Hank hadn’t just poured his heart out. He’d extracted it from his chest, set it in the middle of the table, and let Gil and Miz Iris peer into every nook and cranny. Everything except the baby. He’d promised Grace, and he couldn’t go back on his word.
While Hank talked, Gil got up and made himself more hot chocolate. Miz Iris sipped unenthusiastically from her own cup—sugar free, no marshmallows. There was a lot to process when you started all the way back at the first day of fourth grade and didn’t end until, “And then I walked in and found Dad and Bing kissing.”
Miz Iris’s eyebrows shot up. “That must have been…awkward.”
“No shit.” Gil fished a half-melted marshmallow out with his spoon and popped it in his mouth. “Did you stomp out because you’re pissed, or because ‘Ew, my dad is kissing my best friend’?”
Hank thought about it, then shrugged. “Some of the first. Mostly the second. If I hadn’t already been upset, I might not have completely lost my shit.”
“But you’re cool now?” Gil asked.
Hank made himself replay the scene he’d witnessed. His dad. Bing. Other than a juvenile instinct to cringe… “I needed to talk to her, and she was with him. So I was pissed.”
Gil sucked the marshmallow goo off the tip of his spoon. “Think you can get used to sharing?”
“I guess. If that’s what they want…” Hank trailed off and scrubbed a hand across the wire-tight muscles of his neck. “My own love life just went belly up. Theirs is gonna have to get in line.”
Gil hitched a lazy shoulder. “If it’s no big deal for you…then it’s no big deal, period. Gotta say though, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t have anyone left to check up on in Montana. I was starting to enjoy the scenery, if you know what I mean.”
Miz Iris’s gaze sharpened. “Why can’t you go visit the scenery?”
“Then she’d think I came all that way just to see her, and that’s a surefire way to spoil the view.” Gil smiled blandly at Miz Iris’s aggravated scowl. “Don’t bother. I’m not interested in being fixed, so let’s worry about Hank.”
“Yeah, well, worrying is about all I can do.” Hank thumped a fist on the table in sheer frustration. “It’s like I’m stuck in a rotating door. She won’t let me get too close because she’s sure it won’t work, and I can’t prove it will work if I can’t get close to her.”
“It is a very big leap of faith for her,” Miz Iris said. “Especially if her family isn’t supportive.”
Hank ground his teeth. “Again…how can I win them over if she won’t let me near them?”
He could see it now—the pattern he’d so stubbornly overlooked. How she’d excluded him from anything to do with her brothers. The way she’d avoided being seen with him in public and practically squirmed when she couldn’t. She’d been hedging her bets from day one.
“I don’t think this is the best time to meet the in-laws,” Gil said. “That’s gonna be an ugly divorce.”
“I want to be there for Grace. Wherever and however she needs me.” The way I wasn’t before, he added with a speaking glance.
Gil inclined his head. Message received.
“Are you sure about how she feels?” Miz Iris asked.
“She said she’d been in love with me since she was nine years old.” In the same breath that she’d insisted they could never be more than whatever the hell it was they’d been doing.
“Well, that’s pretty clear.” Miz Iris took another sip, shoved her cup away, and reached across to swipe the one Hank had barely touched, heaving a blissful sigh at the first taste. “That’s more like it. What about the brother? Jeremiah, isn’t it? You could wait until he’s back at school and go have a talk with him, man to man. If you could get him on your side—”
“We’ve got more company,” Steve announced from the living room, where he’d taken refuge from all the feelings flying around his kitchen. “Looks like that old car of Delon’s.”
Shit. His dad. And Bing. He was gonna have to deal with them whether he wanted to or not. He kept his gaze fixed on the sticky marshmallow ring his mug had left on the table while Miz Iris went to the door, but his head jerked up at the note of surprise in her voice. “I wasn’t expecting quite so many visitors, or I would have changed out of my pajamas.”
They shuffled in from the entry—Miz Iris, then Bing, then Johnny. Then Hank’s heart lurched as Grace stepped from behind his dad, face pale, eyes pink-rimmed, fingers twining nervously together as she gave him a tremulous smile. “I guess I was the one who needed some moral support this time.”
Hank had to blink, not sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks. But she was really here. Despite the fog and the ice and everything else that had tried to keep them apart, Bing—God bless her—somehow Bing had brought Grace around, both literally and figuratively. Hank shot to his feet, his chair teetering dangerously before it thumped back to the floor, a counterpoint to his pounding heart. He closed the gap to catch both of Grace’s hands, but his gaze was locked with Bing’s. “Thank you.”
She nodded, her eyes solemn. “I’m sorry about earlier. I should have told you about, um, things.”
Not, he noticed, I shouldn’t have been making out with your father. So it was like that, then. “Well, now I know.” He transferred his gaze to his dad, who was rigid as a fence post. “Feel free to keep sneaking around, though. The less I actually see, the better.”
