Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
GRAYSON STARED AT HIS PHONE, relief, anger, unease, and more relief mixing in his stomach like the worst cocktail ever.
Part of him wanted to demand Bernie tell him if he knew anything, but it had to come from Charlie.
These feelings weren’t going anywhere and if they had any chance, she had to feel the same.
Which meant being honest. And maybe not taking off in his goddamn boat.
She texted. She’s on her way back. She panicked.
How would you feel if Lana showed up, got on the boat, and decided to stay here?
“You’re going to wear a hole in the carpet, bro.” Beckett walked into the family suite where Grayson was pacing back and forth. “What’s up with you?” He came farther into the room, snacking on a bag of pretzels.
Grayson stopped, stared at his younger brother, energy rushing through his blood.
His bones. “Is this how you felt with Presley? How did you go into it when you knew it would end? I mean, it sucks when you don’t know it’s coming and it ends.
But I’m not sure it’s any better to know, up front, that it’s short term.
And how did you convince her to come back? To stay?”
Beckett’s eyes widened with each sentence. He set his pretzels down on the coffee table, brushed his hands together. “Holy shit. You’re really into her.”
Grayson let out a frustrated growl. “That’s not an answer to anything I asked you.”
His brother nodded, standing almost toe to toe with him.
“How? Even knowing it was going to end didn’t stop the feelings from steamrolling us.
It was give in to them and be miserable at the end or be miserable without ever getting to experience what we felt for each other.
And how do you know it has to end? Maybe she can stay. ”
Gray moved around him, started to pace again.
God, he hoped so. Every particle of his being hoped she could and would.
“She and her mother are incredibly close. This is actually the longest they’ve ever been apart.
” That worried him. He couldn’t even lie to himself on that point.
He’d already been down a road where the woman he cared for had an unhealthy need for parental approval. This is different.
“Presley had a life somewhere else, too, remember?”
Grayson stopped again, rubbed his hands over his face. “I remember. But Charlie isn’t her. I don’t know if she’d want to stay.”
Beckett walked over to where Gray had stopped. “If you truly believe she won’t stay, you soak up every ounce of what you guys have. But if you haven’t asked her to stay or, better yet, told her you want her to stay, then you need to. It’s the only way to know.”
Gray shook his head. She couldn’t stay just for him.
It wouldn’t be enough. She needed to want this as much as he did and she needed to want it here because he couldn’t uproot the lodge.
“I don’t want her to go, Becks. But I don’t know if I can give her everything.
Until now, I didn’t even think I could give her this.
I don’t want to stop being with her, but I don’t know what I can offer her. ”
Beckett shoved him. Just a nudge, really. “Don’t say shit like that. You have more to offer than you think. And just because it didn’t work the first time doesn’t mean nothing will.”
His jaw tightened but he spoke around it. “I said I wouldn’t get married again.”
A slow smile crept onto Beckett’s face. “You said you’d never fall in love again either. But I think that ship has sailed.”
Gray felt like something was crushing his lungs. “What?” The word came out as a croak.
Beckett nodded. “You heard me.”
“No. I said I wasn’t going there again either.” Even as he denied it, he felt the truth in the squeezing of his lungs.
Now Beckett gave him one of his wide-ass grins.
“Let me know how that goes.” His brother leaned down, grabbed his pretzels, and started walking toward the door.
He stopped when he got there. “Guests are all good. Staff has gone home. The two douche potatoes are in their rooms. I’m heading home to my fiancée. ”
Grayson muttered, “Good night.”
“Gray.”
He looked at his brother. Waited.
“I’m headed home to the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. The one I almost let go because I couldn’t get out of my own way. Until you told me to get my head out of my ass.”
Beckett didn’t wait for an answer. He left Grayson standing in the middle of the living room, remembering the moment when he’d done exactly that.
TIME FELT LIKE IT HAD stopped until Charlie knocked on the door of his suite. While Gray waited, he tried to lay out what he needed most. He settled on: the truth from her and asking her to stay. To give them a chance.
He pulled the door open quickly, then reminded himself to take a breath.
To breathe. She stood before him in a gray T-shirt with a rainbow heart in the middle of it.
The hem rode up just a little, revealing a seductive hint of skin between the top and the pajama pants with mini rainbows all over them.
Her hair was soft and wavy over her shoulders and her face was free of makeup.
He had that lung-crushing feeling again but for an entirely different reason.
She held a takeout container in her hand.
Her gaze was uncertain, making him want to tell her everything would be okay.
Logically, and he still had some of that left, he knew they had to talk before he could be sure of that.
“I’m sorry I took the boat,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m glad you didn’t get hurt. You haven’t had much practice.”
“I know. I panicked.”
“Come in. Tell me why.”
She followed him in. “I stopped by the cabin and had a shower. I know it’s hard to believe, but the fact that I came back is progress for me.”
He shut the door and turned to watch as she brought the takeout container to the small kitchenette. When she turned back to him, he was staring at her, still overwhelmed with the depth of feeling he had for this woman.
“I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to look at me the way you are right now, especially while I’m wearing pajamas. Or after what I did.”
Grayson crossed the room, desperately needing to do something with this energy. Maybe he should have gone for a run. Instead, he’d showered and taken care of a few things. Standing in front of her, he reached out, took a lock of her hair between his fingers.
“It’s hard to say whether your hair or your skin is softer,” he said, his voice sounding almost far away to his own ears. He lifted his gaze from her hair to her eyes.
Charlie’s eyes were full of awe, surprise. He wondered if no one had ever made her feel as special as she was.
