us together. I’d wanted fate to take over, to bring us together, to fuse us. I’d made her call me husband too. And I’d called her wife.

I was in love with her. As I looked at her, sitting there, thinking about her life, I knew I was in love with her. I looked at her hand on her belly. What if I’d made her pregnant that night? I mean, I presumed I hadn’t. She’d have found out by now, and she’d have said something to me. She sure as hell wouldn’t have accepted a proposal from Rob if she was carrying my child. I was certain of that much. At least, I thought I was.

She’d tell me, wouldn’t she? If she was carrying my kid? She’d tell me?

I pulled the car over again and turned toward her.

“What are you doing?” she said.

I reached out to her, and took her face gently in my hands. Then I leaned in and kissed her. I was consumed with a feeling I’d never experienced before. It wasn’t just lust for the delicious sweetness of her lips. It was love too. I wanted to kiss her, I wanted to put my tongue in her mouth, because of the love I felt for her.

Kissing her was like being frozen, on a cold night, naked, and suddenly the sun coming out and shining on me. It gave me life. It poured warmth and joy into my heart the way the sun pours heat and light.

I pressed my lips against hers, creating a seal that I never wanted to break. My tongue touched hers, the softness creating a surge of desire through my body that I couldn’t control. My cock stiffened and throbbed.

My hands slid down over her shoulders and down to her back. I pulled her closer to me, lifting her from her seat and forcing her to straddle me and sit on my lap.

I continued to kiss her, my mind and heart melting into hers in an embrace that rocked me to my core. It wasn’t like any kiss I’d ever known. It wasn’t even like the kiss I’d had with her before, in the loft. This was different. It was different because I knew I was in love with her now.

And I knew I could lose her. If I didn’t do something, and soon, she’d end up with Rob, and that would be a crime against our destiny.

“Grant,” Lacey said, after I continued to kiss her, more and more passionately. “Grant stop. We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Grant. I’m engaged. Please stop.”

“Lacey,” I said, but I didn’t have any words to follow it up with. Words had abandoned me.

She climbed off me and got back into her seat. Then she looked at me.

“I can’t,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right. Rob might not be the perfect man, but he proposed to me, and I said yes. I can’t cheat, Grant.”

I nodded. Of course she couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her.

“I’ve been cheated on,” she continued. “I know the pain it caused. It just wouldn’t be right to inflict that on another person, no matter how badly we want it. I can’t do that.”

I pulled back into the traffic and cleared my throat.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course you’re right. I wasn’t … I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know,” she said.

“Sometimes I get carried away.”

“We all do, Grant.”

“You make it so that I can hardly think straight, sometimes. I’ll always … have a thing for you, Lacey.”

“Well, at least it happened now, and we did what we did when we did. Before I became a married woman.”

I wiped my eye. A tear fell over my cheek. I was suddenly overcome with emotion.

“You’re wearing the perfume you wore the first day I met you,” I said.