Page 40

Grayson

The moment we get back into the hotel room, Astrid drops her bag, turns, and puts her arms around me. My hands are at her waist, pulling her in close, nothing but the sound of our breath echoing through the room as we move, methodically, toward the bed.

There’s only one thing left that we haven’t done together, and I’m already hard at the thought of it. We’ve been engaging in weeks of foreplay, months of me thinking about her, and my mind narrows down to a singular, determined hope.

Our hands move frantically, stripping one another of clothes, the pieces dropping to the floor of the hotel room. We step over them and keep moving, until the backs of her knees hit the bed and we fall over onto it.

Her chest practically glows in the moonlight, and I slide my hands around her back, finding the clasp of her bra and undoing it, pushing it off her chest. The sight of her taut nipples pulls a groan from my chest, and the feeling of her hand on the back of my head, guiding me toward them, makes me laugh.

I pause to sit up and strip my shirt over my head, and Astrid reaches for my pants, having already pulled them half off when we walked in.

In seconds, we’re fully naked, I have my lips on her breasts, and she’s arching up under me. I listen to her—to her body, her breath, following the rise and fall of her pleasure, cock growing impossibly harder with every second I’m not inside her.

“Grayson,” she gasps, pulling back from me, her irises nearly swallowed whole by her pupils. She doesn’t have to say anything else—I’m reaching for the condom in my pants pocket—a wish made earlier that’s now coming true.

“I want you,” I murmur, and when she nods eagerly, her hips rising to meet mine, I pull the condom from the pack and roll it on in a smooth motion. I don’t need Astrid’s coaching on this one.

My hands shake as I notch myself in her entrance, and when I look up at her, her eyes are already on me, watching me. She looks entranced, like she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to.

Slowly, purposefully, I push inside her, and fireworks explode behind my eyes.

I’ve had her before—Astrid and I have been just like this in the past. Except this time, I’m present for every moment. Before, after Cal’s wedding, I was so focused on getting to the next step that I didn’t even leave time for me to really enjoy what we were doing together.

But now?

Now I savor every inch of her that I take. I notice the way her fingers dig into my forearms, how she adjusts her hips, the breath she lets out when I’m fully seated inside her.

“ Fuck ,” she hisses, and I know what it means—it means I fit perfectly. It means we’ve both been waiting for this longer than we’d admit.

Leaning down, I bury my face in the side of her neck as I thrust into her, and Astrid wraps her arms around my neck, little noises rising up and out of her with each roll of my hips. This isn’t about reaching the finish line—this is about enjoying each other.

And we do.

I breathe her in, kiss her skin, bite gently on her collarbone.

All pretenses of a teaching moment are gone. She’s not even trying to coach me anymore—even typical words like harder and faster seem out of her reach. Instead, we’re suspended above reality, every move right, every place our bodies touch the perfect pressure and friction.

“Grayson,” she whispers again, my name soft on her lips just before she comes, not hard and fast, but languidly, slowly, her walls tightening around me and holding me there so I slide over the edge too, releasing into the condom.

We hold onto each other like there are two of us and only one parachute.

When I pull back and look into Astrid’s eyes, I think it and think it, but don’t say it.

I am so fucking in love with her.

***

Later, when the room service dessert is gone and Astrid is cuddling into my side, I find myself talking.

“I got a call from the Welch family lawyer.”

She sits up a bit, eyes widening. “Is everything okay?”

I reach up and tuck her hair behind her ear. “Yeah—I mean, nobody is hurt. But Kayla Welch—their aunt—wants to take back custody of them.”

Astrid’s brow draws together. “I thought she was in jail?”

“I guess the charges were dropped, and she went into a rehabilitation facility, or something like that. But it doesn’t matter. She’s clearly not fit to take care of them—she couldn’t handle it the first time.”

Astrid’s jaw tics, and she sits up further, drawing her arms and legs in a bit closer to her body. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m obviously not a social worker or anything, but from what I understand, it’s best for children to be with their family.”

Something inside me is bristling, like what she’s really saying is that I’m not good enough to take care of Athena and Callie, and they might as well go back.

“Even when that family member is a druggie?”

“Come on, Grayson.” She shakes her head. “That’s harsh. Drug addiction is a mental health crisis. Just because Kayla has made some mistakes doesn’t mean she should be reduced to a word like that.”

I pause, take a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just…what if the girls go back to her, and she hurts them again?”

Astrid pauses, looks up to the ceiling for a moment. “I think there’s a lot to be said about found family, Grayson. But there’s also something to be said about real family. Kayla was there when those girls were born. They share blood. There’s something about that…in a lot of cases, it just feels invaluable.”

“I don’t know.” I pick at the duvet, running a loose thread between my fingers. “I have all sorts of real family, and I just don’t really feel like I fit in with them.”

The situation with my parents doesn’t feel like it fits in anywhere. There are some people I know who have great relationships with their parents—like Luca and Sloane—and some people who had horrible home lives—like Maverick or Callum.

It’s not like my parents were ever abusive or mean toward me. It’s also not like we’re best friends. My dad has always been a football guy, and when I chose hockey instead, it felt like the final tether between us broke. My mom loves me because I’m her son, but I didn’t stick around home, or go into the family business, so she doesn’t see me as much as she sees my brother. Essentially, I know my family loves me, but I’m not entirely sure they like me. I don’t think we would be friends without those ties.

But Josh Welch just met me, and loved me. He chose me out of all the guys on the team to be his best friend. And now I can return the favor by choosing his girls.

I tell Astrid all that, then add, “If Kayla didn’t choose them the first time, what’s to say that she’s going to choose them now?”

“Nothing,” Astrid admits, then she opens her mouth like she’s going to speak, but doesn’t. She closes it, then leans back down so we’re side by side on the bed again, then reaches over to turn off the lamp on her side of the bed, plunging us into darkness.

Outside, the night is inky black. I stare up at the ceiling, at the tiny blinking red light of the smoke alarm.

“There’s nothing to say Kayla will choose the girls this time,” Astrid says, her voice small. “But I’m a firm believer that you should try to spend as much time as you can with your family while you have the chance. Because at any moment, they could be gone.”