Page 41 of The Grump I Loathe (The Lockhart Brothers #3)

Cassie caught me coming down the hall, carrying a large vase filled with peacock feathers. “Stole this from work for our new place. Hey, you look happy. Did you finally get a chance to talk to Connor?”

“I think that’s a lost cause,” I said as my emotional high came crashing down. Instead of trying to stuff my reaction down, I let the sadness overwhelm me.

Cassie shifted her vase into one arm and hugged me with the other. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got some clear quartz with your name on it.”

Connor

“Hey,” I said as Grace got into the car, slamming the door harder than necessary. “How was Grandma’s?”

She shrugged, buckling her seatbelt. “Fine.”

“Fine,” I mumbled under my breath. Everything was fine lately. “That’s all?”

“Yep.”

I waved out the open window to where Mom stood on the front porch.

I knew if I got out of the car, she’d ask if I’d talked to Eddie yet, and I wasn’t in the mood to be cross-examined again .

I’d already spent the afternoon indulging Max on another one of his outings.

Since the wedding debacle, he’d doubled down on his efforts because apparently I was sulking. Which was a lie. I was also fine .

“What’d you two do?” I asked as I pulled away from the curb.

Grace looked out the window. “Nothing really.”

Silence swallowed us up for the rest of the ride, slowly eating away at me.

By the time we got home, I was itching to say something, but I had no idea where to start.

Things had been off since the wedding. Since Italy.

I thought the Juni Protocol might be the bridge back together, but Grace hadn’t been interested in playing Shadow with me.

She dropped her bag at the foot of the stairs when we got inside, then went to crash in the living room.

“Hang on,” I called. “It’s almost time for your call with Mom.”

She turned on her heel, holding her hand out for my phone. While she darted off to call Ali, I parked myself at the kitchen island and opened my laptop to put the finishing touches on the custody arrangement I’d promised my lawyer.

It had been radio silence on Ali’s end since the wedding, but I was hopeful once an actual arrangement was on the table, her lawyer would come back with a counter proposal at the very least. We needed a starting point.

Grace came back into the kitchen, holding the phone out to me.

“You get a hold of her?” I asked, only then noticing that the call was still connected.

“She wants to talk to you,” Grace said, avoiding my eye.

I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“What is your problem?” Ali snapped .

I rubbed my eyes. God, would anything ever be easy with her? “Now what did I do?”

“You mean besides screwing with my wedding and pestering my lawyer about custody?”

I stiffened, striding over into a side room and closing the door firmly to keep Grace from overhearing.

“I didn’t screw with your wedding,” I said.

“I’m sorry the lawyer called at a bad moment, but your lawyer is to blame for the call as much as mine.

I forgot to tell Ben to wait until the next business day, and you apparently didn’t tell Carlotta you weren’t available for calls either. That’s on both of us.”

Ali scoffed. “And knocking over the cocktails?”

“I wasn’t even there when that happened. And from what I’ve heard, it was the result of Grace getting fed up with you browbeating her for not jumping to take a scrap of attention from you after you’d been ignoring her all night.”

“I was not ignoring her all night!” Ali screeched.

“Oh, give me a fucking break. You absolutely were. I saw her come over and try to get your attention and you literally brushed her aside so you could keep talking to the Wilders.”

There was a beat of silence. “I…I did?” she asked, her voice a lot smaller than it had been a minute before.

I huffed out a sigh. “Yeah,” I said, my voice quieter, too. “You did.”

“I didn’t mean—You know how I get. When I’m caught up in something, I just?—”

“I know.” I breathed in slowly, held it for a beat, then let it out again.

“I know. But Grace isn’t some project you can put down and pick up again when you remember it exists.

She loves you and she wants to spend time with you, but if you keep brushing her off—canceling your plans with her at the last minute, forgetting to call, treating her like an afterthought—then her saying no to the mother-daughter dance is going to be the least of your problems.”

“It’s just the wedding that took up so much of my time?—”

“No,” I interrupted, my voice quiet but firm.

“It’s not the wedding. It’s you . I used to pull you away from whatever was your latest obsession.

I’d make you unplug and spend time with Grace—but I’m not there in your daily life anymore.

You have to be the one to police yourself.

To make sure that when you make a promise to Grace, you keep it.

Because Sawyer…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to be accused of jealousy again, but there were things that needed to be said.

