11. Grayson
11
GRAYSON
“ F uck buddies?”
I grimace at the phrase, hating it all the more because it’s on my mother’s lips. To her credit, she looks horrified to be repeating them. A fact I would feel bad about if I hadn’t just caught her eavesdropping on the conversation I started having with Kendra that now, apparently, includes everyone—models, hairdressers, make-up artists, Amina and the photographers and videographers she brought on to help capture Elysian’s relaunch.
This day has been in the works for months, and even though I know I’ve done everything I can to make it perfect, my stomach is still in knots, my brain racing through a to-do list that’s a million miles long. With only thirty minutes until the fashion show is slated to begin, and a large portion of the brand’s hundreds of thousands of fans already logged into the live stream on Instagram, I should be doing something, anything, besides explaining my situation with Xavier to a room full of people that includes my mother.
Narrowing my eyes at Kendra, who started this line of conversation, I turn to find Mom waiting patiently for my explanation. “No, Mom. Xavier and I are not fuck buddies.” Kendra and A’ja snort, and I glare at them over my shoulder, shifting to address them and everyone else in the room, acutely aware of the way Mallory is smirking at me as she rubs a shimmery body oil into her arms.
“We’re just two adults who care for each other and have extremely gratifying sex every now and again.” A shiver runs down my spine at the thought of all the ways Xavier and I indulged in each other last night at my new place. He ate my pussy on the stairs, then fucked me on the floor in front of my bedroom door before urging me into the shower, where he took me against the wall and put the stamina of my water heater to shame. I’d had to put him out after that, knowing if he stayed the night I’d risk showing up here late and disheveled but well fucked.
“Sounds like fuck buddies to me,” Mom insists, breaking into my thoughts.
“I don’t know,” Mallory says, pushing to her feet and striding over. I’ve only known her for a few months, but it’s safe to say I’m obsessed with the mahogany skinned goddess. She’s all fire and sass and unrefined power. Plus, her body is incredible.
At our first fitting for the dress she’s modeling tonight, I told her I wanted to design an entire line of pieces based on her proportions alone. Her husband, Chris, had hummed his approval, offering to pay me handsomely for the line and throw in a bonus if at least one of the pieces had a tear away component. Mallory giggled at the request, laughing harder when I started to blush.
She comes to a stop beside me, an easy smile on her lips as she integrates herself into our small circle. “Fuck buddies sounds kind of harsh to me. Maybe friends with benefits is a more accurate description.”
I nod while Chantel shakes her head, her eyes on the clipboard in her hands, but her attention on the conversation. “Call it whatever you want. Any word that isn’t ‘relationship’ is wrong.”
My stomach flips, and I put both hands on my hips, shoulders high and tense with defensiveness. “Xavier and I aren’t in a relationship.”
No one seems to believe me. I’m not even sure I believe myself, but I have to stand my ground because giving even an inch right now would mean facing truths I’ve resigned myself to keeping buried in the recesses of my mind.
“Are you sleeping with anyone else?” A’ja asks, moving over to Mallory to fix a wayward strand in the cloud of curls on top of her head.
I press my lips together, fiddling with the pincushion in my hands, and Mom laughs, reading my expression accurately. “We’ll take that as a no.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, though! I just haven’t met anyone else I would want to…”
Kendra silences me with a wave of her hand. “Is Xavier sleeping with anyone else?”
“No.”
I didn’t ask for the information— because un-serious and exclusive don’t really go hand in hand—but Xavier had volunteered it. In that moment, and still today, I refused to acknowledge how happy that made me.
“And is he showing up to other women’s fashion shows completely uninvited, with a big ass bouquet in hand?”
Chantel’s question has all of our attention shifting to her and then following her gaze to the open doorway where Xavier is indeed standing with a large bouquet of red roses in hand. I drag my gaze up his frame and all the way back down, noting how delicious he looks in the black on black ensemble and gold jewelry that makes him look like he’s supposed to be standing next to me all night. He moves through the room with a singular focus, all of his attention on me even though there are a million different things happening around him.
I love when he looks at me like that, like nothing and no one else exists for him. My heart squeezes at the thought, and I force it away, knowing that if I’m not careful, I’ll get used to that look, that I’ll come to depend on it, that I’ll start to want it to only belong to me.
By the time Xavier reaches me, everyone has found something to do that makes them look busy but keeps them within earshot. As she walks away, I hear Mallory mutter something under her breath about getting rid of Chris if divorce attorneys look that good, which means my lips are curved into a smile that’s part disbelief— because I know she’s never going to leave her husband— and part possessive pride because of the compliment.
“Happy to see me, