[[ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER ONC]]Grace finally has it all together. Her smoothie bar is running and generating profit, she's got a second store in the works, and no one is around to break her heart. Not this time.
When her coworkers decide she needs a vac...
"Hey, why so glum?" Grace asked. She'd found Reid slumped against the front door to the dance studio with his head in his hands. His normal dance gear was switched out for the most mundane looking jeans and white t-shirt. It still made her heart pitter patter wildly in her chest.
He held up a piece of paper to her without a word. Neat black type covered the page. At the bottom was a signature and an address for one of the top schools in the area. He'd been applying to places all over but this was the one his heart was set on. It didn't take a genius to notice the wording of the first sentence and to know anything that started with the word regret was not going to be a happy ending.
"Oh, Reid," Grace started. Words failed her in that moment and she offered him a hand instead. Once he was back on his feet she nodded and pocketed the keys to her shop. "Alright, we're going out. I can't have you moping around in front of my store and having people say I upset the great Reid Bennet."
Ops! Esta imagem não segue nossas diretrizes de conteúdo. Para continuar a publicação, tente removê-la ou carregar outra.
A size ten shoe was wedged between the door and its frame. The tennis shoes looked nothing like the sleek black shoes he'd had on earlier. Grace had gotten a good look at them earlier while she'd been bent over staring down at them. The canvas of the tennis shoes looked softer, more malleable.
She could definitely crush those in the door if she pushed hard enough.
"Grace, you're going to break my foot if you keep that up," Reid sighed. Both of his hands were still held up at slightly awkward angles to keep the drinks safe from her rough handling of the door.
"Oh no, the great Reid Bennet out of commission for a broken foot. How will the world recover?" she snapped. After another failed attempt to kick his foot out, Grace jerked the door open enough to step into the hall. Her brown hair was wild from the vicious door slamming. It wasn't wild enough to hide her red rimmed eyes.
The green smoothie was held out to her again, more insistently this time. "What did that guy say to make you cry?"
The silence that grew between them was enough to make Grace feel as if she'd gone deaf. He had to be joking. When she'd known him, Reid had been a pretty funny guy. Not a day had gone by that he wasn't reading her a stupid joke from a popsicle stick and poking her until she laughed. So he had to be joking now while he stood in front of her hotel room.
"You can't have been crying over me, not after you walked out on me like you did," Reid said. He took a slow sip of his drink and wiggled hers at her. "Wanna talk about it?"
Grace gently took the drink from his hand and held her hand up. "Can you wait just a minute? I want to throw on some pants, you sort of lost short shorts viewing privileges," she joked. After getting confirmation from Reid that he would wait, she slipped back into the room and left the door half closed.
"I never expected to see you in a place like this," he said from the door. "Come into some huge inheritance or something?"
"Or something," Grace called back. She returned to the door with a towel draped over her arm. "Don't move please." It wasn't like he had time to move as she shoved him back and threw the towel down in front of him. One firm tug and he'd stepped onto the towel. "Nice to see you still follow instructions when told to."
