Mercy Me: Rae, am I a gold digger? Rae: I’m missing some very important context here. Elaborate please. Me: I came home from the hospital yesterday, and first, our house is fucking gorgeous. You didn’t tell me this when we spoke on the phone. Rae: It didn’t seem like something that demanded a warning. That’s typically reserved for bad news. Me: Yeah, well, it still might have been nice. Something along the lines of Oh by the way, you live in a MILLION DOLLAR HOME. Rae: Next time you crack your head open and forget everything, I’ll make a mental note to apprise you of real estate valuations. Me: I’m glad you’re joking about this. I totally freaked yesterday. Basically went catatonic after we got home. I mean, first I was relieved, right? Married for money. Thank GOD it’s such a simple explanation. But then my brain just shut down. Again. I stared at him for a solid minute, then told him I needed to sle
Ep I passed out until the next morning, and now he’s at work (imagine my air quotes here because that man has never had to work a day in his life) and I ke ep thinking maybe I’ve developed an alternate personality with a taste for the finer things in life. Rae: That’s the best explanation you have? Oh boy. Me: Rae! Have you seen my house? My car? I swear, I had an orgasm from the interior alone. I have Louboutins in the closet. Multiple pairs. I saw the red soles and almost threw up. Rae: Honey, Grant has always been wealthy. You know this. Did you think he gave it all up because of your sparkling personality? Me: You’re so fucking supportive, honestly. Rae: I’m relieved that your language choices haven’t diminished in the wake of your weeklong nap. Me: Raaaaaae. Focus. I married Grant for money? Since when am I that person? Never! I’m never that person. This means I have to swallow down all that self-righteous anger I used to feel about him and his trust fund and how easy everything was for him. I’m a hypocrite. A weak-ass hypocrite who can only have information parsed out one little bit at a time. I hate everything about this. Rae: Listen, I’m about to head into a meeting, but do you want me to call you later? Me: There is a stunning lack of ‘no, you’re not a gold digger, Mercy, don’t be ridiculous.’ Don’t think I don’t notice this omission.
Rae: Mercy. You’re not a gold digger. Don’t be ridiculous. Rae: Just talk to him. Me: I can’t. He’s not here. He’s probably at the bank counting his stacks of gold like Scrooge Mc Duck. Omg, did he buy me the shoes so that I’d leave him alone? He did, didn’t he? I’ve been bought off so he can have the safety net of a wife and still do whatever the hell he wants. Rae: And on that note . . . I’m off. Please rest. Don’t stress yourself out. You’ll have your memories back in no time. Me: Awesome. I can’t wait to have the vivid recollection of when I sold my soul to Prince Charming for access to his investment portfolio. My phone went dark, and I slid it away from me so that I wasn’t tempted to ke ep nagging her. I folded my arms on the counter and laid my forehead down. I’d been awake for about ninety minutes, and it was truly amazing what fourteen hours of sle ep could do. Today was the first morning I’d woken up since the accident where ow wasn’t the first thought in my head. My body didn’t hurt. No lingering aches and pains from the impact of the crash. No headache. Maybe the mattress was magic. Even though I didn’t remember the bed, my body sure did. Yet again, Grant had given me privacy, and I’d found another pair of those heavenly pajamas, washed my face with the gorgeously bottled serums and toners in the bathroom next to the closet, and crawled under the covers. I didn’t sle ep right away, but the way my entire frame sank into that perfectly soft yet supportive mattress, there was a soul-de ep recognition that this was the place I’d sl ept before. There was a television in that room, too, but when I tried to find something to watch, the flickering sounds and fastmoving pictures made me feel slightly nauseous, and the lingering headache at the base of my skull meant that reading was out. So I lay there for hours, rotating between staring at the ceiling and staring out the slider door at the variegated shades of green in the trees behind our house as the sun sank in the sky. I must have dozed for a while, the drain of my own thoughts pulling me into sle ep, because when I woke, I found a bowl of soup and some sourdough bread on a scalloped plate on the nightstand, along with a bottle of water and some over-the-counter pain meds. Guilt was a nasty son of a bitch, because as delicious as the food was, it was tinged with the bitter aftertaste of not just embarrassment, but shame. When I woke the next morning, clearheaded and surprisingly refreshed, to a note on the counter that Grant would be gone for a few hours, I didn’t really know how to feel. Distraction came easily, because wandering the house looking for clues and acquainting myself with the Kincaid-Hastings household was a full-time job. There were hints of him everywhere—the British tea canisters in the cupboard and the decadent tea
