Page 3 of Always Been His

“Okay,” I breathe, ignoring my skittering heart.

He smiles at me, slow and confident, the corners of his mouth pulling in a way that makes my knees do something dumb.

He lets go of the bottle.

He turns and starts down the beach toward the shoreline, the bottle opener swinging at his hip, and my flip-flops are already moving through the sand after him before my brain has caught up. The bonfire fades behind us. The music gets thinner as the ocean gets louder, small waves pushing up the sand in a slow steady rhythm.

“How is Brown?” I ask, hurrying to catch up with him, my shoulder bumping his bicep before I can correct it. He is taller than I remember.

“It’s school,” he says, kicking a piece of driftwood out of his path. “The program is good. The city is fine.”

“The girls?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow at him.

“Excuse me?” He looks down at me with one eyebrow raised to match mine, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“The girls at Brown, Gray,” I say, drinking from the bottle of Corona. The lip of the bottle is wet where his mouth was a minute ago and I am trying very hard not to think about that. “Iris said you brought one home over spring break.”

“Iris doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he counters.

“Iris doesn’t lie,” I point out, nudging the bottle back into his palm.

“Iris is a menace and a big mouth,” he grumbles, taking the bottle back, his fingers closing around mine for a beat before I let go.

“Iris is my best friend,” I correct, smiling up at him.

“There was a girl, but she’s a friend,” he says, the slow smile coming back. “And way more into Iris than she’s into me, found that out the hard way.”

I laugh. It comes out louder than I mean it to, skipping out across the water, and he finds the small of my back to steer me around a patch of sea grass I didn’t see in the dark.

“What about you?” he asks, lifting the bottle to his mouth, his eyes cutting sideways at me. “California. LA boys are… something.”

“I’ll let you know,” I say, watching the way his throat moves when he swallows. It shouldn’t be this mesmerizing, but I can’t drag my eyes away.

“Right, you leave soon,” he says, handing the bottle back, his fingertips dragging over my knuckles when our hands meet.

“Two days.” I don’t want to talk about college. Not tonight. Not with Grayson. But any conversation is better than watching him walk away.

“You scared?” He slows his pace so I don’t have to skip-step to keep up.

“Yes.” My voice trembles.

Grayson stops and peers down at me, and my brain leaps to the version of tonight where he cups my face in both hands and kisses me on the lips, and it’s everything I’ve dreamed about for the last six years.

“I don’t know how to be anybody but the version of me that lives here,” I say, the words slipping out before my filter has a chance to catch them. The beer and the Corona and Grayson’s nearness are all conspiring against me. “I don’t know how to be Sienna in a city where nobody knows my grandmother, or what happened to my parents, or my favorite ice cream flavor. I like being here where everyone knows me.”

“They’re going to love you out there,” he says, brushing a curl back from my temple before he realizes what he’s doing. “You shouldn’t worry about it.”

“You don’t know that,” I murmur, leaning into his hand before he can pull back.

“I do.” His fingers linger at the side of my neck for a beat too long before they fall away. “You’re hard not to love, Sienna.”

My heart stumbles so hard it almost hurts. Electricity crawls up my chest, and suddenly I’m hyperaware of everything, the sweat coating my skin, the spot on my neck that’s still burning from his touch.

“You too, Gray.” I avert my eyes to the water while the tension crackles between us.

I lift both hands and twist my curls up off the back of my neck, trying to catch even a little breeze against my skin. When I face him again, he is watching me with an expression I can’t read.

His eyes flick to my mouth first. Then lower, just for a second, catching on the stretch of bare skin above my low-cut dress, before dragging slowly back to my eyes like he hates himself a little for doing it.