He stepped closer, dropping the lock of hair to curve his hand around the nape of her neck.
“You could wear a neon-orange parka with rain boots or a designer dress and it wouldn’t matter because it’s not the clothes.
It’s you, Charlie. Your laugh and smile.
The way you listen when others talk like you’re not just learning about them, but about yourself. ”
“You make it impossible to maintain any semblance of composure, Grayson. I look at you, and I see the way you look at me, and my heart just about explodes with happiness. It makes everything else fade into the background.”
He needed the truth. He needed to tell her his own; he wanted her here, at his side.
He didn’t have it all figured out, but he knew, the impossible had happened.
He was in love with Charlie. And the part of him, the very terrified part of him, that feared she wouldn’t stay, even if he asked, wanted this moment to show her how much.
To show her how he felt. Without words. And then they could give each other all the words. All the honesty they both needed.
Leaning down with deliberate slowness, he stretched out the moment, until all he could see was her.
He felt her breath on his chin, heard that slight hitch as he brushed the softest of kisses over her lips, then retreated, then did it again.
He did this repeatedly, until her fingers were curled into the fabric of his shirt, until she was pressing her body against his like she couldn’t get close enough.
Neither of them increased their pace. They stood, entwined, sharing the kind of soft kisses that went with rainy days or quiet nights.
His hands moved down, stroking over the sides and curves of her body, memorizing the feel of her.
The perfection. She pushed against him, demanding more from the kiss.
From him. One of her hands moved up his back, under his shirt, her fingers roaming over the muscles there, heating his skin.
Still, he didn’t rush. She turned her head and he smiled against her cheek as he trailed kisses along her skin, to her jaw, then just under her ear, pausing at the spot where her neck met her shoulder.
The spot that made her fingers tighten, her breath quicken.
He nipped. Kissed. Moved down. Up. Back to her mouth.
Hands in her hair, their bodies slowly moving in a dance-like rhythm without moving from where they stood.
He’d never wanted like this. Charlie reached her hands between them, lifted her shirt over her head, and tossed it on his couch.
She wore an ivory tank underneath. It was silky like her skin.
Gray lowered his mouth to her collarbone, kissing along it until he needed to kiss her mouth again.
She arched into him, a needy sound escaping her lips.
Grayson picked her up, his entire body on fire when she wrapped her legs around his waist and tightened them.
She lifted her head and her hair curtained their faces.
It was just them; no timeline, no limitations, no outside world that would crash down on them.
Just each other. Just Charlie. In this moment, she felt like all he’d ever needed.
Grayson walked to the doorway of his bedroom.
He reached behind him and patted her foot so she’d drop her legs.
She slid down the front of his body, torturing him beautifully as she continued to kiss the breath from his lungs.
They stood wrapped in each other and he could feel every spot where they touched and all of the ones they didn’t.
“I can’t breathe when you look at me like that,” she whispered.
His heart surged against his rib cage. He wondered if she could see the love in his eyes; he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide it for long.
He felt it in every breath, every sigh, every whisper between them.
He understood what Beckett had said and meant.
There was no way to fight what was building between them.
What had already taken root and grown. “Then I hope you can hold your breath because I don’t know how else to look at you. ”
The hint of a smile danced over her lips, reached her eyes. “What’s a little oxygen, right?”
Gray lowered his face. “The only thing that feels necessary is you.”
They fell into another kiss that made him feel like everything he experienced with Charlie was groundbreakingly new. Like everything that came before her was a knockoff and now, he knew what it felt like to hold, to kiss, to touch the real thing.
He reached behind her and turned the knob on his bedroom door, then put that hand on her shoulder to spin her in that direction. She sucked in a sharp breath and let out a little aww sound that his heart soaked up.
“Grayson.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “You did this for me, even after everything I just did?”
He’d hung a cream-colored gauzy sheer curtain from the ceiling fan, twisting it at the top so it splayed out like a tent over the bed.
He’d gathered every tea light LED he could find—which was a hell of a lot of them, thanks to Jilly—and set them on every available surface.
Soft light glowed from the bookshelves, the window seat alcove, the dresser and the nightstands on either side of the bed.
Charlie clasped her hands together when she looked up at the ceiling and saw the glow of the night stars that they’d hung for Ollie and Jilly when they’d stayed at the lodge.
Turning to face him, she shook her head, like she couldn’t believe what she saw.
“I want you, Charlie. I know there are things that need to be said, on both of our parts, but when I was trying to convince myself that you would come back, that we’d be okay, I realized, I can’t just hope. I needed to show you that I believe in us. In you.”
Charlie put both hands on his face, gazed intently into his eyes. “I’ve never believed in magic because I know it’s just sleight of hand. But the way you make me feel, the things you do to show me I matter to you, that’s a definition of magic I didn’t even know existed until I met you.”
“I just treat you how you deserve to be treated, Charlie. But I understand what you mean because everything feels new with you.”
She took his hand, walked backward into the bedroom, pulling him along for the ride, a sweet, sexy smile on her face that made his body heat from the inside out.
They moved slowly, the gentle pulse of the lights a seductive backdrop that encouraged them to take in every moment, suspend it, and draw it out.
By the time they lay together on his bed, Grayson knew that trying to fight the love he felt for her was as useless as being on a raft in a storm. The only way to get to the other side of this, where he wanted to stand with Charlie, was to go through it. Hard parts and all.
After. Once he had shown her how much he cherished her, he would tell her. He would give her the words he thought he’d never use again and hope like hell that it was enough to make her stay.