set on display atop a walnut hutch in the dining room. A masculine watch on a bronze tray in the bathroom, brown leather with a black face. A bottle of cologne that probably cost more than I made during a week teaching and smelled so fucking good that my nether regions tingled after one teensy sniff. I set that down very fast, vowing never to revisit. My primary doctor called to check in, and we scheduled an outpatient PT assessment, as well as a follow-up in her office now that I was home. No appointments for memory retrieval, unfortunately. When texting Rae didn’t magically settle my unease, I changed out of my pajamas into some soft lounge pants and a matching long-sleeve shirt in a sky-blue color, washed my face, and while my coffee was brewing, I started searching the house in earnest. Maybe the key to picking out the pieces of our life was in discovering it myself, rather than hearing it like a story. With a thoughtful purse of my lips, I started in the kitchen. “If I were a junk drawer, where would I be?” Every respectable house has a junk drawer in the kitchen. Whether there’s actual junk within its confines is a different matter, but it’s where you stash the extra shit you need from time to time, or don’t want to organize right away. Things like ticket stubs or pictures or receipts. There were lots of drawers, but taking the flow of cooking into consideration, there were really only a few options. As I pried open the top drawer of a trio at the end of the cabinet next to the dishwasher, I let out a triumphant sound. The Kincaid-Hastings junk drawer was a veritable gold mine—a perfectly organized one full of clear little bins in various shapes and sizes. But right on top of those bins was a small stack of things: a few framed pictures and some mail in my name. They were too large to slot neatly into any of the bins, likely shoved inside as he’d pr epared for my arrival. The mail would have been an easy place to start, but when had I ever —literally ever—gone about things the easy way? I tossed the envelopes aside and turned the first frame over. “Oh my,” I whispered. There’d been a real wedding, then. Something important enough that I’d printed and framed this. My dress was white and clung to my body. Simple enough that I’d probably walked into the mall and found it quite easily. No veil, no heavy makeup, no bouquet gripped in my hand. As promised, no puffy sleeves anywhere to be found. We stood in a courthouse, the State of Michigan seal behind us so very official looking. And at my side, with his hand around my waist, Grant stared down the camera with an imperious gleam in his eye and only the slightest hint of a smile teasing the edge of his firm lips. His jaw was sharp and freshly shaven, the cut of his charcoal suit immaculate over his frame.
What transfixed me most, though, was my own expression. It wasn’t the big, toothy smile of a woman in love, giddy just to be standing next to her dream man. I’d never had dreams of Grant Hastings, dirty or otherwise. Okay, one dirty dream after my twenty-first birthday, in which the skinny-dipping scene ended very differently, but I’d take that to my grave. I ran my tongue along the bottom edge of my top teeth and conceded the second and third dreams, but nothing else. No matter how my past self had felt about the man at my side, my eyes were clear. I was at peace. Like I knew exactly what I was doing. There was a slight quirk to my left eyebrow that felt like I was challenging whoever might look at this picture someday. Go on, it said. I fucking dare you to tell me this was a bad idea. Where had we k ept this picture, that he’d tucked it away so hastily? How often had I looked at it during the day? How often had he? I rubbed my temple and set the rest of the photos down, deciding that maybe the mail was the better option after all, no matter how hard the curiosity tugged at all the loose threads in my mind. The first envelope had already been opened, as had the second, and I slid the papers out with a furrowed brow. Monthly donation statements to organizations I didn’t recall being in volved in. But seeing the amount I was able to give every month made me feel just a little bit better about everything else whirling through my head. The first was to a community center down the road from my school. They offered after-school programs to a lot of our students and their parents, and Rae and I worked with them frequently. They always needed more than they had. The second was a giving statement for a local charity that provided evening and weekend meals to school-age kids who dealt with food insecurity. The logo made my chest clench, because countless times I’d been the grateful recipient of those simple meals when I went home on weekends. Until my parents kicked me out. Until I moved in with Connor; then I never needed another brown-bag meal placed in my backpack again. If I tried hard enough, I could still recall sitting on the edge of my bed and savoring that first bite of the sandwich on a Saturday afternoon, my teeth sinking through the cheap white bread. The peanut butter always stuck to the roof of my mouth. The monthly donation made my eyebrows rise. Doing the quick math, I realized it was close to half my paycheck. That amount could cover a lot of meals. Several of my students used that program, and we were so thankful for the volunteers who came and packed meals. Slowly, I sat down on one of the stools and sank my head into my hands. I couldn’t sit there all day waiting. I’d go out of my fucking mind.
