Eight Second Angel: The Ballad of Lily Grace (Lonesome Point, Texas Book 7) (11 page)

She’d convinced him that death wasn’t the best way to prove how sorry he was for letting his son down. The best thing he could do for Aaron was to be strong, to stick around to make the world a safer place for other boys who were trying to grow up to be good and kind in a world that did its best to teach them to be cruel.

But he couldn’t do it without her. He couldn’t stick around just to watch her die. It would be too much darkness too soon after he’d dared his first glance back toward the light.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about a story my grandmother told me,” Grace said, laying her hand on top of his, gently running her fingers through the crisp hairs near his wrist. “When I was little.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m in the mood for a story. As long as it doesn’t have any spiders in it. After waking up with that critter on my forehead this morning, I can’t go there yet. It’s too soon.”

“No, no spiders in it.” Her eyes drifted closed once more. “It’s an old story she learned from her grandmother, who came over from Ireland during the potato famine. It was about a giant who fell in love with a fairy. He was so gone on her he spent every day watching her fly from flower to flower, turning winter into spring.”

“Sounds like an ill-fated romance,” Canyon said wryly. “Like that dog that fell in love with an elephant and did nothing but hump the poor beast’s leg all day.”

“Not necessarily ill-fated in that way,” she said with a smile. “Fairies are magic. They can shape shift. So if the fairy had loved the giant, she could have grown as big as a tree and they could have run away to his mountain together.”

She sighed. “But the fairy was in love with the king of the dead and had already made a vow to stay true to him until the day she died. She broke the news to the giant as gently as she could because she knew he was a sweet, big thing. He pretended not to be devastated, but by the time he returned to his mountain, he was sure he would die of a broken heart.”

“Poor guy.” Canyon’s fingers curled lightly into Grace’s stomach. He concentrated on how soft her skin felt, trying to ignore the lump forming in his throat.

“He was a sad case,” Grace agreed. “He cried for a hundred days and a hundred nights until the lands below him were flooded and all the flowers had died. Knowing they had to act before the giant’s tears killed everything living below him, the fairies sent a war party to take his life. They hated to do it, but it was the only way to keep his sadness from destroying the world.”

Grace’s tongue slipped out to dampen her lips. “But the flower fairy couldn’t bear to think of him dying because of her. So she flew up to his mountain ahead of the war party and sang him a magic lullaby that would turn him to stone for a thousand years. She knew that, by the time he woke, she would have passed into the land of the dead. Some fairies live forever, but not the ones who tend the flowers. Eventually, the frost takes hold in them and they can’t rise up to help make springtime anymore. She hoped that knowing she was gone would help the giant let go of his grief and learn to love someone else.”

“But what if she was wrong?” Canyon said, the lump in his throat so large there was no ignoring it. “What if the giant still loved her, even after a thousand years? Even after she was gone.”

Grace opened her eyes, staring up at the blue sky. “I asked Gran the same thing, but she said she didn’t know because the story didn’t have an end yet. There’s a mountain in Ireland named after the fairy with a giant-shaped stone on top. No one knows when he was put to sleep, but Gran swore no one would be surprised if they woke one morning to see that the rock had turned back into a giant and walked away.”

“Or started crying again and flooded the town.”

Grace turned to him, eyes shining. “When did you become such a romantic?”

He took a breath that caught in his chest. “Sometime between seeing a girl standing on the edge of a roof and waking up with her head under my chin this morning.” He sighed, knowing he couldn’t let her go without telling her the truth. “I love you, Grace.”

She swallowed, her throat working. “I love you, too. Would you stay if I could stay?”

He cupped her cheek. “I don’t answer questions like that.”

“Like what?” she asked. “Hard questions?”

“Impossible questions. No matter what I answer, it doesn’t change anything. Either way, you feel bad, and I’m not going to put that on you.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. “I can’t stay, but I can tell you the truth before I go,” she said, echoing his own thoughts from a moment before.

“What truth is that?” he asked.

She took his hand in hers, guiding it away from her face. “My name isn’t Grace Heller. It’s Lily Grace Lawson and I was murdered sixteen years ago.”

He tightened his grip on her hand. “Grace, please—”

“Just listen,” she said. “Then you can tell me I’m crazy, but let me get it out first.”

“All right,” he said, sad to see her slip back into her delusions, especially when they had so little time left.

“I spent that time in a place between this world and the next,” she continued, “too worried about the husband and children I’d left behind to move on. I felt like I’d left too much unfinished. So when a woman offered me the chance to come back to earth to help a soul in need, I said yes. I wanted to save a life if I could, to be of use. And the woman told me I wouldn’t remember anything about who I’d been before.”

She fell silent for a moment, holding his gaze, hers so clear and steady he had no doubt she believed that she was telling the truth.

“But I do remember,” she whispered. “I remember who I was and everything I lost. I remember my husband and how much I loved him. That’s how I know.”

“Know what?” he asked.

“That this is real,” she said, voice catching. “That we could be something special. I’ve felt it twice. That means you can find it again. If you try.”

“I don’t want to feel it again. I don’t want it with anyone but you,” he said, anger and grief warring inside of him. “If you’re my guardian angel, then whoever sent you here should let you stay. Because I’m going to need you for a lot longer than a week.”

Like the rest of my life
, he thought.

“That’s not the way it works,” she said with a twist of her lips. “And I’m clearly no angel or I wouldn’t have let you fall in love with me.”

“You didn’t let anything happen, Grace.” He sat up, propping his elbows on his bent knees and driving his hands through his hair. “This isn’t real. You’re not a guardian angel sent to save me. And I shouldn’t take you to the bus station tomorrow, I should take you somewhere to get help.”

