Chapter 16 #2
But Griffin immediately reaches for the hem of my shirt, tugging it upward so he can work at my belt. “You remember I told you that I like you not-thinking?” he teases.
“Hey.” I catch his hands gently, stilling him. “Griffin. Baby, there’s no rush.”
“There is, though.” His voice is rough. “Please… I can’t…”
“You want to push it all back?” I murmur, tugging a strand of his hair. “Focus on something else?”
He nods.
“I get it,” I say softly. “But come sit with me a minute. Just let me hold you.”
Griffin resists at first, because of course he does, but he lets me pull him down on the sofa beside me. He stretches out his legs along the cushion, plasters himself against my side, and buries his face in my neck.
I hate that he’s in pain, but the way he’s letting me hold him, letting me help him…
I didn’t know I wanted this. In fact, I would have told you I actively didn’t. But now, I can’t imagine giving it up.
I lift one booted foot onto the coffee table to stretch out and accidentally bump something there.
“Shit, sorry.” I lift my foot to see what I kicked and find a hardcover of the first Whispers book. The copy Griffin dragged out of the pickle barrel turret the other day.
“Were you reading that?” I ask.
Griffin glances up to see what I’m talking about, and then his gaze skitters away. “I thought about it, but I can’t even make myself open it.” He plucks at a spot on my shirt. “It feels like… like he chose the Sprout in the book instead of me. The fictional guy instead of the real one.”
I snort. “If he did, he was an idiot.”
Griffin’s eyes fly to mine, and he manages a little smile. “Right.”
“I say you open it.” I lean forward to grab the book and prop it against my stomach. “Just rip the Band-Aid off. Prove it doesn’t have power over you. And if you’re still pissed off, I’ll take it out in the yard and yeet it, as the kids say. Give the racket some company.”
He lifts his head, and his laughing hazel eyes meet mine. “Beckett, no kids actually say that anymore.” But he glances down at the book and sighs. “You’re right. I mean, Jesus, the book’s not actual magic. It’s wood pulp and ink.”
“Exactly.”
He sits up, and I position him so his back is to my chest and my arms are around him. His hands shake slightly as he opens to the first page, so I lay my hands over his to hold the book steady.
I watch his face in profile as he reads the dedication. When he finishes, his eyes are shiny again and he shifts the book over for me to read.
For Sprout.
Keep risking those scraped knees to chase down adventures.
Keep asking the good questions and giving the good answers.
Find your way home, no matter what obstacles you face.
Love like the clouds do, wild and brave…
And know that somewhere there’s a mushroom who loves you back.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Griffin says, but he sniffs loudly as he shuts the cover. “It’s a book about a kid who gets lost in the woods, you said, and he talks to mushrooms—”
“While trying to find his way home, yeah.”
Griffin nods down at the book for a minute, then touches the cover and sets it on the table. “If he loved me, I don’t understand why he did things the way he did.”
I shrug. “Me neither. But from what I knew of Jim, he wasn’t…
conventional. I think he prided himself on being a nomad.
This was his home base, but he was gone a lot, especially years ago.
Maybe he didn’t know how to reconcile really caring about someone while living his life the way he wanted to.
He gave you what he thought he had to give.
Which has nothing to do with what you deserve. ”
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Ada said… she said I’m like him.”
“No.” I snort. “God. Not even a little.”
“But maybe… maybe she was right, in a way. Maybe I don’t know how to reconcile those things, either. I want a stable life the way Jim wanted the opposite. But we’re making the same mistakes.”
I huff out a breath.
Griffin turns to face me. “Why’s that funny?”
“My dad said something similar to me earlier today.” I run my fingers absently along his stubbled jaw, his sculpted cheekbones, his plush lips.
“We sat down and actually talked, and he said he’s been worried I’m making the same mistakes he made.
Pushing too far in the opposite direction but for the same stubborn reasons.
Thinking I need to do it all on my own. This whole time, I thought he was trying to jump in and fix things because I wasn’t doing it right, but he was actually trying to help in his own way. ”
“And things are good with you two now? At dinner, it seemed like you were getting along.”
“They’re better,” I say cautiously. “My default is to assume, when he offers me something, that it’s because I’m not doing it right. It’ll take time to change that.” I tap his chin. “Maybe you and I both need to work on that.”
Griffin huffs and drops his forehead to my chest. “I don’t know how you do it,” he murmurs. “But you somehow make things quieter in my head. Make things feel easier. Or at least… doable.”
