When Gracie Met the Grump Read Online Mariana Zapata

Categories Genre: Contemporary, Fantasy/Sci-fi, Paranormal, Romance, Virgin Tags Authors:
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Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
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Them? The Trinity? “Okay, sure.”

But was it them we had to worry about? Why wasn’t he trying to get in contact with them?

One purple eyeball opened yet again and peered at me, almost expectantly, like he knew something else was bouncing around in my head. I definitely needed to shut up, but I had to get this off my chest. I didn’t want there to be any surprises and might as well do it now.

Might as well take my shot. “Can I tell you something real quick?” I croaked.

It took a moment—where he probably thought about telling me no—but he sighed.

Good enough for me.

“I promise I won’t hurt you or put you at risk. I’ll try my best to do what I can until you’re ready to leave, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep your presence a secret. But…” I swallowed hard. “Would you mind promising me that if anyone shows up here to try and finish whatever it was they did to you, that you won’t kill me in retaliation if I run away? I know that makes me a coward, but there’s nothing I would be able to do other than sacrifice my life in vain to help you, and I said, if anyone deserved a sacrifice, it’s you and the other Trinity members, but I made a promise to someone that I would try my best to live a decent, long life, and I made that promise before I met you. I’m the last person alive in my family. I just don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us,” I straight-up went on. “I don’t want you to haunt me.”

He didn’t laugh.

And if my request surprised him or even irritated him in its honesty, it didn’t reflect on his features. Not even a little bit. The Defender stared at me through that slit of his eye, probably weighing my cowardice, or the very value of my soul, who the fuck knew, before saying in a rough, tired voice, “Fine.”

That easy, huh?

The Defender, The Primordial, and The Centurion were the three most important entities in the world. But at the same time, they’d only been around for twenty-something years. The world had been around before them, and it would be around after them—probably. The same as anyone else.

All life impacts the world, some lives just more directly than others. I knew that better than anyone.

I cleared my throat and squeezed my fingers. “One more question. Do you think it’s safe for me to go for a run at night? Or do you think somebody’s around here and they’ll try and get me to get to you?”

He didn’t even look at me as he closed his eyes and said, so quietly I had to strain, “Do whatever you want.”

Wow, I thought, as his breath rattled and he fell back asleep that easily.

In midconversation.

If I had holy water, I would have put some in a spray bottle and squirted him with it, just to see what happened.

Was talking to me that much torture? I didn’t think I was that awkward or annoying. If I’d been born to any other life, I might have had a lot of friends—if I hadn’t grown up to be so paranoid and watch every word I spoke to strangers. When I tried, I got along with people pretty well. I was trying my best not to talk a lot so that I wouldn’t say something I shouldn’t. I was trying my best to take care of him, the ungrateful….

I peered at his sleeping face.

He wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Not even a little bit. I doubt he was what anyone expected. A crabby, bossy, six-foot-something man. The thought felt like it should have been sacrilegious, but it was the truth.

He was pretty arrogant, and it wasn’t as if he’d talked to me all that much in the first place.

For about the hundredth time, I wondered what exactly I’d gotten myself into.

Lifting my head, I looked around the small bedroom that had been part of my world for the last chunk of my life and remembered how the hell I’d ended up here. No knickknacks, just a single picture of me as a little girl with my grandparents at the park. The rest of my pictures were split between a box in the closet and my safe deposit box. I remembered what had been taken from me before I’d even had a choice.

Everything, that was what.

I would have done anything to be normal. For the chance to have an existence that wasn’t built on so many fucking lies, on bone-softening loneliness that I called privacy to keep my sanity. To be able to totally be myself without fear of repercussion.

Unfortunately, I had to live with the fact that I wasn’t sure that was ever going to be possible.



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