Page 51 of Always Been His

He presses his forehead to mine.

“I love you,” he says, low and rough and final, like he has been holding the words in his chest for so long it’s a release for him too. “God, Sienna, I love you.”

Then he moves again, and the world narrows to just us, just this, just his arms and his voice and his name in my throat as I come apart against the tree with the rain coming down on both of us.

He buries his face in my neck, his body trembling against mine as we both reach our climax together, and I hold him in my arms, our heartbeats in sync, our bodies molded together.

For a long moment there is only the sound of rainfall and our heavy juddering breaths.

Then his arms wrap around me, slow and gentle, cradling me from the bark. His lips press to my temple. My cheek. The corner of my mouth. Each kiss deliberate. Each kiss its own sentence.

“I love you,” he murmurs into my hair, quieter this time, like he’s getting used to how it sounds.

I press my face into his chest and let him hold me in the rain.

He sets me down carefully when my legs make it clear they have opinions about standing, keeps one arm around my waist, his hand warm and steady at my hip.

“Let’s get you inside,” he murmurs into the top of my head.

I nod, not trusting my voice with anything else.

He bends and scoops my hoodie and leggins up off the wet grass, presses them into my hands, and buttons his jeans one-handed with the ease of a man who has done it in worse conditions. His shirt is somewhere in the dark behind us and neither of us goes looking for it. I struggle into my leggins and press the soaking hoodie to my chest with both arms because, at this point, it isn’t worth putting on, and we gaze at each other in the rain for one more second.

Then Grayson grabs the guitar in one hand, and my hand in the other, and runs.

I shriek, half laughing, half genuinely unprepared for how fast he moves, and then I’m running too, bare feet slapping the wet grass, cold water spraying up the back of my ripped leggings with every step, the hoodie pressed to my chest with one arm and my other hand locked in his. We hit the porch steps at the same time, crashing through the back door into the kitchen in a burst of cold air and rain and noise, both gasping, saturated, laughing in the breathless, stupid way that happens when your body has been through something it doesn’t have a category for yet.

“Oh my god,” I wheeze, doubling over the kitchen island, my wet curls falling in my face. “I’m so cold.” My teeth chatter to prove the point.

“We need to get you dry.” He sets the guitar down on top of the island. His bare chest is heaving, rain still dripping off the line of his jaw onto Esme’s clean floor as his hand hovers between us.

“I don’t want to drip all over the house.” I push my curls back with my free hand and peer down at my ripped leggings, the soaking wet hoodie pressed to my chest to cover my nakedness, fully aware that someone might come in and find me half-naked.

He looks at me. The corner of his mouth pulls into a smile like he’s contemplating taking me again, right here on the kitchen counter.

“Stay here,” he says, already moving toward the kitchen stairs. “I’ll get you something dry.”

He takes the stairs two at a time, and I stand in the middle of the kitchen dripping onto the tile, pressing the wet hoodie to my chest and trying to locate my heartbeat, which has been missing since the moment when he said ‘I love you’ into my hair in the rain.

I’m still standing there, still searching for it, when the hall door swings open.

“Sienna.” Iris’s voice comes fast and high and wrong before she has even fully crossed the threshold. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I need to tell you something. The tabloids⁠—”

She freezes.

I watch her eyes take inventory. The ripped leggings hanging off my hip. The saturated hoodie I’m holding to my chest with both arms. My hair, destroyed by the rain, blue tips clinging to my neck. The puddles at my feet.

Her mouth closes.

Her eyes move to the kitchen staircase.

Then back to me.

The one thing I was afraid of happening plays out in real time across Iris’s face, and my brain, which has been pleasantly offline for the last hour, lurches back to life in a full-body panic. This is Iris. This is my best friend since first grade, the girl who made me swear on the grave of her childhood goldfish that I would never, under any circumstances, touch her brother. The girl who has been the most constant thing in my life for twenty years. The girl who is currently standing in her kitchen doorway looking at me like she doesn’t recognize me.

“Iris.” My voice comes out thin. “It isn’t…”

“What,” she whispers, “is going on?”