Page 159 of High Reward

“She’s stronger than she thinks she is,” I say against his chest.

“She learned it from you.”

I fall asleep before I can argue with that.

Victor wakes me before the sun’s up, tugging me out of bed by the wrist with a wickedness in his eyes I recognize instantly.

“What are you doing?”

“Sharing something with you.” He pulls me, naked and complaining, through the bedroom doors onto the balcony overlooking the water. The air is cold enough to raise goosebumps down my arms, and the sky’s just starting to go pink at the horizon.

“Victor, it’s freezing.”

“Then you’d better hold onto the railing.” He presses against my back, hard and warm, and the cold stops being my biggest problem.

“Here? Someone could see.”

“No one’s awake for another mile in either direction.” He bends me forward over the railing, one hand splayed flat between my shoulder blades, the other gripping my hip. “And I told you. I wanted to share the sunrise with you.”

He pushes into me slow this time, none of the desperation from the night before, just deep and deliberate while the sky changes color in front of us. I grip the railing hard enough that my knuckles ache, and every thrust punches a sound out of me I can’t hold back no matter how many houses are within earshot.

“Watch it,” he murmurs against my ear, nodding at the horizon. “I want you to remember exactly what this looked like.”

I come with the sun still climbing, his hand clamped over my mouth to catch the sound, my whole body shaking against the railing while he follows right behind me with a groan he doesn’t bother muffling at all.

He leaves two hours later, showered and dressed and looking annoyingly put together for a man who spent half the night against a wall.

“Two days,” he says at the door, tipping my chin up with one finger. “I’ll have a car waiting at the airport.”

“I’ll be there.” And I mean it. I haven’t meant much of anything in four months.

He kisses me once, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world instead of a flight to catch. Then he’s gone, and it feels too quiet the second the door shuts behind him.

I don’t waste time missing him. I start packing.

The opening is in two days, and Trinity’s team apparently works fast, because by the time I’ve folded the last of my clothes into my suitcase, there’s already a text waiting with flight details and a hotel address in Vegas.

By the time the suitcase zips shut, I’m not even nervous. I’m just excited to see them again.

Four months of walking that beach did what it was supposed to do. I know what I want now, and it’s Las Vegas. It’s Victor and Grace. What I don’t want is a ring. I’m never signing my name next to a man’s again, not legally and not ceremonially, and I just have to hope they can live with loving me on those terms.

God, I hope they’ll have me.

As I drive through the small town I’ve been living in, I make one last stop before heading to the airport.

Inside the small cafe bookstore combo, I look around for something to take to Grace.

A grin spreads across my face as I find the perfect thing and take it to the small counter at the side of the room.

“How can I help you?” the young clerk asks with a smile.

I slide my selection across the counter. “I’d like to have this engraved, please.”

Chapter 43

Grace

Mystomachisinknots as I stand in the small bathroom in the back of the Butterfly Effect. We’re due to open the doors in ten minutes, and there’s already a line down the sidewalk. How is this my real life?