Page 54 of Always Been His

“I don’t believe you,” I say. “I swore to her I would never do anything with you. Like never. I’m a fucking harlot.”

He pushes off the frame in one motion, crosses the room in three strides, and takes my face in both hands before I’ve finished the sentence, tilting my chin up so I have no choice but to look at him.

“Don’t call my girl a harlot,” he says, low.

My brain short circuits.

His girl. I am Grayson Douglas’s girl. I have been in love with this man since sixth grade and have spent years telling myself it was inconvenient and impossible and the one thing I wasn’t allowed to want. And here he is standing in the guest room of his own house holding my face in both hands and calling me his girl like it’s the most natural thing he has ever said.

I am going to need a minute.

He kisses me softly on the lips, slow and tender, memorizing how I taste and feel against him.

My hands find the front of his thermal and hold on. “My girl?” I say, my voice smaller than I intended.

“Yeah, well almost,” he says.

I blink at him. “What do you mean, almost?”

The corner of his mouth tugs upward. He releases my face gently, like he picked it up and is returning it, and straightens up off the bed.

“Get dressed,” he says. “Something comfortable. Meet me out front in an hour.”

“Grayson,” I say, sitting up fully now, my hands still holding the front of his thermal. “What does ‘almost’ mean?”

“One hour, Songbird,” he says, unhooking my fingers from his shirt gently and setting them in my lap. Then he walks back out the door, pulling it to the same three-inch gap.

I lie back on the duvet and stare at Florida on the ceiling and think about how I am in love with the most infuriating man alive and all I want to do is tell my best friend about it. I push myself up before I spiral again.

Grayson is right. Iris will come around. She has to. I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t.

The shower is the first decision I’ve made in the last week that doesn’t require any effort. I turn the water as hot as the old pipes will allow and stand beneath it with both hands braced against the tile, letting the heat work into the knots in my shoulders and neck.

I wash my hair twice, slowly working through each braid the way Grandma Mary taught me when I was nine. While the conditioner sits, I stare at the grout lines and let my mind wander. Iris eating pasta. The way Grayson’s jaw goes tight when he is trying not to make things worse. The grainy tabloid photo of me in front of Mason and Hender’s, looking less like a celebrity than a kid pretending to be one.

And the night in the rain.

I’ve been turning it over every day, in fragments because the whole memory is too much to hold at once. His hands on my jaw. The bark against my back. The way he said ‘I love you’ the second time, quieter, against my hair, like he was still getting used to them on his tongue. I’ve been getting used to them too. They find me in odd moments,in the shower, in the dark, sitting on the porch with a guitar in my lap,and every time they land oddly in my chest.

I rinse out the conditioner and force myself to turn off the water before I waste another ten minutes standing beneath it replaying the same memories. By the time I step out, the bathroom mirror is completely fogged over.

I dry off, wrap a towel around myself, and sit cross-legged on the guest bed with my damp hair hanging loose around my shoulders. Digging in my bag, I turn on my Echo phone, the one I turned off and didn’t look at for the whole six weeks I’ve been home. For a minute, I stare at my phone in my hands, knowing exactly what I’m hoping to see and hating myself a little anyway for hoping.

The notifications flood my screen the instant I power on the phone. Hundreds of messages from the week the story broke pile up alongside fresh threats from Joshua in legal. Bow’s texts are a chaotic record of my disappearance: pleas for contact, demands for confirmation of life, and a single, cryptic question mark sent at two in the morning. I ignore them all, open Instagram, and scroll through the comments on my final posts.

The fans are kinder than I deserve. A girl named Maya has checked in every four days, offering gentle words of support, while a stranger shares a paragraph about how my music carried him through his parents’ divorce. Their collective hope that I am simply okay sits heavy in my chest.

I point my phone toward the window without leaving the bed. Rain streaks the glass in uneven lines, tracing the soft-gray Maine light that filters into the room. I capture the smear of condensation near the faulty seal,an ugly, honest photo,and post it with a two-word caption: Only human. I add the opening bars of a Miley Cyrus song, hit post before I can second-guess the choice, and flip the phone face-down.

I count to twenty. By twelve, the mattress hums with the steady, insistent rhythm of incoming vibrations. I don’t look. I pull on jeans, an oversized sweatshirt, and boots, then braid my damp hair back. I look in the mirror, fix a curl and then make my way downstairs.

Grayson is leaning on his black Jeep, arms crossed. I step off the porch, and his eyes find me with that intense, guarded warmth they’ve carried for the last week.

The corner of his mouth twitches into a ghost of a smile. He reaches past me to open the passenger door. “Get in the truck, Songbird. We got a date to make up for.”

15

GRAYSON