Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ALIX
Morning came the way snow often did: quiet, steady, everywhere at once.
Alix blinked into pale light and the hush of a world still storm-stunned. For a second, she couldn’t place herself. There was only the slow ache in her muscles, the press of warmth along her front and back, the faint scent of sex tangled with Grace’s shampoo.
Right. The Westin. The suite with the huge window where snow still stitched the sky to the runway. The not-so-subtle miracle of Grace, everywhere, all over her.
She now knew one thing to be true. Grace Ortega was a sex Goddess.
Alix had thought she knew what good sex was.
Turns out she’d just been grading on a curve.
She’d had flings and her fair share of pillow princesses, awkward fumbling, a handful of partners who thought foreplay was optional.
But no one like this. No one who met her energy and then took her apart with it.
Grace breathed against the base of her throat, a tiny sound escaping as she shifted. A strand of hair brushed her cheek. One hand lay splayed across Alix’s ribs, fingers curved like she’d fallen asleep mid-claim.
Alix didn’t move. She couldn’t.
If she could have bottled this exact second — the weight, the quiet, the proof of it all — she would’ve. She’d live right here, in this square of warmth, under the name Finally.
A plane revved somewhere far away, dull through the glass. Grace stirred. Her nose nudged Alix’s throat. A sleepy sound hummed up like a question.
“Good morning,” Alix whispered.
“Hey,” Grace said back, voice wrecked and velvet. She didn’t open her eyes. Her thumb traced a lazy line along Alix’s side, over tender skin that answered with a full-body shiver.
They lay there listening to the heat tick in the vents, watching the barrage of snow out the window.
Everything in Alix felt warm and sore and absurdly pliant, like someone had replaced her bones with jelly.
She pressed the bridge of her nose to Grace’s hairline and breathed in the clean, faintly sweet scent.
Memory fluttered everywhere. Grace laughing into her mouth, marking her with exquisite pain and precision, the deliciously brutal way her hands had learned Alix’s back, the shock of being known so fast and so easily.
“You okay?” Grace murmured.
“Okay doesn’t even begin to describe it.” Alix smiled, eyes stinging for no good reason. “You?”
Grace’s answering exhale carried a little laugh. “Mmm. Yes. Wrecked, but in a marathon-running, mountain-summiting, perfect oral defense kind of way.”
“Perfect oral,” Alix agreed and felt Grace’s smile against her skin.
Neither reached for the clock. Morning dragged its feet in the best way, the room filling with that particular pale winter glow that made edges soft.
Alix could have stayed like that all day, greedily entangled with Grace.
But the more she let herself feel it — the weight of Grace’s thigh braided with hers, the exact heat where their stomachs met — the more some hungry, grateful spark inside her woke up again, restless and achingly ready.
She nuzzled Grace’s neck, kissing where she’d left a mark the day before, nipping and sucking at the sensitive skin until Grace yielded, letting Alix roll her onto her back.
She lay beneath Alix with sleepy eyes and wild bedhead and the kind of smile that made Alix’s heart pound like it had an audience.
“I will never, ever get enough of this,” Alix whispered against Grace’s mouth, their hips beginning to move together, Grace’s leg hitching up to wrap around her.
“Ever,” Grace agreed.
They kissed slowly, like the world could be convinced to match their pace.
Like the frantic touches of yesterday had finally sated all that they’d been holding back, and now they could take their time with one another.
There was nothing urgent in it, only a sweet, molten insistence that melted nerves and unspooled worry.
Mouths learned again what they now knew by heart.
Fingers threaded through hair and smoothed along familiar curves, touches more about reassurance than discovery.
Her favorite cadence of yes, yes, still yes.
Alix positioned herself between Grace’s spread thighs, craving the feel of Grace’s slick arousal against her own. Grace was so warm, so wet, and so incredibly responsive. Her gasps, her moans, the wrinkle of concentration between her brows as she pressed her hips up into Alix.
Alix was gentle, knowing they were both sore and spent from hours and hours of wringing every last drop of pleasure they could from one another.
Alix teasingly nipped at Grace’s knee as she held it aloft to get just the right angle to make Grace’s head fall back against the pillow, her back arching, those gorgeous breasts pushing into Alix’s palm as she lazily rolled her thumb over Grace’s hard nipple.
