Page 90 of Always Been His

“I’m not doing anything,” I pout, batting my eyelashes at him.

My toes find his calf under the table.

He picks up his wine glass and takes a measured sip without breaking eye contact. “I’m warning you,” he murmurs.

I trail my foot a little higher.

The muscle in his jaw ticks once. He sets the wine glass down. Then he reaches under the table without looking away from me, finds my ankle, and wraps his hand around it with a grip that isn’t gentle. He holds it and looks at me.

“Stop.”

I purr, licking my lips at the thought of him controlling me. “I like it when you’re bossy.”

His thumb presses into the inside of my ankle. “You may not like me in a minute.”

Something travels through me that isn’t quite alarm but isn’t pleasure either. I know that voice. That voice is actively doing something to the ambient temperature of this rooftop.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

He releases my ankle and reaches inside his jacket. He sets an envelope on the table between the candles and slides it toward me.

I look at it. Then at him.

His face gives me nothing.

Keeping my eyes on him, I slide out a single folded document, cautiously read the header, and then read it again because the first time doesn’t fully compute.

CONTRACT BUYOUT CONFIRMATION. SIENNA RENEÉ RHODES, professionally known as ECHO. Full release from all obligations under contract number…

I stop.

“Grayson…” My pulse is racing.

“Before you say anything,” he says, leaning forward on both forearms, his voice dropping so low it belongs only to this table. “I know what you said. I know you meant it and I know exactly why you meant it and I am not going to pretend I didn’t hear you.”

“Then why⁠—”

“Because I couldn’t sit back and watch it anymore,” he says simply. “I couldn’t sit across from you every morning and watch you carrying a contract that was designed to own you, knowing I had the ability to remove it, and didn’t. I tried, Sienna. That is the honest answer. I tried and I couldn’t.”

I peer back down at the document.

My eyes find the wire transfer confirmation at the bottom. The amount. Fifty million dollars, cleared and confirmed, labeled with a reference number, a date, and a legal signature from Joshua Eds on behalf of the label, countersigned by Douglas Corp legal.

The label has released me.

I read it again. Full release. All obligations. Catalog rights returned. Effective immediately.

I set the paper flat on the white tablecloth and stare at it.

“Say something,” Grayson says.

I can’t. I’m processing what this means in order because if I let it all land at once, I won’t be able to sit upright in this chair. No more rescheduled tour dates. No more Nicki calling the farmhouse a hundred times a day. No more label meetings at midnight. No more Joshua Eds in a black BMW on the Douglas driveway with a portfolio and a number. No more thirty-two years or six albums, whichever comes first. No more machine.

I am free.

The weightlessness is something I didn’t anticipate. I knew I wanted it. I’ve been wanting it since Penn Station at midnight when I turned off my phone and got on a train. But wanting a thing and having it are not the same feeling, and this, the actual having of it, is sitting in my chest right now like something that has been wound unbearably tight for years and has finally, completely, let go.

I did not know it would feel like this.