Johnny’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I’m good with that.”
“What are you…” Then Grace’s eyes went wide as they ricocheted from Johnny to Bing. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Hank said. “Like ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,’ but with the Grinch.”
“Hey!” Johnny protested.
Bing punched his arm to shut him up.
Hank shoved out of his chair and reached for Grace. Just the feel of her hand in his was enough to make his heart settle back into that strong, sure beat. It was as if his love for her was the bass line of his emotions and all the other notes—high and low—wove in and around the steady thump. He drew her toward him, another layer of tension peeling away when she didn’t resist. “We need to talk,” he said. “Privately.”
She nodded.
“You can use Cole’s old room,” Miz Iris said.
“Thanks.” As he started up the stairs, tugging her along, he glanced back at the small crowd. “Don’t wait up. I’m not letting her go again tonight.”
Or ever.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Grace blurted the instant the bedroom door closed behind them. When he swung around to say no, it was him who should apologize, she pressed her fingers to his lips to silence him. “I underestimated you so badly. Every time I imagined telling you about Maddie, it ended with you walking away. And when you didn’t…” She gave a helpless shrug. “It dredged up issues that I had been avoiding. Instead of acknowledging them and being honest with you, I persuaded myself that this was just an extended repeat of what happened before, and it was only a matter of time before you lost interest.”
His mouth twisted at the reminder of the pain he’d caused her. “That’s my fault.”
“And mine.” Her fingers traced the line of his jaw to his neck, then settled on his shoulder, sending warmth radiating through his body. “For two people who’ve always tried to take care of each other, we’ve managed to do a lot of damage, mostly because we were afraid to admit how we really felt, even to ourselves. I’m tired of fighting it, Hank. I want to just let us be.”
His breath caught, but he reined in the leap of hope. “What about Maddie?”
“It wasn’t about her. Not really.” She smoothed her hand over his chest, drawing his blood to the surface like iron to a magnet. “I was all tied up in worrying what people will think. How they’ll look at us. But everyone whose opinion matters will understand, or they wouldn’t be the people we care about.”
“There will be talk,” Hank felt obligated to say. “And some of it won’t be very nice.”
“Probably not, but compared to what Maddie’s mothers or any other queer or mixed-race couple have to deal with? A few gossips are nothing.” She caught both of his hands and clasped them between her breasts. “But you have to understand, Hank. I didn’t just give Maddie up because I was afraid of raising her alone. I didn’t want a child at all.”
“I know.”
She blinked. “You do?”
“Gil told me, while I was trying to punch him.”
“Oh.” Her eyes searched his face. “And you understand that’s probably not going to change?”
“Yes.” He lifted their joined hands to kiss her knuckles. “I am the product of two people who really, truly should have used better birth control—although I’m obviously glad they didn’t. And I have so much shit of my own to get straight, I can’t even imagine being a parent. So if you don’t want babies, I’m fine with that. But if you don’t think you deserve another baby…well, that’s something different.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the first.”
He pressed another kiss to her knuckles. “We can work it out together. I happen to know a mental-health professional, and it looks like she might want to stick around.”
Grace drew back to give him a wary look. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
“I will be, once I get past the oh yuck stage.”
Grace choked on a laugh. “It could have been much worse.”
“Don’t even say that.” He shuddered dramatically, then dropped his hands to her hips to pull her up snug against him. “I do love you. You know that, right?”
“And you know I’ve basically never not loved you.” Her smile was almost bashful as she reached into her coat pocket and held out the ring he’d left where it had fallen. “If you still want me to have this, I would be proud to accept it.”
Joy washed through him, a rush of emotion that left him shaken, so his fingers fumbled the chain and she had to help him untangle it before he could carefully ease it over her curls. She closed her hand around the heavy gold ring and centered it between her breasts. “I’ll wear it right here, until we’re ready for something with a little more sparkle.”
Hank’s vision blurred, clouded by hot tears. She was finally, completely his girl. His world. His saving Grace. He tipped her up onto her toes, filling his kiss with every ounce of love and longing that he’d stockpiled over all those years. She responded in kind, the kiss going so wild and hungry that he had to pull back, tucking her head under his chin and her cheek against his stampeding heart. As he looked around the room at shelves cluttered with school trophies and Cole’s face staring out at him from a dozen different photos, he groaned.
“What?” Grace asked.
“I’m not taking you out on those roads tonight, which means we’re stuck in another damn place where I can’t get you naked.”
She laughed softly, reaching up to feather her fingers through his hair. “But think how much fun we’ll have making up for it tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“With sugar and sprinkles on top.” Then she kissed him again, and they tumbled onto the bed to whisper and laugh and remind themselves that yes, this time it was really real, until they finally fell asleep wrapped up in a handmade quilt and each other.