Give Me Grace (53 page)

“Oh.” She was like a tiny, little fairy. The thought of some big dude beating on her made me want to puke. I swallowed down the urge by downing my next beer and grabbing another. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. I just
… can I tell you something?”

I popped the lid off my bottle and tossed it towards the bin in the corner. “Sure thing, babe,” I replied with a casualness I didn’t feel. Chicks and talking was never a good thing. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know you, but I know a lot about what you’ve been through, so I can understand your anger. But don’t let it eat you up until there’s nothing left. Being angry at the world, and at Casey, is letting your father win. You know why? Because it’s hate breeding hate. You’re keeping your father’s rage alive inside you and you’re feeding from it and using it against your own brother. I don’t want that for Casey. He doesn’t deserve that. Your brother loves you. Don’t hate him for that.”

“Are you finished?” I bit out, my tone harsh because her words made my eyes
sting. Damned if I was going to break down like some bitch in the middle of some classy as fuck party where I didn’t belong.

“Hey!” Travis abandoned his conversation to grab my bicep. His fingers dug in hard. “Watch your fucking tone around my wife.”

Fuck.

I needed to go find Fox and get the
hell outta here.

I shrugged off Travis’s hand. The last thing I needed to do after everything Quinn just said was to punch her husband in the face. With the way I was feeling right now, it was a possibility.

“I’m sorry,” I said stiffly to Quinn and shoved my way out of the kitchen, knocking some guy in the process and not caring. Needing to take a piss, I made my way towards the bathroom.

I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I weaved my way through Casey’s friends. Was it the shock of seeing how much I looked like him, or that they sensed I didn’t fit in here? I wiped everything from my face—frustration, anger, and the regret Quinn’s words induced—and I slipped on a mask of indifference. I even managed to wink at a sexy girl. She flushed, her eyes flaring with interest, and the weight of confidence settled in my chest. This was something I knew. Sex was easy. Women came easy. Getting
rid of them maybe not so much, but it was hard to care when you were in the moment. There was nothing like forgetting your troubles in a pair of hot tits and an even hotter pussy.

I opened the bathroom door, slipped inside
, and shut it behind me. Then I turned and in that instant, everything flew from my head because Grace was on the floor and she wasn’t moving. Her dark fiery hair was spread out in a fan across the tiles and her face so pale that her full lips looked red in comparison.

“Babe. Jesus.” Moving quickly, I rushed to her side and dropped to my knees. With shaky fingers I checked her pulse. It was thready and weak. “Grace, babe. Wake up.”

She swatted at me like I was a pesky fly and I almost groaned with relief. “Mmmf.”

I frowned. “What?”

She let out a long, shaky breath, clearly exhausted. “I’m fine. Just … sick. Needed to lie down ’cause the room was spinning.”

“On the bathroom floor?”

“’s near the toilet,” she mumbled.

“What can I do?” I asked, thinking that maybe I should go get Casey.

“Hold me up?” she whispered weakly. “Gonna be sick again.”

I got on my knees behind her, propping her back against my chest. Her bony arms flopped uselessly and my goddamn heart bled out all over the floor at the sight. How did Casey deal with this? I felt fuckin’ useless.

Grace curled over and heaved in the toilet bowl. I held her hair and kept her upright. That’s about as useful as it got. She kept apologising over and over until I told her to shut the fuck up. Who apologised for cancer? Fuckin’ shit-ass disease. I wanted to smash my fist through a wall.

“
’m ‘kay,” she mumbled again. “I’m over the worst.”

It had been worse than this? I wrapped my arms around her waist and held
on, thinking that right then I needed the comfort more than she did.

“No more chemo anymore?”

She fell back against me, her head sagging into my neck. “No more for now.”

I couldn’t resist a quick brush of my lips against her hair. It was still the same deep vivid red, hanging down her back in soft waves. “I thought your hair fell out with chemo?”

“I only needed a low dose,” she managed to say as I twisted a lock of it between my fingers. It was so soft. “My hair thinned some but not much.”

The door opened and Casey slipped inside.

“Grace! Fuck,” he bit out.

“Where the hell were you?” I
dropped the lock of hair and glared up at him, feeding that rage Quinn talked about. “Out there having a goddamn party while your woman is layin’ in here half dead!”

“You sonofabitch!” he ground out as he dropped beside me. I passed Grace over carefully, smoothing the hair from her face. He wrapped her up in his arms, his anger at me contrasting with the tender way he took
hold of her. “You don’t know shit. I didn’t want this fucking party,” he told me, his voice cracking. “Dammit. She was in bed when I left to get some ginger ale for her stomach. When I came back to the bedroom she was gone.”

“
’s my fault,” Grace mumbled, burrowing herself into Casey’s chest. “The party. Everyone was home from the tour and I missed them all so much. Felt fine this morning.”

“How could you miss Henry?” Case
y asked as I stood up and wet a washcloth with cold water. “He flew back every five minutes just to check on you.”

I crouched and ran it over Grace’s forehead. She looked like she’d passed out. Casey didn’t seem to mind that I was wiping down her face so I kept going, pausing briefly to look at him. “
Is this how it’s been these past three months?”

Casey’s jaw ticked.
“Yeah. I fucking hate it. We got her a great doctor here in Sydney. Made the appointment and went and saw him a couple of days after all the shit that went down. I sat in that office of his and listened to him talking about injecting her with poison. I had to sit on my hands because I wanted to grab him by the throat, drag him across his desk, and toss him out the window.”

“I’m sorry, Casey,” I told him, because I was. They were dealing with all that and me being a jackass on top of it.

I’m not sure he heard me, his eyes were on Grace, his fingers tangled in her hair as he brushed it from her face.

