Page 47 of Touchdown, Tennessee

“Those plants are incredible,” I said, noticing the tall indoor tree with big, green leaves, sitting at the corner of the living room.

“That’s Grandma Bet’s other hobby. Gardening.”

“She sounds like a sweet lady.”

Gray hummed. “She’s a fucking firecracker. Not exactly sweet, but she is ten times more badass than me. Gardening is her most grandmother-ish activity, trust me.”

I laughed. “You make it seem like she’s out at clubs railing lines of coke on the weekends, or something.”

“Pretty sure she used to do a lot of coke, actually,” he said.

I glanced at him, waiting for him to say he was joking, but he wasn’t. “Damn.”

“She’s had a tough life, and she’s not an angel. But her wildest days are over, and she cares about me more than any other family member I’ve had. In her own way, of course.”

I smiled. “In her own Granny Badass way?”

“We don’t exactly share hot chocolate by the fire or anything. We don’t even talk that much. But we coexist peacefully. That’s all I ask.”

Along the hallway, multiple black and white photos of classic cars were hung on the wall. Next to one of the pictured cars, there was a young girl with dark curls piled on top of her head, posing in a leather jacket next to the driver’s side door.

“Is that her?” I asked him.

“Many, many years ago, yes. Always been into cars.”

“I guess you inherited that from her.”

“One of the only good qualities I got from my bloodline.”

As I followed him down the rest of the short hallway, questions flooded through my mind.

But something held me back from asking any of them.

More than once, he’d made it clear that he wasn’t proud of his family tree, and he didn’t like talking about it. I wanted to askhim so much, about what happened to him as a kid, or how he got to be so insanely smart despite all of it.

Or when he decided that he was going to go to law school.

I am standing next to a future fucking lawyer, I thought as he reached the end of the hall, pushing open a door.

“Best thing about living with Grandma Bet is that she hates big windows in bedrooms. She prefers the lower light levels in the guest room on the opposite side of the house, so the master bedroom was mine to take while I’m living here.”

I stopped in the doorway.

“This… this is not what I was expecting. In any way. What thefuck?”

The bedroom was the most peaceful thing I’d ever seen. The walls were painted a beautiful shade of blue, not jet black like I’d come to expect of him. The sheets were white and fluffy. And the windows were tall, looking out over a portion of the back yard that had a cluster of trees and shrubs.

“You really do have a bad impression of me, don’t you, Peachel?”

I let out a breath, shaking my head. “Don’t repeat this to anyone, ever, but no. I don’t have a bad impression of you.”

“Holy fuck. Is hell freezing over? Andrew Peachel admits he doesn’t hate me?”

“Never saidthat,” I told him, then gave him a little smile. “It just seems like everything you do is so… intense. The way you drive your car. The way you write articles, with a sharp scalpel. The way you fucking look at me.”

“You like how I look at you,” he said softly, and I was glad he glanced out his windows so that he didn’t see theguilty as chargedlook on my face.

“This bedroom is like a fucking oasis. That’s all I mean,” I told him.