Grace made a sound that was only for them, and Alix’s chest went bright and achy.
“Alix,” Grace whispered, and her own name on Grace’s lips sounded like a prayer.
They moved together without hurry or expectation, leaning into the slow pleasure of one another, the bed a warm little sanctuary they’d made.
Every brush of skin drew a line of heat.
Every shared breath stitched them up where the coming goodbye had already started to fray them.
Alix closed her eyes and let herself feel it, the slow build of sensation braided with the sharper, fragile rush of wanting — wanting this, wanting more, wanting later and next week and New Year’s and morning coffee and a hundred ordinary, stupid things.
Grace’s fingernails dug into Alix’s hips, holding her right where Grace needed her, and watching Grace turn rigid with an orgasm and cry out her name undid her own resolve, sending her over the edge of her own climax.
When they finally went still again and Alix settled beside Grace, chests rising in the same rhythm, Grace tucked her face into Alix’s neck like she’d been doing it for years.
Alix slid a hand into her hair and carded gently, a soothing loop — down, up, pause; down, up, pause — that steadied her own racing thoughts.
“God,” Grace said into her skin. “This is so unfair.”
“Brutal,” Alix agreed. She focused on the tangible feeling of her hands in Grace’s hair. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I’d never laugh at you,” Grace lied politely.
Alix swallowed. The tenderness in her felt like a glass she couldn’t carry without spilling. “Will you spend New Year’s with me?”
Grace stilled. Lifted her head, eyes wide open now, warm and startled. “In Miami?”
“Yeah, I’ll come to you,” Alix said too fast, relief and panic in the same breath.
“Or you come to me — no pressure — actually, forget I said anything if it’s crazy, or if work’s too much after taking so many days away.
It’s just that the idea of not kissing you at midnight — I know it’s so cheesy, but—”
“Alix.” Grace’s hand pressed gently over her mouth, eyes bright with amused affection. “Breathe.”
Alix did, albeit grudgingly. Grace’s palm slid away, fingers lingering against Alix’s jaw like she couldn’t help touching her.
“I want to come to LA,” Grace said simply.
“You do?”
“Yes. I want to see your everyday. Your salon. Your favorite coffee that you complain about.’” Her mouth curved. “Phyllis. Your longboard and The Hollow and all of it.”
Alix blinked, because tears were rude and did not ask permission. “So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a very hard yes.”
The relief that flooded Alix was almost comical. “Okay. We’ll… Okay.” She was already listing itineraries in her head she had no intention of keeping: Echo Park walks and flea markets, the pier at sunset, watching Grace’s face the first time she saw the skyline at night.
Grace kissed her, just a little, a punctuation mark tucked against Alix’s smile. “It’s a date.”
They stayed like that, a tangle of limbs and plans, until the world barged in. The groan of a plow somewhere, the faint ping of one of their phones on the nightstand. Grace reached for hers, sighed at the screen.
“Flights,” she said. “Looks like I can get out midday. You’re on a late afternoon now.”
“Rude,” Alix muttered to the ceiling. “I was hoping fate would trap us here indefinitely and we’d have to learn to live on the land.”
“On the land,” Grace repeated, deadpan. “You mean room service and vending machines.”
They peeled themselves out of bed by degrees, laughter and little touches cushioning each indignity of reentering the day.
Alix found her sweater on the armchair under a tangle of scarves.
Grace unearthed her pants from beneath the bedspread like buried treasure.
They bumped hips performing the graceless ballet of shared bathroom sink space, trading the mirror without asking, smiling every time their eyes met.
Alix stood behind her while Grace brushed her teeth, hands at her waist like she could memorize the exact geometry of her there.
Grace spit, rinsed, set the toothbrush down.
They looked at themselves together in the mirror, sex hair, sleep-puffy and content and wholly undone in a way makeup couldn’t fix or fake.
“We look…” Alix started, then didn’t have a tidy end for the sentence.
“Rough,” Grace supplied.
“I was going to say happy.”
“Yeah,” Grace said, her smile growing. “That.”
They brewed the coffee packets like a ritual, both unwilling to leave the protective bubble of their hotel room until the last possible second. Alix handed Grace a mug and clinked her own against it.
“To canceled flights,” she said solemnly.