“Because Sawyer’s not going to do what you did, right?” Ali stated. “That’s what you want to say.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”

There was a long pause where all I could hear was the sound of metal rubbing against metal. Ali was fiddling with her necklace. She always did that when she was anxious. “Sawyer pulls me away from my work so I can focus on him ,” she admitted. “He won’t do it for Grace.”

“That’s certainly the impression I’ve gotten.”

“He loves me, you know. And I love him.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “But he doesn’t show the slightest interest in Grace.

I get the impression that he’s happiest when she’s not around.

And if that’s what you want too, then I can deal with that.

I’ll talk to my lawyer, you’ll talk to yours, and we’ll get it on paper that custody is completely mine, without visitation.

Grace won’t like it, but she’ll learn to move on.

If you’re not going to be in her life, it’ll be better to have a clean break.

” I didn’t want Grace to go through what Eddie did, and I was going to make damn sure it didn’t happen .

“That’s not what I want,” Ali said quickly. “I’ll…I’ll talk to Sawyer. I’ll make it clear that Grace and I are a package deal. And I’ll do better about making time for her going forward, and not canceling phone calls or plans. Maybe hire a PA to make sure I unplug when I need to.”

“Good,” I said, letting out a sigh. “That’s go?—”

“And you’ll do better, too,” Ali added.

“…What?”

“Connor…” Ali tsk ed. “Why do you think Grace gave you the phone?”

“Because you wanted to yell at me for what happened at your reception?”

She chuckled. “Well, yeah , I absolutely wanted to yell at you for that. But that wasn’t Grace’s motive. What she wanted was for me to talk some sense into you.”

“This is about Eddie, isn’t it?” I asked, barely holding back a groan.

“Yeah. Look, I didn’t realize you two were that serious. And I’m sorry for anything I might have said at the wedding.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What did you say?”

“I might have implied she was a rebound.”

“To her? Ali?—”

“And like I said, I’m sorry for that. Because from what Grace tells me, she’s really special to you. And she makes you happy. When was the last time you actually let yourself have something just for the joy of it?”

“I’ve got other things to worry about than the amount of joy in my life,” I ground out .

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t. The company is thriving. Grace is amazing. Your mom has built an incredible life for herself. Don’t you think it’s time you finally prioritized yourself and what you really want?”

I took a beat, considering her words. Of all the conversations I figured I’d be having with Ali, this wasn’t one of them. But maybe she was right. Maybe I finally did have the chance to open myself up to real love, real happiness.

“If you’re not going to do it for yourself, don’t you think you should do it for Grace? I want her to grow up seeing the adults in her life be happy—with work they enjoy, and friendships that support them, and love that makes everything worthwhile. That’s what I want to model for her. Don’t you?”

It was a valid point. If I wanted to give Grace the best life she could have, didn’t I owe it to her to build a good life for myself? How else would she know it was possible?

And no matter how I tried or who I imagined, the only person I saw at my side, truly making me happy, was Eddie.

No one else was going to argue with me over quesadillas like she did or get me addicted to M&M’s the way she did or turn a pancake breakfast into a dance party like her. There was no one like Eddie.

No one else was going to come in and flip my world upside down.

“Well?” Ali said.

“I’ll consider it,” I said. “What you said.”

“Good. And we should take another look at our custody arrangement, but what I really think we need to do is consult Grace about it. Let her decide what days she wants to spend with both of us.”

“That’s…actually a good idea,” I admitted, feeling ridiculous for not thinking about that myself .

“I know,” Ali said. “I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

“Bye.” I hung up and headed back to the kitchen. Grace was waiting for me on the stool, looking over the custody draft.

“I have some thoughts,” she said.

I sat down on the stool next to hers. “And I’d love to hear them.”

She nodded. “Did Mom get through to you? Are you going to fix things with Eddie?”

I sighed. I didn’t know if I could. “You’d be okay with that? If I tried?”

Grace grabbed my hand with both of hers. “Of course! I really like her, Dad.”

Staring into Grace’s eyes, I was forced to confront the weight of that truth. I really liked her, too. No, I loved her. I’d fallen hard for Eddie. Too hard to let her go, so now I had to figure out how to get her back.

How to have her in my life.

Grace beamed at me, and I immediately amended my last thought. What I needed was to figure out how to have her in our lives.