Page 3 of Stitch & Steel
“I didn’t want you worryin’. You’re still young, still out there living.”
I reached for her hand. “I came to be here. Whatever you need.”
She patted my fingers. “You’ve always been good, even when you were little and caught that snake with a Tupperware bowl and tried to make it a pet.”
I laughed. “I forgot about that.”
“I didn’t,” she said with a smile. “I still got the bowl.”
After dinner, we played gin rummy on the living room rug just like old times. She beat me twice before I realized she was cheating, just like she used to.
“You always stack the deck,” I accused.
“Only when the company’s worth it,” she winked.
As the sun dipped below the hills, we moved to the window seat and watched fireflies light up the grass like tiny lanterns. Gran sipped tea while I leaned my head on her shoulder.
“Time flies,” she whispered.
“Too fast.”
“Why aren’t you married yet, Bella Grace?”
I groaned. “Gran.”
“I’m serious. Pretty girl like you. Smart. Sweet. You ought to have a man by now.”
“Men in the city are... different,” I muttered.
“How so?”
“They’re rich and fast. They use apps to find girls like they're shopping. They lie. Cheat. Sometimes date five women at once. It’s exhausting.”
Gran clicked her tongue. “You want my advice?”
“Always.”
“You need someone slow. Solid. Who sees you. Not what you can be for them.”
I looked out at the dark road where the sound of a distant motorcycle echoed faintly in the hills.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Maybe I do.”
Two
LOGAN
She wasfresh like a spring morning—barely-there makeup, eyes too big for her face, lips the color of peach blossoms and just as soft-looking. She smelled like citrus shampoo and clean cotton, not club perfume or cigarette smoke. It hit me harder than I expected.
Bella Grace.
I knew the name before I ever laid eyes on her. Gran talked about her like a firecracker in a jam jar. Smart. Stubborn. City-worn. And way too good for the kind of men that hung around our world.
Still, I wasn’t ready for how she looked at me.
Or rather, how shedidn’tlook at me.
She didn’t flirt. Didn’t lean in or touch my arm like the club girls did, trying to start something they couldn’t finish. She crossed her arms and challenged me with her eyes, like I was some outlaw in her classroom who forgot to raise his hand.
