Ten Things

Ch.29-Scared

Cole

I knew Grace thought she was being a bother asking me to go thirty minutes out of town to pick her up, but she had no reason to be. She could have been in Ohio and I would still have gone. I think she was beginning to understand that, too.

I was secretly thrilled the party had been such a disaster. That meant Dustin was hopefully out of the way, as were anymore distractions. Grace didn’t seem like a partier to me, anyway. It was all wrong.

She was asleep with her head on my shoulder now, her soft snores filling the spaces of my car. I wondered what I was feeling, and glancing down at the tight way she clutched at my hand while she slept I realized it was happiness.

I was happy.

I wanted another chance. To forget the past, forget anything else but the future, one that I hoped might include the girl snoring on my shoulder. I didn’t know when she had become so important but she had. I couldn’t imagine my life without her adorable faces when something didn’t make sense or something wasn’t right, her earth-shattering smiles when they came, or that soft voice trying to mold me into the next Mr. Rogers. She may have looked delicate but she was strong. Strong to fight through cancer and be where she is today. I figured it was about damn time somebody decided to be strong for her for once.

It pulled into her driveway, letting a wide yawn break through. I hated to wake her up, so as gently as I could I extracted her hand from mine and slid out from beneath her. I opened her door and scooped her up, cradling her against my chest. I marveled at how light she was. She could be so easily broken. I had a moment of fierce protectiveness, a deluded thought that if I never let her go nothing bad would ever happen to her.

I climbed her steps, knocking on her door. When nobody answered I rang the doorbell. I frowned. That was peculiar.

“They aren’t home,” Grace whispered. I looked down at her. Her eyes were still closed. Her hand clutched at my sweatshirt over my chest.

“What?” I questioned gently.

“They went out on a date,” she continued, finally popping those lovely blue eyes open. “They said they wouldn’t be home until late, and I didn’t expect to be back this early.”

Well that was just fantastic. She was freezing and it was snowing even harder, and we had no way in the house. I walked over to one of her rocking chairs, sitting myself down in it. Grace curled up against me, her slight frame fitting perfectly. She spread the blanket out so it covered me as well. It was odd and probably looked strange to anybody walking by, but first of all nobody would be walking by in this kind of weather and second of all she felt damn good where she was and I wasn’t going to tell her to move.

I used my feet to rock us back and forth. Her ear was against my chest, right over my heart. All that soft hair was displayed for me and I couldn’t resist the urge to wind my fingers through the golden tresses. It was just like silk.

“What were you doing?” she asked out of the blue.

“Hm?”

“When I called,” She clarified. “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”

I shook my head. “No, Grace, you didn’t.”

“Alright.” She traced images with her finger over my sweatshirt. “I’m sorry I haven’t been exactly agreeable over the past couple weeks.”

I twirled one long strand around my finger. “I can understand why,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean to push you into anything.”

“I just haven’t experienced anything like this before,” she said.