his friend. He didn’t need anyone to be his friend. He most certainly didn’t need fake Christmas crap surrounding him to the point of suffocation.
Who cared if Gracie had a reason for backing out? It wasn’t the same as learning your wife was cheating on you, or that she was dead. None of this was the same.
But somewhere in the past few years he’d lost how to parse it all. Which meant he’d let this all go—Gracie, her help, anything to do with Bent. He’d figure this all out on his own where he was safe from the way people were complicated, from the way people could betray you.
“Will. Wait.”
But he couldn’t wait. He had to get back to his house, his mountain. Far away from all this.
He turned away from her, hunching against the cold. There were cars everywhere, filling the lot, clogging both sides of the street. He’d had to park two blocks down.
Before turning the corner to where his Jeep was parked, he gave a final glimpse at Gracie standing there in the twinkling lights, hugging herself and looking worried and like a Christmas gift.
He damn well didn’t need her worry. Or care.
He climbed into his Jeep and started the engine. He drove out of Bent, so distracted with the roiling set of emotions inside him it took miles to realize something wasn’t right.
The engine was making a horrible noise, and the steering wheel wasn’t responding the way it normally did. Will frowned. It was pitch-black on this mountain road and not a good place to stop. Even though traffic wasn’t a big concern, 18-wheelers sometimes rumbled by toward Fairmont.
If he stopped—
The thought, the hope he could fix this situation, died in an instant. When his foot tapped the brake, nothing happened. He swallowed at the trickle of fear, pressing his foot down harder. A grinding noise sounded—a terrible one—and the brake barely responded, slowing his progress only a little bit.
Will swore as he continued to stomp his foot on the brake. Horrible noise, a slight decrease in speed, but not enough. Keeping his eyes on the road and one hand gripped to the steering wheel for dear life, he fished his phone out from the messy console.
He waited for a straightaway on the road, searched for anything that might slow his car down without killing him. All there was in the dark night, he knew, were rocks and trees and death. He couldn’t even see the moon, like some kind of terrible omen.
He dialed Gracie’s number, impatiently swearing as it rang over and over again. He remembered the emergency brake, stomped on the lever, but nothing happened.
She didn’t answer.
Stupid to call her instead of 911, and still he gripped his phone with one hand, while desperately trying to take the curves of the dark road ahead of him. Screeching tires, increasing speed as the road dipped, entire car shuddering.
“Gracie,” he shouted into his phone when her voice mail beep sounded. “I need your help.”
But he couldn’t explain beyond that because he had to drop the phone to grip the steering wheel with both hands. Except that didn’t seem to help. His steering had gone the way of the brakes and now he was careening toward another curve, this time with no hope of doing anything but catapulting over the edge and into a grove of trees.
Paula’s trees.
Gracie chewed her lip as she stared at her phone. Maybe Will had been calling to apologize. Maybe she should have answered.
He was dealing with such complicated emotions and—
Well, no, the problem was he had complex emotions, grief and betrayal, and for two years he’d run away and hermited away from them rather than face them, deal with them, accept them.
And she’d placated and enabled him at every turn. She chewed harder on her lip, staring at the voice mail icon.
“Here. Turn that frown upside down.”
Gracie looked up at Laurel, who had slid a bottle of beer in front of her at her little corner table where she was sitting. By herself.
“Sorry I’m not reveling.”
“Don’t worry. The Carsons are doing enough reveling for all of us,” Laurel said, smiling fondly at the motley crew around them. Delaneys lined the outskirts of the crowd. Most looking a little sour faced, though a few had imbibed enough to mingle with Carsons.
Gracie looked back down at her phone. She should put it away and celebrate her cousin’s engagement. Celebrate the fact the town wasn’t imploding over a Carson and a Delaney getting married.
Yet.
“What’s up, Gracie? It isn’t like you to mope.”
Gracie shook her head, gesturing at the crowd. “It’s so not important. I’ll tell you about it later. Enjoy your night.”
Laurel took a sip from her bottle of beer then glanced around the room, her smile going soft when it landed on her fiancé, Grady Carson. He was laughing with his cousins Noah and Ty behind the bar. They made a handsome, dangerous trio.
Gracie glanced down at her phone again, that obnoxious voice mail icon staring at her.
“So, who’s the guy?”
Gracie’s head jerked to Laurel. “What?”
“I know everyone you know, Gracie,” Laurel said with a smile. “They’re all here. So the only reason you’re staring at your phone and not talking to anyone is...well, a guy.”
Gracie tried to laugh casually, but it came out sounding forced even to her own ears. “There’s no guy.”
“Then what’s with the phone staring?”
“I’m in a deadly battle of Candy Crush.”
Laurel laughed. “Liar.”
“It’s not a guy...per se. I just finally told Will I’d stop...” Gracie shook her head. “This is not engagement party talk.”
Laurel reached across the table and patted Gracie’s arm. Laurel had never been shy about her disapproval of Gracie’s odd relationship with Will. As a sheriff’s deputy, Laurel didn’t take kindly to accusations that the department wasn’t doing its best because the victim had been a Carson, or any of Will’s other accusations over the case.
So, it made Gracie feel silly and small bringing it up, especially at Laurel’s party.
“He’s not my favorite person, but I know you felt a kind of obligation to him, and cutting that off couldn’t have been easy.”
Gracie forced herself to smile. “And something we can discuss tomorrow.”
Laurel nodded. “Fair enough. Just one little piece of advice. Either cut all of it off for good, or accept you’re going to be a part of it. Don’t sit here in a back-and-forth. Make a choice and stick with it. You’ll feel a lot better.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me which choice?”
“You two look far too serious for a party,” Grady said, coming up to them and taking Laurel’s hand in his. “On your feet. You’re going to dance with me.”
“I’m a terrible dancer,” Laurel returned with a laugh, but she let Grady pull her to her feet. She left her beer bottle, grinning as Grady gave her a little spin toward the small throng of people dancing to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
But Laurel smiled over her shoulder at Gracie. “You pick the one you can live with,” she called over the crowd and the music.
One she could live with. Gracie frowned. That