Page 41 of Always Been His

“I have always wanted you.” My voice cracks. I reach out and place my hand flat on the front of his shirt, exactly where I had it at the bar an hour ago, and I can feel his heart slamming against his sternum under my palm. “I want you, Grayson. I have always wanted you. I’ve wanted you since I was twelve. I’ve wanted you on stages in seven countries, and in hotel beds where I was sleeping alone, and in every single five-minute FaceTime I could squeeze out of a tour bus bathroom. I haven’t stopped wanting you for a single day, you stubborn, cold, beautiful asshole, and the only thing I’ve ever wanted out of any of this is you.”

His chest is heaving under my palm.

“And I’m a fool.” I sniff loudly. “Because all I do is keep wanting you. No matter what you do.”

His eyes drop to my mouth.

I close the inch between us before I can think about it, and I kiss him.

His mouth is open before mine has even gotten there. The cigarette taste of him hits the back of my throat. His hand comes out of his pocket and his fingers fist hard in the back of my hair while his other hand finds my hip and drags me up against the line of his body. The cold brick of the wall behind him is solid against my forearm, and his thigh slots between mine like it has been waiting three weeks to be there, and I’m falling. I am falling so fast I don’t know which way is up, and the sound that comes out of my mouth and into his is one I haven’t made in two years.

He pulls back.

He pulls back hard. His hand drops out of my hair. His other hand falls off my hip. He steps away from me, and the alley air rushes between us cold enough to hurt, but his chest is still heaving, his mouth is still open, my plum gloss smeared at the corner, and his eyes have gone flat in a way I’ve never seen before.

“Don’t,” he bites, his voice scraped raw. “Do not play with my emotions, Sienna. You fooled me once. I won’t let you do it again.”

“Gray…”

“Go back inside, Birdie. I won’t tell you again.”

My mind is racing. I want to fight him. I want to plant my boots in this alley and demand an explanation. What does he mean by you fooled me once? What version of the last two years has he been living in because it doesn’t match mine. I want to put my hand back on his chest, push him against the brick wall, and make him kiss me again. I want to scream loud enough that the bartender comes outside.

But he is looking at me like he can see through me. Like he did me the courtesy of looking once and isn’t going to do it again.

I close my mouth.

I take one more peek at him, at the cigarette ash on the front of his shirt, the tight roll of his jaw, the clear blue of his eyes, and I know I don’t stand a chance against whatever he is telling himself.

He’ll hate me despite it all, and with my chest caving in, I slip back inside.

11

GRAYSON

It’s been a few days, Sienna Rhodes is still living rent-free in my head, and I’ve run out of ways to explain it to myself.

I should never have let her kiss me at Dom’s birthday party. I should never have let her see what that song did to me. And when she found me in the alley with a cigarette and her hand on the front of my shirt, I should’ve shrugged it off. She has done this before on a larger stage, and I know better than most how she does it. I know the face. I know the voice. I know the specific way she says things that sound true so cleanly you don’t notice they aren’t until you are four hours up I-95 with a fan tote bag in a gas station dumpster behind you.

She looked me in the eye in that alley and told me she wanted me.

The problem is that I believed her when she said she wanted me in Boston too. I believed her when she said she would be right back. I believed her when she kissed me. I believed her when she looked at me like I was the only person in the room and sang that she loved me.

I don’t know if I can survive being wrong twice.

I haven’t slept a full night since; I haven’t even been in my own bed. Four days at a bed and breakfast two miles into town, the one run by the Henley couple off Route 9, with the squeaky third stair and the quilt that smells like someone else’s fabric softener. Forty dollars a night. I’ve spent a hundred and sixty dollars a night to avoid sleeping across the hall from a woman I’m supposed to feel nothing for. Iris thinks I’m in Boston on some business trip, so I’m lying to everyone, and ignoring everyone’s calls, especially hers.

Because if I’m going to be honest, I need to feel nothing so that normal life can resume, and I can’t make myself feel nothing, so those two facts are incompatible. I spend most of my days camped out at the garage, grateful that Bud and Mary are only a third of the way done with their two-month cruise. Taking Douglas Corp calls from the break room. Reviewing vendor contracts at the workbench between jobs. My father built the company so that I only get final say rather than day-to-day management, which means there is a limit to how many hours of work I can manufacture, and I’ve been hitting that limit by noon and picking up a wrench anyway.

Four days of twelve-hour shifts on cars that don’t need twelve hours, at a shop that isn’t mine, because going home means walking through a door and finding Sienna Rhodes on the other side of it, and I am not built for that right now. The worst part is that avoiding her hasn’t helped.

If anything, it has made it worse.

Now I think about her constantly because I never see her. I think about whether she is downstairs drinking coffee. Or sitting on the back porch with that guitar. Or sleeping. Whether she is writing songs about me or writing songs about somebody else, and I am enough of an idiot to keep hoping they are about me anyway.

Every time my phone buzzes, I look for her name. And every time it isn’t her, I tell myself that it’s a good thing.

“Gray, what the hell, man.” Dom’s voice is strained from under the Charger, his hand open above him, palm up, waiting for the piece he asked me for a minute ago. I’ve been standing here holding it for thirty seconds, staring at the wall above the parts cabinet, which isn’t a wall that deserves to be stared at.