I laugh. “And here I was, thinking you make things louder in my head. In a good way. Like I’ve been half-asleep for a long time and you woke me up.”
He tilts his head up, and his hazel eyes are soft but intent enough to make my heart race. I lean in and kiss him, slow and hot, but pull back before either of us is satisfied.
“You need rest,” I remind him, running a hand over his hair.
I’ve never considered myself sweet by nature, but there’s nothing I want more than to be sweet to this man.
Griffin grumbles but lets me pull him to his feet and kiss the top of his head. “Have I reminded you today how bossy you are?”
“Have I reminded you that you love it?” I counter.
While Griffin showers, I send a text to my crew, asking if any of them are available to do me a favor in the morning. When Griffin reappears, shower-damp and half-naked, in the doorway of his bedroom and finds me sitting on the edge of his bed, I immediately slide my phone away.
“So… I mean… I’m fine. Clearly.” He runs one bare foot down the leg of his pajama pants. “And I appreciate you coming over, but you don’t need to babysit me, if you—”
I back him against the doorframe with my body and force him to look up at me. “You don’t need to pretend to be okay if you’re not,” I say softly. “And whether you’re okay or not, I still want to be here, if you want me to be. I kinda like you, city boy.”
“You care about me, you said.” Fuck, it kills me when he looks this vulnerable.
“I do,” I say simply. “Do you want me to stay?”
He nods.
“Then I will.”
I take off my jeans and shirt and climb under the blankets in just my boxers.
And for all the second- and third-guessing we’ve done with each other, once we’re pressed together in his small bed, it’s the easiest and most natural thing in the world to wrap my arms around him, to pull him against me, to kiss the top of his head when he murmurs “so warm,” and to let him fall asleep in my arms.
Sometime later, Griffin’s fingers brush my collarbone, and I open my eyes in the thick, velvety dark. His touch is so light I might’ve thought I’d imagined it, but then his voice, rough with sleep, whispers, “Hi.”
I turn my head and find his head on the pillow beside mine. Our faces are inches apart, and his breath’s warm against my lips.
“Hi,” I say, smiling sleepily.
He lifts his head a little and runs his thumb along my beard. “Beckett…”
I reach for the lamp in the darkness, and with a click, dim golden light spills over us. It’s just enough for me to see the flush on Griffin’s cheeks, the dark hunger in his eyes, the way his cock is already tenting the front of his pajamas.
I don’t answer in words. Instead, I grab his wrist, press my lips to his palm, and look at him in return, letting him see the hunger in my gaze. His breath hitches, and his fingers tremble.
I shuck my boxers.
I roll toward him, and our bodies align perfectly despite our size difference, chest to chest and hip to hip. My hands map the dip of Griffin’s waist, the ridge of his hip bone, that I’ve already claimed as my own, and he arches into me, his lashes fluttering.
I kiss the hollow of his throat, where his heartbeat thumps, and part my lips to taste him. He moans, body melting into the sheets, so pliant and silent in this, at least.
After shucking off his pajamas, I run my hand down his creamy skin, finding his length, hard and aching. I palm his cock once, twice, slow and measured.
Griffin groans, eyes closing as his thighs fall open in blatant invitation.
“Look at me,” I murmur, and he obeys, dragging his eyes open.
“Lube and condoms?” I demand.
“D-drawer.” He motions toward the nightstand.
After I’ve retrieved them and straddled him again, his breath catches.
My first touch is gentle—just the pad of my finger circling and teasing his hole.
His body tenses, then relaxes, his thighs spreading wider.
I press in just a little, letting him adjust, but just that small motion has his fingers digging into my shoulders, his nails biting into my skin.
I crook my finger, finding his prostate, and he lets out a soft, needy whine.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful like this,” I whisper as I add a second finger, stretching him open. My free hand grips his hip to hold him still.
Griffin’s only answer is the clench of his body around my finger, the gasps that say he’s forgotten how to breathe, and the way his cock leaves a sticky trail along my stomach.
By the time I line myself up, he’s trembling, but I pause there, my tip just breaching his ring, my forehead resting against his, our breaths mingling.
“Mine,” I breathe.
The last time we did this, I claimed him in a physical way. Claimed his skin, his cock, his ass, those hip bones.
But that physical claiming’s not enough now. I want him in every way. In my bed, at my table, by my side. And I don’t know how to make that happen, but for maybe the first time, I don’t need details.