Page 27 of Grace

Our house is small. And it’s not even homey. It’s mostly just a place where we live now. Nothing like my childhood home, which had the love and warmth I still crave. But everything has an upside—this, too. I’m not alone, and I have a place to sleep.

I’m staring at the wall when my heart skips a beat—I see a shadow pass in front of the window. My eyes widen and fill with tears. I look straight at the glass.

It should be closed! I fume.

The shadow might have been Bruce, our neighbor’s bear-sized dog, who poses no danger to me. Still, I’m pissed at Cyrus. We need an AC, no matter how much it costs. The window must be closed.

I know I’m paranoid, but… I take a deep breath, because I also know he could get in even through closed windows. If he wanted to, he could kidnap me along with this whole house.

But he’s not here. He can’t be. He’ll never get out of prison. And maybe he doesn’t care about me anymore—at all. It’s been four years since I ran away from him. The last time I saw him was in court.

When I think about him dying in prison, I have mixed feelings. It’s strange… It doesn’t make sense.

Why would his death hurt?

Why don’t I want him to die?

What have you done to me, Chase Baker?

I slip out of Cyrus’s embrace and force a kind smile onto my face. I brush a loose lock of hair that had got out of his ponytail away from his eye.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and kiss him on the lips, even though it makes my stomach twist into a knot.

I’m angry at myself for feeling like I have to force this small, innocent gesture out of me—no one is holding a gun to my head.

I shouldn’t feel this way around Cyrus. He’s never hurt me. He doesn’t deserve my coldness. He deserves someone better, someone more. Not me.

I get lost in his warm eyes, and my heart melts.

Cyrus is smart, friendly, has a huge heart, and is handsome in a rough, hardened way.

A lot of people think he looks like Jason Momoa. Even his short beard is similar. His profile, though, is a bit milder. The years he spent as a cop have turned the smiling boy into a more serious man, and his body has filled out his frame—a hardened build and a gaze edged with steel from all the horrors he’s seen.

I remember our first meeting as if it were yesterday…

2005

(Breaking free from Chase)

I remember our first meeting as if it were yesterday…I met him at the police station, when they took my statement.

I looked like a cheap whore: smeared makeup, unkempt hair, black fishnet stockings, black lace panties, and a long, checked shirt that barely covered my ass. I felt naked in the endless sea of curious eyes—but after finding the letter pinned to the fridge with a magnet, my first thought hadn’t been how I looked. It had been freedom. Mom and Dad.

At the police station, everyone was looking at my body—only Cyrus looked me in the eyes, searching.

He was standing outside the room, in the corridor, his wrists and ankles circled by clinking cuffs, linked by a thin chain. I cast an incredulous glance at the rattling metal and rubbed my wrists, which had spent a long, long time bound in rough rope.

He watched my movements with narrowing eyes. I had no intention of telling him that I, too, had been bound, but he deduced it. Bound… and not just once.

While I was waiting for my parents, a woman with a kind smile draped a checked blanket over me. She also set a mug of warm tea in front of me, which I sipped slowly. For a short time, I forgot about the man in the corridor—but then I heard a commotion. For a second, I thought that Chase was crazy enough to come for me here to the station, but it was only Cyrus who had broken free from the guards flanking him.

He was huge and wild, like a cornered, raging black bear.

Wide shoulders, strong arms with bulging biceps… The man, packed into tight clothes, exuded raw strength. The cops couldn’t overpower him—he shook them off like they were nothing. Some slammed into the wall and slid down, limp.

A few steps away, a man in rock-themed biker clothes—just like his—started swearing as someone pressed a taser to Cyrus’s neck. His huge body—at least 220 pounds, I thought, all muscle and bone—crashed onto the dirty black-and-white checkered linoleum. The building seemed to shudder, and a cloud of fine dust lifted from the floor.

My mouth hung open.