Fourth Down (31 page)

Grady was so careful with
me, even though I could tell from the tension in his body that it
was hard to go slow. When he settled between my thighs, resting his
forearms on either side of my head, he leaned down to kiss me
slowly, lovingly, and asked quietly, “Are you sure?”

I nodded once and replied,
“I’ve never been more certain about anything, Grady. I love you. I
want to be yours in every way.”

Later we lay entwined
together waiting for our breathing to even out. Grady kissed the
top of my head and smoothed my hair. “Are you okay?”

I rose up on one elbow and
my hair fell over my shoulder and across his chest. I grinned and
replied, “I’m more than okay. That was amazing. Why didn’t you tell
me it would be like that? I would have given in much
sooner.”

He laughed and shook his
head. Then I suddenly thought that maybe it wasn’t that great for
him, you know, because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I bit
my lip and mumbled, “I mean, it was great for me, but I know I
didn’t really know what I was doing…” I trailed off when he cupped
my face in his hands and made me look at him.

“Lindsay. Don’t ever doubt
my feelings for you. Yeah, I’ve been with other girls, but nothing,
absolutely nothing, compares with what we just had. I love you.
Don’t ever forget that.” I relaxed back into his arms, and against
everything I had planned, I fell asleep.

The sun was just rising
over the hills surrounding the lake when Grady woke me up.
“Lindsay? It’s time to go,” he said quietly in my ear. I shook my
head and burrowed under the blanket and closer into his chest. If I
focused hard enough on this one moment, maybe I could stop time
from passing. He chuckled and sat up, pulling me with
him.

Every emotion from last
night came rushing back to me and I couldn’t stop the tears from
falling as we silently packed up our stuff and rode back to Lana’s
house. Grady had breakfast with us and sat in my room while I
showered and dressed and finished packing my things. We didn’t
speak much, mostly because I was crying too hard to get any words
out. After the car was packed, Lana got in the driver’s seat so we
could say our goodbyes alone on the porch. I threw my arms around
Grady’s neck and wept on his shoulder as he held me
tightly.

“Ssshh, Lindsay. It’s
going to be okay. We will make it through this. We can make it
through anything,” he said gruffly. I pulled back to look up into
his light blue eyes, that were shimmering with unshed
tears.

“
Promise me, Grady.
Promise me,” I begged.

He pressed his lips gently
to mine and murmured, “I promise you, Lindsay Ross. I will love you
until the day I die.”

October 2006

“Lindsay, you know what
you need to do. Now do it,” my mother scolded me from the doorway
of my bedroom. I heard her sigh before pulling my door shut, and I
could imagine her rolling her cold blue eyes at me, but I didn’t
look at her. I couldn’t.

A week ago I disliked my
mother for all the typical teenage reasons along with the general
faults in her character like caring more about money and image than
anything else, including me. Now I despised her with everything in
my being. She had become the enemy - the reason that I hated my
life.

I sat on my bed cross
legged with my laptop open in front of me, just as I had been for
the last two hours. Instead of sending the e-mail on the screen
like I knew I should, I stared out the window at the people running
and walking through Central Park and the dense traffic moving down
the street. The leaves were starting to turn various shades of red
and gold, and I thought about how beautiful fall would be in Penn
Yan. I would never know.

Tears had been steadily
dripping down my cheeks for what I had already lost and what I was
about to lose, but I didn’t have the strength to wipe them
away.

There was no other way. I
had been racking my brain for days, but I had come up with nothing.
So, the only thing I could do was to send the e-mail. I read it one
last time through my cloudy haze of tears.

Grady,

We are over. Please stop calling me.

Lindsay

There was so much more I
wanted to say, but I knew if I gave him any sense that this wasn’t
what I wanted he would fight for me. And I couldn’t let him do
that. I couldn’t drag him down with me. At least this way he could
get over me and move on. Find someone who would love him just as
much as I do.

I took a deep shaky breath
and clicked Send.

Then I closed my laptop,
huddled under the covers and let myself cry for the last time over
Grady Hawke. After today I would lock away my memories of him and
our time together. Maybe someday I would be strong enough to think
of him again, but at that moment I couldn’t imagine that day would
ever come. Alone with my pain, I cried myself to sleep.

Chapter One

Grady

The day started out like any other. I
got up early, worked out in the home gym I had set up in my
basement, grabbed a shower and headed in to work. My dad and Josh
were already at the shop when I got there. I made a mental note to
fix the sign outside. The old metal sign that hung over the front
entrance was hanging on by a thread. I needed to get new chains or
Hawke’s Boat Repair would be face down in the dirt soon. Stomping
my cigarette under my boot, I walked inside to get started on a new
week.

My dad’s girlfriend always sent him in
to work on Monday mornings with a plate full of freshly baked
muffins. Today’s selection was blueberry with some delicious
looking sugary crumb topping. I snagged one and poured myself a cup
of weak coffee. We really needed to invest in one of those one cup
coffee brewers. None of us had mastered making a decent pot of
coffee in all the years we’d been working together.

Josh was outside inspecting the motor
of a new arrival over the weekend, and my dad was busy at his desk
with a pile of paperwork. Business had really picked up lately, and
it was getting harder and harder to keep up with the repair work
let alone have any time left over for anything else. We had already
outsourced the bookkeeping and taxes, but what we really needed was
an office manager. My dad handled invoicing the clients, and Josh
somewhat maintained our pitiful excuse for a website, but we would
need to hire some help. And that would have to be sooner rather
than later. This shop was quickly growing beyond what the three of
us could handle. I guess there were worse problems to
have.

