My mouth was suddenly dry. I was never going to look at this table the same way again. “There’s a pull,” I admitted softly.
“Good, now that we have that established.” He took a deep breath. “Grace and I grew up together in Nags Head. Well, Owen, Grace, and I did. It was always the three of us, but she was my best friend and I was hers, and one day that flipped, and we fell in love. We’ve been together since we were fifteen.”
I wanted to throw in a smart-ass quip about how perfect that they were high-school sweethearts, but it would be a defense mechanism, and if he was stripping his defenses for me, I owed him the same courtesy, even if it hurt like a bitch. “Okay.”
“The summer of my senior year, we had a huge party at the beach. Everyone was there, and everyone was drunk. I’d had a couple beers, but I made sure to stop a few hours before I knew we needed to leave. I wasn’t stupid enough to chance anything with Grace, you know?”
His eyes darted between mine, begging for understanding, but he hadn’t told me anything I needed to understand yet. I nodded. “Right.”
“Owen got a brand new truck for graduation. This amazing Chevy, and he wouldn’t let anyone wear dirty boots inside the cab, let alone drive her. And it got late, and Grace needed to get home. I told Owen to leave it at the beach and we’d get it in the morning, but he wouldn’t hear of it.” His eyes dropped to the table, and he took a shaky breath. Grayson took off his hat and rubbed at his forehead, like the memories were physically painful. “I should have fought him harder. I should have stolen the keys, or hog-tied him and put him in the car, but I didn’t. I shook my head and said, ‘suit yourself.’ Can you believe that shit? Suit yourself.” He swallowed and then brought his eyes back to mine. “I killed Grace with those two words.”
My stomach rolled. He deserved a happy story. Even if he’d kissed me when he belonged to her, I wanted to hear that they woke up the next morning and laughed about how drunk they’d gotten.
“Grace and I took off for home. I drove her car, since mine was in the shop, and we got into a fight about colleges. I’d been accepted to UNC like her, and I wanted to go there, but she was pushing the Citadel. She knew I’d been accepted there, too, and how badly I wanted to go.”
His knee started to bounce with nervous energy. “We were stopped at a light before the bridge, and when it turned green, Owen passed us driving way too fast in that goddamned truck. He cut off the oncoming traffic before jumping back into our lane, but he overcompensated.”
His eyes went vague, and I knew he wasn’t with me anymore. He was there, on that bridge, with Grace in the car…and I didn’t want to know. But I had to.
“He slammed into the guardrail, and I swerved. I mean, I couldn’t hit him head-on, right? We’d both be killed. Grace’s little car wouldn’t stand a chance. So I swerved, and we went through the rail, into the channel. She screamed, and we hit so hard. So hard. The airbags deployed, but my head cracked against the window, and I don’t remember anything for another couple minutes. When I came to, we had already sunk, and landed on our side. Funny, I used to think cars always landed on their tires, right? They don’t—not when there’s uneven terrain to land on. The water was what woke me. It was already up to my shoulder. Grace…she was under it. Unconscious.”
I held my breath like it was me underwater, and reached out to hold his hand. “Grayson.”