Grady couldn’t bear the compassion in her eyes, the soft sympathetic hitch in her voice. It affected him on a level he’d spent a lot of years pretending didn’t exist and that fed the anger already burning through his system. He’d rather she be angry. That way he could maintain his rage, too.

He didn’t need it diluted by her sympathy.

“I may live outside Credence, but I’m part of this town whether I like it or not. And what I don’t need is a line of well-meaning townsfolk appearing with their apple pies and their cobbler and their fucking platitudes the second you hightail it out of town. I had enough pity to last me a lifetime seventeen years ago.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.” Her voice wobbled, and she cleared her throat. “How do we fix it?”

Grady blanched at her question. “We don’t do anything. I’ll fix it.” Jesus, she’d done enough already. “I’ll deal with it. I deal with things—that’s what I do.”

She looked like she was going to say something, opened her mouth, even, then shut it again and didn’t say anything. “What?” he demanded.

“If you don’t mind an observation? I don’t think you deal at all. Not talking about things isn’t dealing with them. They don’t go away just because you don’t say their name, Joshua.”

Grady hated that she’d known him for two weeks and had already nailed the way he coped with the crap that had come his way. Just one more thing pissing him off, itching like a fever in his blood. “Oh, you mean like how you didn’t mention to me about your mom telling Bob Downey about us and just kept your fingers crossed that it wouldn’t get out?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, compassion turning to sarcasm. “That’s exactly the same thing.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry, because I’m not going to deal with it your way. I’m going to tell my aunt and uncle the truth.”

“Wh-what?”

Suzanne’s expressive face ran the gamut of emotions, from confusion to questioning to irritated, then finally alarm. He could watch her face all damn day.

“But—”

“Don’t worry.” He cut her off before she could object. “They’ll keep your little secret.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ll ask them to,” he said testily.

He knew Burl and Cora would play along with the deception if he asked, even though it would go against their principals of honesty and decency. Which made Grady feel extra shitty. As if regular shitty wasn’t bad enough. This was exactly the kind of thing he knew was going to happen when Suzanne had brought this proposal to him.