The restlessness cr ept in like a fog, and I was powerless against it. I’d never done well with doing nothing, and that’s what everyone was asking of me. Do nothing. Rest. Give myself grace. Time for healing. I stared across the kitchen until I noticed something sticking out of the drawer beneath the junk drawer. It was blue marker on a piece of white paper, and when I pulled the drawer open, I saw pictures and cards exploding with bright colors and well-wishes that made my ribs tight. Get well soon, Miss K We love you, Miss K Sorry about your head I hope you didn’t forget your favorite student (you promised to give me all A’s right before your accident) I exhaled a quiet laugh, so fucking overcome that I almost burst into tears right there in the beautiful kitchen holding so many secrets. With a short exhale, I pressed the pictures to my chest and decided I was sick of waiting. Grant had left the car keys in a beautiful cream-andgold antique dish on the kitchen counter, and I snatched them out, marching toward the garage before I could talk myself out of it. I yanked open the door and found myself face-to-face with an empty space. My excitement deflated like a popped balloon. Car accident. Only one car. I looked down at the keys in my hand and realized belatedly that they were the spare set. The empty key dish mocked the fuck out of me as I set the key fob back in the gleaming center circle. “Let me guess, you’re probably three hundred years old and personally blessed by the queen or something.” The dish, as one could imagine, did not say anything back. I speared my hands through my hair. “God, I’m speaking to inanimate objects. I need a hobby.” With no clear idea of when Grant would return or what the hell I was supposed to do with myself, a quick glance out the window offered one option. But while the lands caping in the back was even more beautiful than the front, I didn’t know what to do with any of it. I wandered down to my office and settled into the reading chair, sighing happily when it was soft and perfect and held my body like a hug.
On the table next to the chair was a stack of books I’d presumably pulled for my class. I turned onto my hip and selected the book from the top —from a young adult series set in a mythical kingdom following the adventures of talking animals. Kayla would like this one, I thought. The fantastical stories always pulled her in. I sighed when I turned a page, remembering she wasn’t in my class anymore. But someone else might need it. Might want the same kind of story. It was the most gratifying part of my job, finding which stories appealed to every kid in my class. Every Friday, I gave my classes a few options, and they had to pick which first chapter they’d try. First-Chapter Friday was one of my favorite things, and if I thought too hard about how many I’d forgotten . . . I pinched my eyes shut, only reopening them when I was ready to focus. For a while, I was able to lose myself in the book, but the house was too quiet. The questions in my head were too loud, and even reading couldn’t drown them out. My stomach let out a discontented growl, the first real pang of hunger I’d felt since waking. I pulled a yogurt from the fridge and one of those healthy protein bars that taste like stale cardboard from the perfectly organized pantry, but with my fidgety hands and fidgety brain, I needed something to do. Sugar. I needed something sweet. Cake. I could make a simple cake, couldn’t I? Baking had never really been my thing, but then again, neither had gardening. Neither had getting married for money or sharing a bed with the handsome man who smelled really nice and had big hands and silvery eyes with streaks of blue. Before I knew what I was even looking for, I was searching the cupboards. Tucked next to the container of sugar was a recipe box, and my curiosity got the better of me, prying open the lid to see what kinds of things were stored inside. The first card had a smudge on it, the edges worn like it had been handled quite a few times. Victoria sponge. It was so British I almost laughed. Maybe Grant was the one who baked. I tried to conjure that image—coming home from a day of corralling middle schoolers to find my rich-ass husband mixing cake batter, a darling little smudge of flour on his chiseled jaw. Nope. No matter how hard I pressed my fragile lil’ cranium, that vision was nowhere to be found. Still, I needed something to do, and if there was a cake at the end of it, it seemed like an activity worth doing. The recipe seemed easy enough, and after scanning the fridge and pantry to make sure we had the right ingredients, I got to work. Forty-five minutes later, Grant found me perched on a stool, head lying on my folded hands. The house was cloaked in a sick kind of stunned silence that had me ke eping my eyes shut.