The morning passed quickly, and Josh
and I went over to the pub for lunch. My dad stayed behind to watch
the shop, and I promised to bring him something back. We drove
separately because Josh was meeting his wife, Leah, for a doctor
appointment after we ate. She was pregnant with their first kid.
Josh was crazy excited about this baby. He and Leah had been
together since high school and got married right after she
graduated three years after us. Honestly I’m surprised he waited
this long to knock her up. But Leah didn’t want to be a teen mom,
which is probably a good thing.

After Lindsay broke it off with me,
aside from my dad, Josh and Leah were the ones to make sure I ate
regularly and didn’t drink myself to death. Between dinner at their
house a couple of times a week and dinner just as often with my dad
and his girlfriend, I didn’t have to worry about any actual
cooking. Ford, the third member of our trio, was still off playing
college ball those first few years, and by the time he was back in
town, I was back to normal. Or as normal as I was ever going to
get.

We scarfed down our burgers and I
waited for my dad’s takeout order while Josh left to pick up Leah.
I was halfway back to the shop when I remembered Dad asked me to
stop by his house and grab his checkbook. Who the fuck uses a
checkbook anymore? My dad, that’s who. Squealing the tires on my
bike I made a u-turn and headed up the hill.

The first thing I noticed when I
turned onto my dad’s street was the brand spanking new Mercedes SUV
parked in Lana’s driveway. Lana’s business must be doing really
well…or she had company. Just as I swung my leg over the bike and
removed my helmet, I saw Taryn Ross walking up Lana’s front walk.
The implications of Taryn being here, in Penn Yan, weren’t lost on
me for a second.

I had never met Taryn, but she had
been all over the news lately. You’d have to be a in a coma to not
know who she was. Her father was running for President, and Taryn’s
personal life was also a hot topic. I had maybe taken an interest
since I knew her cousin once upon a time.

Taryn noticed me staring at her like a
fucking stalker and gave me a little wave. The kind of wave that
said “I know you’re staring at me, and I’m trying to be polite, but
stay the fuck away from me.” A little voice in my ear reminded me
that curiosity killed the cat. Yeah, well I liked to live on the
edge. And my sense of self-preservation had been missing for a
while now - five years to be exact.

“Hey, aren’t you the Senator’s
daughter? Taryn Ross?” I called while walking through the grass to
stand in front of her.

“Yes.” She backed up a step and looked
a little wary at my approach. I better make this fast before her
boyfriend bodyguard comes out here and tackles my ass to the
ground.

“Are you here visiting Lana?” I asked,
nodding toward the house.

“Just for a night. My cousin, Lindsay,
is Lana’s niece, and we’re dropping her off for a visit,” she
replied.

“Lindsay’s here?” That’s pretty much
all I heard from what Taryn just said. It was like swimming through
a dark tunnel and the only thing that made it through were those
words.

“Um, yeah. Do you know her?” She
seemed slightly more at ease since I obviously knew Lindsay and
wasn’t some crazy stalker fan of Taryn’s.

I snorted, “Yeah. You could say that.
I’m Grady. Grady Hawke.” Taryn looked back at me blankly with
absolutely no idea who I was.

“Oh, okay. It’s nice to meet you,
Grady. I’d better help Lindsay finish unpacking,” she said stepping
up onto the porch.

I could feel the rage in my heart
bleeding out and threatening to consume me, so I turned and stalked
back across the yard and into my dad’s house before I freaked her
out anymore. FUCK! I slammed the front door shut behind me and
kicked it hard with my boot. Pacing the small living room that I
grew up in, I shoved my hands through my hair repeatedly. Why is
she here? After all this time, why is she here? It’s been five
years for Christ’s sake!

I realized two seconds too late that I
just slammed my fist through the wall next to my dad’s favorite
recliner. Grabbing my dad’s checkbook off the kitchen counter I
left the house before I did any more damage and raced back toward
the shop, nearly running over Mrs. Wilson on my way. That old lady
needed to the stay on the goddamn sidewalk.

Instead of heading directly back to
the shop, I found myself heading south on East Lake Road toward my
house. Leaving my bike in the driveway I sat on the grass between
the house and the lake and dropped my head into my hands. Why now?
What does she want? I have a good thing going here with my work at
the shop, my house and my friends. On a good day I can almost
convince myself that I don’t miss her with every breath and wish
that she was here by my side. But obviously what we had didn’t mean
that much to her if she didn’t even tell her cousin and best friend
about me.

Blowing out a breath and a string of
curses I dropped onto my back and stared through the branches
overhead. This girl has been fucking with my head from three
hundred miles away for the last five years, and now she’s back to
do it in person.

October 2006

“Put the damn phone down,
Grady, and get back to work,” my dad grumbled at me from under the
boat. How the hell can he see what I’m doing? Maybe because I’ve
been staring at my phone for the last three days, willing it to
ring or beep with a text or e-mail.

Three days. Three fucking
days! Since I met Lindsay in June, we haven’t gone more than three
hours without communicating in some way, let alone three days.
Something is not right. I was about to jump on my bike and drive
across the state and show up on her front porch, or front door, or
whatever the hell you call the outside of a penthouse in Manhattan.
Then my phone beeped.

Stepping into my dad’s
office for privacy, I dragged my thumb across the screen and smiled
like an idiot when I saw an e-mail from Lindsay. Then I read the
e-mail.

Grady,

We are over. Please stop calling me.

Lindsay

I swear my heart stopped
beating for at least a minute. It’s a fucking miracle I didn’t drop
dead right there. It would have saved a lot of damage and a hell of
a lot of pain.

My phone was the first
thing to go, crushed beneath the heel of my boot. Next went the
desk and everything on it, upended with a roar of rage I barely
recognized as coming from me. My dad and Josh rushed in at that
point, but they weren’t able to keep me from repeatedly slamming my
fist into the wall, destroying the drywall and ripping my knuckles
apart. I barely registered the pain above the blood rushing in my
ears and the tightness in my chest.