Page 35

Astrid

I pull away from Grayson, heart beating hard and slow in my chest. Turning, I clear my throat and try to remember what I was talking about. We walk ahead, and I focus on the work—the case study. Introducing coping mechanisms to the professional athlete, studying his anxiety and how it presents in a competitive environment.

As we walk, I fill my head with the technical facts of the situation to keep from thinking about the way he’d looked down at me, his eyes warm on mine.

Grayson looks at me like I’m his saving grace, and it makes everything inside me far too confused for my own good.

It doesn’t help that everything in this market reminds me of my mom—she loved Christmas. Earlier, when Grayson casually talked about his mother making that pomegranate salad, I’d wanted to tell him about my mom.

About how she hated the seed, but loved the juice, and would buy those weirdly shaped bottles from the grocery store, urging my dad to have some. For a while, she smelled like pomegranate juice and sandalwood.

Normally, I avoid department stores and decorated streets, going out of my way to steer clear of holiday cheer. When I planned this outing for us, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that everything here was going to be pine and cinnamon, a thick, hazy wave of yule and flushed cheeks.

When we stop at one of the stands, a little thrift store presenting their best finds, I pick up a Precious Moments figurine—a woman and a little girl in front of a fire—and a knot collects in my throat. It’s almost like Mom is here with me—how could there be so many coincidences? So many things that remind me of her in just one place.

I can picture her and my father walking through this market—her carefully assessing each stand, being shrewd about what to buy, him laughing and making friends with every seller, leaving with arms full of local honey and artisan cheese.

“Astrid?”

Grayson’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts, and I startle, nearly dropping the delicate figurine in my hands. I realize they’re shaking, and I set the thing down, clasping my hands together and hiding them behind my back.

He’s still looking at me, brows drawn together. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” I flash him a smile that feels all wrong on my face. All I need is a second to take a deep breath, compose myself, shove all of this back into the tidy little compartments each memory belongs inside.

“I know that all this stuff is kind of about me,” he says, scratching the back of his neck and glancing over at the figurine, then bringing his eyes back to mine. “But you know you can talk to me, right? Like…we’re friends.”

The word cuts straight through me, making my stomach squeeze. We’re friends. Right.

Except I don’t really talk to my friends about this stuff, either. Other than the absolute basic facts, Sloane doesn’t know about my grief over my parents. Of course, she knows that I lost them when I was seventeen. She knows that I got the news about my skating scholarship one month after they died. She knows that once a year, I disappeared from campus for an entire day, tucking myself into the grief for twenty-four hours, before returning to the real world.

It’s been my system for keeping the feelings at bay. Without it, the grief over what I lost would eat me alive.

“I know,” I finally say, meeting his eyes squarely, holding his gaze. After a second, he lets out a breath and turns to look at something else.

Something has just taken place here, but I don’t have the time or space to analyze it. Grayson and I are friends, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to bare my soul to him.

Brianna—whom I haven’t thought about in months—flashes to mind, her accent lilting. “You say emotional like it’s a bad word—which is particular fucked up coming from a therapist.”

Emotions in general aren’t the issue—it’s the ones rising up inside me, the grief and yearning for connection—that feel especially dangerous.

And I’m not a therapist.

So, I do what I always do. Bringing my tablet out again, I clear my throat, turn to Grayson, and launch back into work, asking him all the questions I’ve been asking him since we first started this thing. The case study is coming together nicely—it should be enough to get me that research position.

The research position I realize I haven’t thought about in a while.

Grayson’s answers are a little deadpan, but I barrel on through, deciding that if I can just get through the next hour, everything will return to normal between us.

***

It turns out I was right.

By the time we’ve grabbed something to eat and returned to the hotel, Grayson is back to normal again, apparently forgetting our moment of missed connection at the farmer's market.

We sneak into the hotel like we’re on the run from the law, coming in through a back door, scanning our cards, and slipping right into the elevator. Grayson has his little bag of spinach and pomegranates, which he realized too late he wouldn’t be able to give to the girls—not with a trip to California tomorrow.

“They should have all left this morning for California,” Grayson whispers when the elevator doors shut.

I turn to him, unable to keep the smile from my lips. “Why are you whispering?”

He holds my gaze. “Touché.”

When the doors open, we proceed in an orderly fashion down the hallway, like we’re here to conduct official business. We get to the door of his hotel room. He scans the card, then holds it open for me to pass through.

The door shuts, and he sets down his bag.

For a moment, we just watch each other, the tension building to a point. Then, without warning, he reaches forward, anchors his hand at the small of my back, and draws me into him, pressing our bodies together and kissing me deeply.

My mind goes blissfully, wonderfully blank, nothing but the feeling of his tongue against mine echoing through my body. I want closer, and wrap my arms around his neck, my mind snagging on the smallest details—the few hairs on the back of his neck, the warmth there and the strong muscles cording over his shoulders.

Grayson is all soft heat and strength, his body molding to mine when he cups his hands under my ass and brings me up to him. It’s his favorite thing to do, and lifts are so ingrained in me that I’m in the air without thinking about it.

It occurs to me that Grayson would be a great partner for skating—at least for the lifts.

“Okay,” Grayson rumbles, pulling back from the kiss after what must be a long time, but what only feels like a quick flash in my mind. He levels his gaze on mine, and I stick on his blown-out pupils. “What’s today’s lesson?”