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said meekly, but my voice was slightly muffled by the way my mouth was tucked against the edge of my arm. Grant still didn’t say anything, but I could clock his movements based on the sounds. The gentle click of his shoes—leather, expensive. The key fob going into the ceramic dish. A bag being set on the floor—also probably leather and expensive. A restrained sigh from a couple feet away. The jar of raspberry jam was next to my hand, globs of it dotting the counter, my fingers, probably my hair, and the glass made a gentle scraping sound as he picked that up, then set it back down. I tilted my head to the side and peeked over the edge of my arm, not exactly sure what I was expecting to see on his face. A subdued sort of horror over the mess, no doubt. But I found a clenched jaw and two wrinkled lines appearing in the space between his furrowed brows. His eyes, for a brief moment, weren’t shuttered, and they weren’t blank. They weren’t focused on me at all, but on that jar of raspberry jam, and he looked absolutely fucking tortured. I sat up slowly, a sick feeling crawling inside my stomach and up my throat. “I’m sorry if I used something I shouldn’t have.” His face smoothed out, the expression gone in a heartbeat. “I was going stir crazy, and I thought . . . I thought I’d bake something for you since I’ve been a little bit . . .” I paused to swallow, and oof, it was a feat that I managed it. “A little hard to handle.” Grant surveyed the mess. “No,” he insisted, “that’s not . . . that’s not why I’m . . .” The sight of him so thrown off pulled an unwilling smile at the corner of my mouth. He noticed, giving the most subdued, posh roll of his eyes. “I’m thrilled that you find my struggle amusing.” “Oh, come on, that has to be a small comfort in all this.” At the teasing tone, his gaze searched mine, just for a moment, then it dropped again and he seemed to gather himself. I could see it in the way he stretched his spine and stood taller. The way his broad shoulders squared, his chest expanded. Grant filled the space around him in a way I’d never seen before—like he was born to command the air around him to bend to his will. “What made you choose this?” he asked, studying the absolute fucking carnage I’d left behind in my failed baking attempt. I shrugged one shoulder. “The recipe card looked well loved. I thought . . . I thought maybe it was a favorite of yours.” A muscle jumped in the corner of his jaw. “Quite.” His eyes finally rose again, and when they met mine, he had his emotions well under control. “You’ve made it before.” “Oh.”
“Indeed.” He braced his hands on the counter. The spread of his fingers made the veins on the back of his hands even more visible, and I studied the line as it disappeared up his forearm into the roped muscles underneath his skin. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, a shockingly informal choice for a man who looked like he sl ept in a three-piece suit and tie. “The first attempt ended up with a similarly disastrous result.” Even though his face was impassive, his voice still smooth and cultured and holding all the refinement of hundreds of years of blueblooded aristocracy, there was a note of fondness that tugged at something in the pit of my belly. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Questions didn’t form at the tip of my tongue, nor did I feel the lightning bolt of panic that I was missing something. “It couldn’t have been this bad,” I said, aiming for casual and falling woefully short. Grant arched a brow. With a disbelieving scoff, I pointed at the cake pans. “They’re half the height they’re supposed to be. I couldn’t pry that shit out with a crowbar.” His eyes warmed with a dangerous glint of humor. “Is that so?” “And the cream. Look at it. It’s all clumpy.” Grant did not look at the cream, even though I picked up the bowl and waved it in front of his face. “A tragedy,” he said evenly. I crossed my arms tight around my waist. “So you’re telling me I’m doomed to r epeat all of my mistakes? How comforting.” The glint of humor flickered out, and I could tell he didn’t know what to say to that. His eyes couldn’t meet mine. “I do feel better, though,” I said, pushing past the discomfort that was left in the wake of that sudden change. “I sl ept like a fucking rock on that bed.” “And snored like a bear, no doubt.” My mouth fell open. “I do not snore.” “Don’t you?” I stood from the stool and glared, swiping a dishcloth from where it hung neatly folded over the edge of the sink. I added some soap and waited for the water to heat up. After warming up the cloth and squeezing out the extra water, I turned to find Grant poking at one of the cakes with a wrinkled brow. “It’s quite remarkable, actually.” “My baking skills? Thank you.” “No, how someone with such a small body can create the noises you do while you sle ep.” I elbowed him in the stomach, and he backed up with a quiet huff. “So we, like, share a bed and everything,” I said, wiping down the counter with brisk movements that mimicked the delicate swoop of my stomach as I thought about that.
