Too Close to Resist

Or at least hide away for a while.

Her lungs burned, her already tired muscles screamed, but Grace kept running. She wasn’t going to stop until the pain drowned out everything.

* * *

KYLE CRESTED THE STAIRS, hoping Grace would want to stick around at least another thirty minutes so he could get some spinning in. He was toying with the idea of doing a Half Ironman in October, and he’d need to pick up the pace of his training.

Which wouldn’t be all that hard with Grace underfoot. Exercise was far more appealing than enduring any more alone time with her. Somehow, it always ended up with him flustered, revealing too much. And worse was when she showed a hint of vulnerability. He didn’t like what it brought out in him, this strange need to help and commiserate and smile. Worst of all, smile.

Kyle didn’t commiserate and he didn’t let people into the dark places of his mind, so it was best to avoid Grace as much as possible.

He scanned the machines, looking for Grace’s rainbow-streaked ponytail and that ridiculously yellow, ridiculously tight exercise shirt she’d been wearing. He didn’t see her on any of the machines, but he caught a bullet of yellow out of the corner of his eye.

She was running the track. Hard. His stomach did a sickening slow roll when he saw her expression. When he recognized it as panic and fear.

He should know. He saw that expression enough in the mirror. Not knowing what he was going to say, Kyle still found himself taking to the track and running until he caught up with her.

When he fell into step next to her, she actually flinched, stumbling over her feet a little. He reached out to steady her, but she jerked away.

“What are you doing?” she huffed out, not bothering to slow down once she’d regained her footing. Her face was red, her words barely audible through the gusts of breath she was sucking in and letting out.

“Take a break, Grace.” Good Lord, how long had she been going at this pace? The breakneck speed was enough to have even a seasoned runner like him exert a lot of effort.

“Nope.” But she began to slow. It took a while, another two laps, and then she was down to a normal pace. “What are you doing?” she repeated, breathing heavily. Sweat dripped down her temples, and her chest heaved with the effort to breathe.

“Hoping to keep you from having a heart attack.”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, a shot of temper so unlike her.

She looked so close to breaking down he was afraid sympathy might lead to the possibility of tears, and he was not at all comfortable with that. So he went for a different reaction instead. “Don’t be obnoxious.”

She stopped dead in her tracks so quickly he almost toppled over trying to stop with her.

The outrage on her face was short-lived, morphing into eyes filling with tears and a quivering lip.

Crap. Wrong tactic.

“I’m not done yet.” She put her hands on her hips and took a deep hitching breath. “I’m not done yet.”

He took a step away from her. Just leave her alone, his mind instructed. “All right.” But his feet didn’t listen to his mind, because he didn’t take any more steps away.

“I just need...” Her voice hitched, but she shook her head as if to shake it off. “I just need...”

Kyle couldn’t stand it any longer. Knowing all too well what it was like to fight those gnawing, oppressive feelings. The way they dug into every wound, making them deeper, more painful. It was too much to bear seeing those feelings on Grace. Gently, he took her arm and led her toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

He expected her to fight him, but she didn’t. Perhaps she was too busy fighting the tears shimmering in her eyes.

He stopped in front of the locker room and she nodded in silent understanding. Forgetting his normal after-workout routine, he grabbed his bag out of the locker. When he returned to Grace, she was slumped against the wall, her eyelashes suspiciously wet.

He took her arm again, not sure why. Crying didn’t make her incapable of moving on her own, but he didn’t know what to say, so a friendly touch seemed the way to go.

Grace climbed into the car, her body tensed from head to toe. He slid into the driver’s seat, and though the rational part of his mind told him not to look, he couldn’t help himself. When it came to Grace, the other part of his brain too often took over.

She was curled up in her seat, forehead pressed to her knees. He opened his mouth to tell her to buckle her seat belt, but clamped it shut. He’d just drive with extra caution.

“I’m not going to cry.” Her voice was muffled by her knees.

“Praise every available deity.”

She laughed. “I like it when you’re funny. It’s much better than pretentious-asshole Kyle.” She turned her face so her temple rested on her knees and she looked at him, just the hint of a smile on her lips.

He looked at the windshield. “I wasn’t really trying to be funny.”

“Things were fine when he was locked up.” Her voice was a whisper. “No, they were good. Great. Why does it have to change?”

“The unknown tends to screw with us a lot more than what we know for fact.”

“Yes! Exactly. I don’t even know if he’d try to hurt me, you know? I mean, we’d only been on three damn dates, so it’s not like I was the love of his life. Maybe he doesn’t even care that I testified.” Her vigor faded and she slumped in her seat. “And maybe he does.”

“Grace.” What could he say? What was there to say? He knew the weight of uncertainty, the oppressive bulk of it. He remembered reading The Crucible in high school and thinking it felt a lot like the way being pressed to death must feel. Except lucky Giles had an end. This way, you just felt it all the time, that heavy weight, that struggle to breathe.

He’d done what he could to circumnavigate it, but he knew his way wouldn’t fit Grace. She was too bright and vibrant to mold herself into something else, someone else. So he had no advice. Only silence.

“Did your parents beat you?”

The question didn’t surprise him, but he never knew how to answer it. Had he been hit? On occasion. But beaten in the after-school–special sense? No. And now, well, it didn’t constitute beating if he dished it right back. “Not exactly. What happened to us isn’t the same.” Not at all. Grace was innocent. He was not. “But I know what it’s like to try to beat something and feel like you’ll never win.”

Grace rested her hand on top of his. Kyle let the feeling of human contact, human comfort, wash over him for a minute. Just a minute. Any longer and he’d take more than he deserved.

“Let’s head home.” Kyle lifted his hand from Grace’s and turned the key in the ignition. Part of him wanted to see what expression he would find on her face, but fear bolstered the rational part of his brain and he kept focus on backing out of the parking spot.

“It’s nothing to feel ashamed of.”

But that was exactly what he felt, what drove him. Shame. Of everything he’d let happen in that trailer for eighteen years. Of everything his father still could bring out in him.

* * *

GRACE WAS SPRAWLED on Jacob’s bed, painting her fingernails a bright purple. She was not thinking about Barry. She was not thinking about losing it at the gym. And she definitely wasn’t thinking about Kyle being understanding and nice. About how he was more complex, more kind, more fascinating than she’d ever given him credit for.

Instead she was thinking about how she was going to wring Jacob’s neck for ditching her again so she’d felt compelled to go to the gym with Kyle. Maybe he’d thought she’d have Mom for company, and maybe at the time she’d been happy he was giving her lots and lots of space, but still. He was a grown-ass man, and would it kill him to stand up to his girlfriend?

So a little payback was in order. Step one: fill his room with nail polish fumes.

Grace studied her purple nails and smiled. Mission accomplished. Step two: wait for him to get home and poke and prod him over being such a wimp when it came to women.

Jacob opened the door and immediately scowled when he saw the nail polish bottle. “Okay, what did I do this time?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Ditch me every night this week ring any bells?”