“To extremely good decisions,” Grace replied, equally solemn, then ruined it with a smile that hit Alix square in the sternum.
Packing took ten minutes and a lot of kissing disguised as item retrieval.
Alix zipped her carry-on and immediately unzipped it because she’d forgotten to shove in her underwear from yesterday, a move Grace mirrored with a fold of socks and a sigh of self-mockery.
The mundane domesticity of it — the zippers, the check of outlets for chargers, Grace’s last-minute scramble to unearth a hair tie from the abyss — felt like a glimpse into a life Alix wanted enough that it scared her.
She didn’t say that part out loud. She tucked it in her pocket with the key card and carried it carefully.
They lingered at the door like it might take mercy on them and grow vines and hold them hostage. Alix stole one more kiss, because restraint was overrated.
“We should go while the snow is letting up so we don’t have to cross over to the airport in the worst of it,” Grace said, practical again, though her fingers were still looped in the pocket of Alix’s coat like she’d forgotten to let go.
“Right.” Alix kissed her once more, a smaller thing that still managed to knock out a few of her bones. “Let’s go brave the tundra.”
They moved through the lobby with that shared bubble around them, a little hush inside the bigger noise.
The revolving doors shoved them back into the terminal’s bright tent-topped chaos.
Travelers were bundled and cranky and heroic.
Somewhere a family spoke cheerfully in Spanish.
The announcements had returned to their eternal litany.
They checked Grace’s bags, went through security together, then held hands on the train to Concourse A. Alix walked Grace to her gate, unwilling to spend a single possible moment not by her side.
They cuddled on a large chair near the gate, Grace checking her email, Alix making sure her music was downloaded for the flight.
As the gate agent began to call out boarding announcements, they finally glanced to one another, unable to pretend any longer that this wasn’t happening.
“Well,” Grace said, eyes glossy again, though her smile was steady. “We’re getting good at this.”
“I don’t want to get good at this,” Alix blurted, then added a smile. “But yes. We are.”
Grace cupped her cheek, thumb tracing once under her eye like she could scold the tear back into place before it even considered misbehaving. “New Year’s,” she said.
“It’s just a few days away,” Alix echoed. “I’ll clean the house. Phyllis will pretend to be annoyed.”
“I’ll be charmed,” Grace promised. “Text me when you get to your gate.”
“And when you land,” Alix said. “And when you see the ocean. And when you think of me.”
“And when I think about last night on the plane and accidentally rub up against a stranger.”
“Don’t you dare,” Alix growled playfully.
They kissed one more time, not movie-dramatic, just deep enough to make the boarding call overheard feel like an interruption. Then they stepped apart because life required it.
Grace boarded her plane as Alix stood out of the way, hand wrapped in the strap of her carry-on bag like it could keep her tethered.
At the last second, Grace glanced over her shoulder, held up two fingers, then pointed to her own eyes and to Alix, a ridiculous little I’m watching you that made Alix laugh through the ache.
And then she was gone, disappearing into the jet bridge. Alix briefly considered buying a ticket to Miami and running after her.
New Year’s. Phyllis making comments from the kitchen. The cheap string lights on the back porch. Grace’s suitcase taking up Alix’s entire bedroom like it belonged there. It lodged in her chest, a bright, hopeful ache she didn’t try to smother.
She turned toward the train that would connect her to Concourse C, walking in a body that felt pleasantly off-kilter, packing her sappiness like contraband. Her phone buzzed as she stepped onto the escalator.
Grace
Already miss you.
Alix
Feels illegal how much I miss you, Gator.
Grace
See you in LA, Wolf.
Alix
Bring Connie’s recipe journal if you dare. Phyllis is going to interrogate you about beans.
Grace
I fear neither Phyllis nor beans.
Alix smiled so hard a man passing her gave her the wary side-eye people reserved for those experiencing emotions in public. She didn’t care. She texted anyway.
Alix
Is it New Year’s yet?
Grace
Have a little patience.
Alix
No.
Grace sent back a laughing emoji, followed by a heart. Alix stared at the little red heart, warmth blooming behind her ribs. For a second, the terminal noise blurred into nothing. Just her, the hum of fluorescent lights, and the fact that she was smiling like an idiot because of one tiny heart.