Grant made a sound de ep in his throat—just short of a hum but assent nonetheless. It was a low, rough sound, something I didn’t correlate with Grant, and it turned the delicate swoop into a violent reaction that wreaked havoc on my pulse. “Interesting.” The flour was sw ept away underneath the dishcloth. “You don’t have to disappear or feel like you can’t be in your own home.” “I didn’t—” He stopped, seeming to gather himself. “I wasn’t hiding. I had a meeting that couldn’t be rescheduled again. A few errands that needed to be taken care of.” Again. The insinuation was clear enough, because he’d been busy haunting hospital hallways while I was convalescing. “Yeah, I noticed you’re a very popular person.” Grant was quiet. “That’s . . . that’s not typical.” “Are they clients calling you all the time?” He didn’t answer right away. His mouth was open like he wanted to, then he closed it again. “Never mind,” I said. “Forget it. You don’t owe me any explanations.” “Mercy—” “No. It’s fine.” I paused. “I’m fine.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Grant still. “You’re fine,” he said slowly. “Better,” I amended. “After last night, I mean. I think . . . I think after my initial freak-out, and reassurance from Rae that I’m not actually a gold digger, I’m relieved, I guess.” He turned, leaning his hip against the counter, and pinned me with an incredulous expression. “A gold digger? What in heaven’s name made you think that?” I dumped the crumbs and mess into the sink and rinsed the dishcloth. He was still staring when I went back for a second pass. “You told me we married for money. This house. The car. My closet. The shoes. The logical conclusion is that I decided to spread my legs for a sugar daddy.” “Bloody hell, Kincaid. Your mind is a terrifying place.” “You have no idea, buddy.” Grant swiped a hand over his mouth, his eyes tracking my every move, just waiting for me to look in his direction again. When I finally did, his gaze was relentless. “You did not marry me for my money. It was about money, and that’s something entirely different.” I blinked. “Oh.” “Yes. Oh.” He shook his head. “I could’ve explained that last night, but I’ve bollocksed this up, haven’t I?” “It’s not like we have a playbook to go from.” The dishcloth was cooling beneath my fingers, and I twisted the edge around my pinkie. “I don’t want to shut down every time I learn something new, but that felt . . .” I tried to search for the right word and came up
short. “It fucked me up for a minute.” His eyes traced over my face. “And you’re relieved now.” “Well, yeah.” I tossed the dishcloth into the sink. “This whole time I’ve been trying to put together a puzzle with all the wrong pieces.” “In what way?” I licked my lips. “Do you remember that dinner we had at Connor’s a couple months before he died?” “Of course,” he answered roughly. Absently, I rubbed at the aching spot that formed over my heart whenever I thought of my brother. Grant noticed but didn’t say anything. “Do you remember what happened?” When his brow furrowed briefly, I added, “Between us, I mean.” “Ahh.” The slightest flush of pink climbed over those aristocratic cheekbones. “I have a vague recollection of it, yes.” “You called me a feral beast who needed etiquette lessons and a handler.” His eyes flashed. “And as I recall,” he said silkily, “you said that I was a painfully tragic lesson from the universe that all money and no personality can only be upheld by the stick wedged up my ass in place of a spine.” I hummed, tapping my chin lightly with my pointer finger. “Yes, this memory is very clear.” I waved my hand toward him in a so, you see my point gesture. His heavy sigh made me smile. I couldn’t stop myself, and he stared at my mouth like he was heavily concussed. “Understandable, then, that I was spiraling.” “Just so,” he murmured. I shrugged lightly. “But knowing it was something far more practical . . . I don’t know, the pressure isn’t as suffocating.” “That makes sense, actually.” “You seem so surprised by this.” He arched a brow. “Trust me, Kincaid, being surprised by the way you bulldoze through life is the one thing I know to expect.” I snorted. “Now, that’s a very good approximation of how you sound at night.” “Bite me.” Grant took a st ep closer, and I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes. His gaze moved slowly from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. I felt that look as if he’d shoved his hand between my legs. I might’ve married him for money, but I was still in full possession of my faculties. My inconvenient husband of convenience was fucking beautiful. When he lowered his voice, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “It’s a bit early to discuss kinks, darling.” His gaze locked on my mouth. “Give it time.”
Then he walked away, and eventually, I was able to breathe again.