29. #3
His laugh followed me as I stepped closer, and I reached up to cup his cheek. The faint roughness of evening stubble brushed against my palm as I ran my thumb over it.
"I went to the job fair."
His eyebrows lifted. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"How was it?"
I studied him.
Grant's expression was frustratingly neutral—not cold, not irritated, not even particularly surprised. Just attentive. I'd spent enough time around people who disguised disapproval beneath polite questions that I found myself searching his face for the part he wasn't saying.
"It was good," I said slowly. "I talked to a few people. There's one place I really liked. Road to Safety. They're a domestic-violence advocacy organization."
Something flickered in his eyes at that, subtle enough that I might've missed it if I weren't already watching him so closely.
"They have a part-time advocate position. Twelve to fifteen hours. The woman I spoke to seemed to like me, although I'm pretty sure the First Lady part was doing at least fifty percent of the work."
I smiled faintly. "I gave her my résumé anyway. I told her I wanted to go through the regular application process."
"That's good."
"And I think I have a decent chance of getting an interview."
"That's really good."
I waited.
Grant waited too.
My hand slipped from his cheek, and I threaded my fingers through his instead. "That's all you're going to say?"
His mouth twitched.
"What else am I supposed to say?"
"I don't know." I narrowed my eyes. "You were very opinionated about it earlier."
"I sent you one text."
"It was a judgmental text."
A smirk finally broke through the neutrality he'd been maintaining, and I knew immediately that he'd been waiting for me to do exactly this.
"You know how I feel," he said, squeezing my hand. "Your first year is going to be demanding, and you're already coming back three weeks behind. If you asked me whether I thought adding a job right now was the easiest thing you could do, I'd tell you no."
I lifted my eyebrows. "But?"
"But you didn't ask me whether you're allowed to get a job."
Something inside me quieted.
Grant pushed away from the island and turned toward me completely, still holding my hand. "You went. You talked to them. You know what your schedule looks like better than I do. If you get the position and decide you can handle it, then try it. If it becomes too much, you'll make another decision."
"You're not going to try to talk me out of it?"
"No."
The answer came so easily that I squinted at him.
He laughed. "Why do you look disappointed?"
Grant shook his head and pulled me closer by our joined hands. His lips touched the top of my head before he rested his chin there for a moment.
"I trust you to make decisions for yourself, Naomi. Doesn't mean I'm always going to agree with every one of them."
That sentence settled somewhere deep.
For most of my marriage, disagreement had been treated like proof that one of us needed to win. More accurately, that Rodney needed to win. If he thought something was a bad idea, then the conversation wasn't a conversation anymore. It became an explanation of why I wasn't doing it.
Grant had told me he thought working during my first year was a bad idea.
I'd gone to the job fair anyway and somehow we were still okay.
It felt embarrassingly good to have someone trust me with the consequences of my own decisions.
I pushed onto my toes and kissed him. It was quick, barely more than my lips touching his.
"Thank you."
"Anytime."
I started to lower myself, but Grant's free hand found my waist before I could get far. His eyes dropped to my mouth, and the second kiss wasn't nearly as polite as the first.
His lips moved against mine slowly at first, warm and familiar.
My hand slid from his fingers and returned to his face, my thumb brushing his cheek as I kissed him back.
Grant drew me closer until my stomach pressed against him, his palm spreading over the small of my back beneath the edge of my blouse.
When we separated, I stayed close enough that the tips of our noses almost touched.
"I feel like I trust you more than I trust most people in my life."
The admission came out before I'd decided whether I wanted to say it aloud.
Grant's expression changed. The playfulness faded without disappearing completely, replaced by the quiet attention he gave me whenever he knew I'd said something that mattered.
"I want you to trust me."
"I do."
"My intentions with you are good, Naomi." His thumb moved once against my waist. "Always."
I watched him for a moment before asking, "Do you trust me?"
"I do."
No hesitation.
I wrapped my arms around him again.
This hug felt different from the one at the door. I wasn't exhaustedly collapsing into him now. I held him because I wanted him close, pressing my cheek against his chest while his arms closed around my waist.
I shifted closer.