She laughed, making him turn to see her lying on her back, shaking her head back and forth. “Pigheaded. You’re so damned pigheaded.”

He sighed. “I’m not pigheaded, I just—”

“You’ll see that I’m right someday,” she said, not a trace of doubt in her tone. “You’ll die and wake up in the land in-between and you’ll want to apologize to me. So you might as well do it now while you’ve got the chance.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Fine. I’m sorry, Lily Grace, for not believing your perfectly sane stories about the afterlife and guardian angels.”

“I never said I was a guardian angel,” she said, sitting up beside him. “You put those words in my mouth.”

“I’d rather put my tongue in your mouth,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist.

“Not until we’re back at the tent,” she said, flipping his hair away from his forehead. “You know once we start kissing we don’t like to stop.”

“No, we don’t,” he agreed. Then added seriously, “Am I a bad man for taking advantage of a delusional person?”

“You’re not taking advantage of me,” she said, her gaze softening. “And I think deep down you know it. You know I’m not crazy, you’re just too stubborn to admit it.”

He didn’t respond, but as they dove back into the water for another swim, he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. Or about how quickly she’d learned to swim, how mature she was for someone so young, and how grief-stricken she’d been after seeing the men she claimed had been her boys.

And what about the name she’d given him? Did that woman really exist?

By the time they headed back to the campsite, he’d decided it was worth a search on his phone while Grace was showering to see what he could learn about Lily Grace Lawson.

It was crazy. But no crazier than the other decisions he’d been making lately, he thought grimly as they arrived at their campsite to find a van parked beside his truck and Rudy sitting on their picnic bench cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife.

“What’s up?” Canyon asked, fighting the urge to guide Grace behind him to shield her from Rudy’s stare. He didn’t want the other man to know how much it got to him when he leered her way.

“Change of plans,” Rudy said, working on his filthy thumbnail. “Drake knows one of the border guards on duty tonight. He’s promised to send you straight through as long as you get in and out before three a.m. when his shift is over. If you leave right now, you ought to be able to make it. The van’s loaded and ready to go.”

Canyon frowned. “I can’t go tonight.”

Rudy’s brows lifted. “Yes, you can, son. This is your chance to get this done with no stress, no mess. It would be stupid to wait.”

“Then call me stupid,” he said. “I can’t go tonight. Grace and I have plans I can’t break.”

“Are you kidding me?” Rudy looked up, gesturing toward Grace with his pocketknife. “You’re going to put twenty large on the line because you don’t want to piss off your bitch?”

“Get out,” Canyon ground out, pointing a finger toward the van, his decision made. “Get in your van and forget you ever knew my name. I’m not interested in working with you.”

Rudy jumped off the table. “No, son. It doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to say no anymore. We don’t have time to find another driver. Now get your ass in the van and get on the road.”

“Go lock yourself in the bathroom, Grace,” he muttered softly, sensing this was about to turn ugly.

“No,” she whispered, grabbing hold of his tee shirt. “I’m not leaving you alone. We should both run, I don’t—”

She didn’t have time to finish her sentence before Rudy rushed them with the knife.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lily Grace

The most violent people in the world are also the poorest. And they know it.

They know they have nothing—no love, no creativity, no passion, no tenderness—and are fiercely jealous of those who do. In the dusty, diseased emptiness of their minds a red-faced monster screams in the dark, insisting the only way to stop their pain is to steal from those who still have riches left inside of them.

But you can’t steal light or love; you can only extinguish it.

Sixteen years ago, a man with nothing inside of him but fear and hate had put out Lily’s light and stolen her from the people she loved. Clint had taken her life, but she refused to stand by while Rudy stole Canyon’s. The world needed men like him too much, good men brave enough to stand up to the poor, angry monsters.

“Run!” Canyon pushed her behind him, but instead of running to safety she shot around him and aimed herself at Rudy. She came at him from the side, palms colliding with his thick shoulder seconds before he and his knife reached Canyon.

Rudy roared as he fell. He’d been so focused on Canyon he hadn’t anticipated her attack. It was relatively easy to knock him off balance, but Lily knew it wouldn’t be easy to fight him off once he gained his feet. She and Canyon had to get out of there.

She spun, grabbing his hand and tugging him toward the beach. “Run! We can get one of the lifeguards to call for help.”

Canyon hesitated only a moment before he launched into motion. Lily dropped his hand and they both ran, arms pumping as they cleared the campsite and started down the road toward the beach. She was pushing with everything she had, but she could sense that Canyon was holding back, staying with her instead of sprinting as fast as he could.

She was about to tell him to run faster—to get to safety because his life was the only life that mattered—when a flash of movement in her peripheral vision made her head jerk to the left in time to see a rock the size of a baseball hit the back of Canyon’s head.

He didn’t make a noise as he collapsed, simply crumpled to the ground like a basket of laundry tossed to the floor, his cheek slapping hard against the pavement. Lily screamed, a cry wrenched from the core of her being, and ground to a stop so quickly that she stumbled and fell, rolling painfully across the cracked road. She turned with a sob, scrambling on her hands and knees back to Canyon, the thin skin on her kneecaps tearing.

“Help!” she screamed as she crawled, sensing that Rudy was still coming though she couldn’t pull her eyes away from Canyon’s limp body. “Someone help me please, my friend’s hurt! Help!”

She reached Canyon’s side just as a loud male voice shouted across the parking lot. “What happened? Did he pass out?”

Lily heard footsteps approaching from her left and glanced up, seeing an older man in a khaki fishing cap and a fit, older woman dressed for hiking hurrying toward her from the trailhead. A younger couple, carrying a swim bag and towels, were not far behind them.