Page 77 of Always Been His

I breathe out as the comments explode with questions, most I can’t answer.

“I have new music,” I tell my fans. “And I wanted to tease that for y’all if I can?” I look at the comment strip. “I don’t know exactly when you’ll hear it yet. But I want to give you something tonight. Because you waited. Because you always wait.”

I settle the keyboard in my lap, tuck it steady against me, and find the chord. Simple. The first one that came to me three weeks ago lying in the lupine field with stars above me and Grayson’s hand warm in mine, and the feeling of being so entirely full that I didn’t know what to do with it. The feeling of something that had been waiting a long time, finally existing.

I don’t know what the next version of my career looks like. I don’t know if there’s a stage or rooms like this one, just me, a keyboard, and the people who show up anyway. I don’t know if I can make myself go back to the machine, the tour bus, the sold-out nights, the wig, and the schedule that swallows years whole. But I know this song is true, and I know these people have been waiting, and I know that if I don’t put some piece of it into the world right now, I am going to lose my nerve. So, I play the opening chord of ‘Heartbeats’ and I open my mouth, and I sing.

“And the sun doesn’t shine as bright,” I begin, soft, just the first line, the melody sitting low and warm the way it sits when a song is really finished. “And the world don’t turn as fast. And you can be close enough. Oh, you’re dear to me. Oh, you’re my second heartbeat.”

I play the chord out and let it resolve and sit there for a moment with the last note still in the air, and a smile on my face I cannot get rid of because the song is about Grayson, and 1.1 million people just heard it, and I don’t regret a single bar.

I look at the comment strip.

she is so in love right now you can literally hear it in her voice

she’s literally glowing through the screen

HEARTBEATS! HEARTBEATS! HEARTBEATS!

i am on the floor i am on the actual floor

I read the comments, and somewhere underneath it all, I’m back in the lupine field, back in the dark with the stars above us, and the ring on my finger, and his hand warm in mine. It’s where the song came from, that exact feeling, and I’m still living inside it.

Then a throat clears behind the camera.

The sound rolls across my skin, dripping all the way down to my pussy.

I press my lips together against the laugh trying to come out and fail completely, glancing up from the screen with what I already know is the most incriminating expression I’ve ever made on camera in six years of being in the public eye.

I see him in the doorway, and my mouth goes dry.

No shirt. Jeans slung low on his hips, the waistband of his boxers just visible, the cut of his obliques catching the low light from the hall behind him. His arms are crossed over his chest, which does nothing to help my current situation, and he is looking at me with the same patient expression that has been making me forget my own name since I was sixteen years old.

“Is that song about me?” he asks, his voice carrying into the microphone and the ears of more than a million people who absolutely did not need to hear Grayson Douglas sound like that.

The comment strip detonates.

WHO IS THAT

A MAN THERE IS A SHIRTLESS MAN IN THE HOUSE

she’s blushing i can SEE IT

“Yes.” I’m still looking at the camera, smirking now, my face warm, completely beyond any kind of recovery. “Obviously it’s about you.”

He approaches me slowly, unhurried, and the camera catches his shoes as he stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him from a foot away. My whole body is aware of every inch of the space he isn’t quite closing.

“You might want to switch that off, Sienna,” he says, low.

“Gray.” I giggle, tipping my head back to look up at him.

He looks down at me with those blue eyes and a mouth teased upward. “Or we can do it on camera.”

Every single nerve ending I have makes the decision simultaneously.

I face the camera one more time. “Sorry y’all,” I manage, my voice coming out half an octave lower than normal. “My boyfriend is calling me.”

I end the ‘live’ before I can read what comes in.