There wasn't actually much space left between us, but I rose onto the balls of my feet anyway, subtly pressing myself higher against him. My arms tightened around his shoulders. Grant's hands remained exactly where they were.
I did it again.
This time I felt the quiet vibration of his laugh against me.
Heat spread through my stomach.
I hadn't planned this.
That realization should've made me stop. Instead, it made me suddenly, painfully aware of how long it had been.
Since the night at the house, Grant hadn't initiated anything sexual.
He still kissed me. He still slept wrapped around me when I let him.
He kissed my forehead while I studied and occasionally grabbed my ass with enough casual confidence to remind me that he was still very much himself.
But every touch stopped well before it could become an invitation to anything more.
At first, I'd been grateful.
My body had hurt. My head had hurt. Existing inside my own skin had been difficult enough without figuring out what intimacy was supposed to look like after Rodney had put me on the floor again.
But I wasn't on that floor anymore.
And Grant was being irritatingly respectful.
I shifted my hips against him.
His laugh came again, lower this time, directly beside my ear.
"Are you trying to tell me something?"
The roughness of his voice sent another wave of warmth through me, sharper than the first.
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
Before I could answer, his mouth touched the skin beneath my ear.
My eyes closed.
The kiss was slow and deliberate. Another followed lower against my neck, and my fingers tightened in the back of his shirt.
A small sound escaped me.
Grant stopped.
I opened my eyes.
He'd lifted his head just enough to look at me, and the amusement was still there, but something darker sat beneath it now.
Desire changed his face in a way I'd learned embarrassingly quickly—his gaze heavier, jaw tighter, attention suddenly so focused that it made the rest of the room feel less important.
I dropped my forehead against his chest.
"I hate when you do that."
His palm traveled slowly down my back.
"Do what?"
"You know what."
"I actually don't." His hand settled over my ass before he gave it a light slap, and I bit back a sound against his shirt.
"Don't you want to too?" I asked.
The question sounded bolder than I felt.
I lifted my head and kissed the side of his neck. Grant went still beneath my mouth. I did it again, slower this time, and felt his fingers flex against me.
There.
The tiny fracture in all that restraint.
"I do," he said.
I pulled back enough to see him. "Then come on."
I expected that to be enough.
Usually, it would've been.
Instead, Grant looked at me for several seconds before his hands left my body.
"What?"
He reached for one of the stools beneath the kitchen island and sat, then gently caught both of my hands and drew me between his knees.
My stomach dropped for an entirely different reason.
"Why are you sitting down?"
"Because I want to ask you something."
That was never a promising sentence.
I searched his face. "What?"
Grant rubbed his thumbs across the backs of my hands. "I don't want to kill the moment."
"That's generally what saying that does."
He smiled, but his attention stayed on me. "This has been on my mind."
My nerves sharpened.
Had I done something? Was he uncomfortable after what happened? Maybe I'd misread him completely. Maybe he wasn't ready, and I'd just spent the last five minutes practically climbing him in his kitchen.
"What is it?"
Grant's gaze moved across my face before settling on my eyes.
"Are you comfortable initiating sex with me?"
I blinked.
Of all the things I'd expected him to ask, that wasn't one of them.
"I just did."
"I know." His thumbs continued moving over my hands. "That's why I'm asking."
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
Grant didn't fill the silence.
"Have you ever?" he asked. "Not just with me. Have you ever been comfortable being the one who says, I want this, and starts it because you want it?"
My first instinct was to say yes.
Surely I had.
I was a grown woman. The idea that I'd somehow made it this far without ever becoming comfortable asking for sex sounded ridiculous.
Then I actually searched my memory.
With Grant, I hadn't needed to.
At least that was what I'd told myself.
I was attracted to him constantly enough that his advances rarely caught me somewhere I didn't want to follow. He kissed me and I kissed him back. He touched me and my body responded. Even before we'd slept together, there had been weeks of tension where I knew exactly where things were heading.
But he had almost always taken the first real step.
Rodney—
My thoughts stalled there.
There had been a time, early enough in our relationship that I still believed marriage would make everything easier, when I'd tried.
I remembered lingerie I hadn't felt particularly comfortable wearing and the stupid amount of time I'd spent making sure everything looked right. I'd walked toward Rodney expecting him to be pleased.