“I cried,” he choked out as he sat back on the tiles, Grace in his arms. “I fucking cried myself sick the first time they put that needle in her and I watched it drip slowly into her veins.”

“But she’s gonna be okay, right?” I stood, re-wetting the washcloth. “That’s what she told me.”

Casey nodded, his nostrils flaring as he drew a deep breath in. “Yeah. She is. She should start getting better from here on out.
The original surgeon cut out the cancer before she arrived in Sydney. The chemo was done as a precautionary measure to kill off any cancer cells that might’ve been left behind.”

“Told you I’m fine,” Grace mumbled, her eyes fluttering open.

“Hey!” Casey protested when she tried pushing her way up off of the floor. She fell back against him. “Let me carry you.”

“No,” she replied stubbornly. “I’m fine. There’s nothing like a good puke to make you feel better, right, Kelly?” She winked up at me. The effort was puny at best, but it felt nice to be included.

“Right on, babe,” I replied smoothly, winking back.

Casey narrowed his eyes on me. I shrugged and grinned.

Grace sighed.

“What?” he asked her.

“You and Kelly. You both have the same pretty dimples.”

“Pretty?” we both said at the same time with disgust.

“Yeah.” She giggled, starting to sound drunk. The exhaustion must have well and truly set in. Tilting her head back, she looked up at Casey, taking his face in her hands. She smiled sweetly. “I love you so much, Batman.”

It felt like I was intruding on a private moment, but really? “Batman?”

“Don’t you know?” Grace looked at me, tired and pale, but happiness shone in her eyes. “Casey’s my hero.”

I knew right then, in that one single fuckin’
second
, that I wanted what my brother had. It must have felt real damn nice to be someone’s hero, for them to look at you the way she looked at my brother. We might’ve had a shit start to life, Casey and I, but he had Grace now, and that meant he had everything.

At Grace’s stubborn insistence, Casey carried her out to the kitchen while I followed behind. He planted her ass on the counter top. Then he stood between her legs with his back to her. She latched her arms around
his shoulders while they chatted with their friends. I stood on the fringes next to Fox, beer after beer shoved in my hand until I felt unsteady.

Fox
left soon after, catching a cab because Mac refused to give us the keys to our bikes.

“They better still be there in the fuckin’
mornin’,” I bitched at her.

Her gaze narrowed gloriously and I was drunk enough to start eyeing off her zippers with
real interest. “Or else what?”

I paused, my mind too drunk for a good comeback. “Or else I’ll be pissed off.”

“Good one, Kelly,” Mac replied with an eye roll. Then she crooked a finger. “Come with me.”

Holy fuck did I want to come with her. I abandoned my beer to the counter and followed her to the living
area, barely noticing the party had wound down and the place was emptying fast. She pointed to the couch. It was covered in blankets and pillows. “Lie down.”

I dragged my shirt over my head, tossed it on the floor
, and stalked towards her.

She backed up a step, but I noticed with satisfaction that her eyes were on my chest and she may as well have licked her lips the way she was staring at it.

Then she shook her head, as though coming to her senses. “Are you crazy?”

I paused. Was I? Or was I just drunk? What was she talking about?

“I have three brothers. Older brothers. They all own guns. They’ll shoot you if you touch me.”

I shrugged and kept coming for her. “Won’t be the first time.”

“Wait, what? You’ve been shot before?”

“Yep.”

I grabbed her hips and yanked her towards me. Ducking my head, I pressed my lips on hers, waiting for her to respond. She did for a second and I groaned, one hand reaching up to fist her hair.

“What in the goddamn fuck?”

Mac leaped in the air, letting out a little shriek. “Jake!”

I turned, recognising the drummer from Jamieson that I was introduced to at some stage during the night. My brows rose at the guy, silently telling him to fuck off because I was busy. I had zippers to get to.

Jake shook his head, growled, “Fuck this shit,” and left, slamming the loft door behind him. Then Mac burst into tears and this new, vulnerable side to her surprised me. It also left me floundering. I didn’t do tears.

Before I could pat her awkwardly on the back, she took off in the other direction.

I sighed, figuring there was no getting any pussy tonight. Flopping on the couch, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

When I woke later, the loft was quiet and dark. I groaned, rubbing the side of my face and then scratching at the stubble on my jaw. I rolled off the couch, ready to go search for the keys to my baby and take her home when the unmistakable sound of retching came from the bathroom door.

“Hell,” I muttered. Had Grace even slept at all?

I opened the bathroom door quietly and did a double take, because it wasn’t Grace heaving over the toilet bowl this time. It was Mac.

“Jesus, babe. You okay? How much did you have to drink?”

I sat on the edge of the tub and for the second time that night, I held back a chick’s hair and rubbed her back in warm circles while she threw up in the toilet. Classy bitches sure puked a lot.

“Nothing,” she moaned.

The door opened and Grace slipped inside, shutting it behind her. Her eyes found Mac first and they flashed with concern. Then they found mine and I saw the banked amusement. “Kelly. Come here often?”

Then her eyes fell on the vanity and they widened like fuckin’ dinner plates.

I followed her gaze.

“Shit,” I muttered. On the vanity sat a pregnancy test. Highlighted in pink neon so bright they stood out like a cock at a lesbian orgy, were two distinct lines.

“You’re pregnant,” Grace breathed.

Oh shit. And I’d tried fuckin’ her. What a douche.

“Who’s the father?” I asked because I could be nosy when the occasion warranted it. I wanted to know who’d knock this hot bitch up and then leave her so I could go tell him what a giant cock he was.

Mac swallowed and wiped away the smeared trails of mascara that ran down her cheeks. She looked at me, then she looked at Grace.

“Jake,”
she rasped, her voice hoarse from puking. “It’s Jake.”