Arm Candy (Real Love #2)(38)

“Why are you here?” I snap at my dad. “Are you dying or something?”

“Yeah.” His already-pallid face goes more ashen as my stomach plummets to my toes. Candace touches me on the shoulder. “Sit down for a minute, Grace. I’ll buy you a drink and we can bury the hatchet.”

“I don’t have to do anything with you.” My voice is shaky. My hands too.

“I don’t have long to shuffle this mortal coil, Grace. Sit. Down.” His ain’t-you-gonna-say-nothin’ tone has shifted into the self-righteous one from the soundtrack of my childhood home.

I shake my head. This has to be a ploy. A desperate attempt to get my attention. Candace’s hand squeezes my shoulder. Unable to take condolences since I’m still processing, I brush her aside.

“For years I reached out and you ignored me,” I tell my dad, my voice hard. “You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me when you stood me up at my college graduation. And now you’re here…Why?”

“I’m your father, Grace.” I scan his hulking presence. He doesn’t look sick. “That’s forever. However long we got left.”

“I can’t do this now.” I slap the wet towel onto the bar, heat building in my eyes and tingling my nose. My mind skitters left and right. Does Mom know? If so, why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t he tell me in a note along with my tea? I snag my coat and purse from the office and rush by my father.

“Grace,” my dad bellows from behind me.

“I can’t” are the only words I can manage. “I can’t.”

“I don’t have much time, angel.” His face broadcasts concern, his mouth turning down.

The lump in my throat doubles in size. I turn for the door, tears obliterating my vision. Yes, I’m running. Running away from truth I can’t handle.

“Grace!” His desperate shout causes adrenaline to dump into my bloodstream. I’m thirteen again, in my room with the door shut, his and my mother’s shouts rattling the windowpanes.

He can’t be dying. He was always invincible. Always.

I throw open the door as someone walks in. I have too much forward momentum to stop short, so instead I plow into him. I awkwardly apologize, my eyes on my feet as I attempt to flee, but the man in front of me scoops me against him, his arms solid and strong. He smells good.

Really good.

“Hey, hey. Gracie.”

I look up into Davis’s concerned expression and practically collapse against him.

“Don’t let her leave.” My father’s commanding voice sends a ripple of fear through me. Not of him but for him.

Davis takes it as the former, his face morphing into hard planes, his jaw set and nostrils flaring. He addresses my father, and when he does, he’s not the least bit polite.

“Who the fuck are you?”





Chapter 14


Davis


Grace trembles like a leaf next to me, insisting for the umpteenth time that she’s “fine.” I’m not buying it. The run-in with the leather-clad mountain man, who’s apparently her father, was a surprise for both of us.

At McGreevy’s, she begged to leave while clinging to my coat. I was about to take her out of there when Raphael Buchanan introduced himself in such a way that I knew I couldn’t take her out of there.

I’m her father. I assume you care about her. So do I. I don’t have much time left on this earth, so if I could have two minutes. I don’t want things to end like this.

Grace buried her face in my shirt and let out a sob that crushed my heart. In the unique position of never having gotten to say goodbye to my dad, I suggested she grant her old man two minutes and hear him out.

Two minutes turned into two hours with Raphael. Pancreatic cancer. They’ve given him six months.

I offered to excuse myself several times to give them their privacy, but Grace had a hold of my hand so tightly, I didn’t go anywhere. She listened. She even smiled. Her father apologized and explained.

Then she and I left McGreevy’s for my place.

Her request.

After everyone slipped out at the end of poker night, I didn’t bother cleaning up, which I explained as we stepped into my house. She didn’t care about the mess, and after I took in the hollow look in her eyes, I didn’t care either. All I cared about was getting that hollow look out of her eyes.

We walked inside and collapsed on the couch. She clung to me then and clings to me still. She hasn’t spoken in a long while. I rub my hand up and down her arm and wait.

Against me now, she lets out a sigh. The tremors subside. She untangles herself from my torso to sit on the couch cushion next to me, swiping her hands over her face and resting her elbows on her knees.

“I can’t decide if your timing is perfect or horrible,” she says, her words slightly garbled from her hands pressed to her cheeks.

“I’d say my timing was damn near perfect, considering.”

She nods but doesn’t look at me, her focus off in the distance.

I take her one of her hands. “Hey.”

She blinks at me like she forgot what I looked like.

“Remember that time I told you about my runaway bride?” I lift my eyebrows.

One side of her mouth quirks. “Are you saying I owe you a story?”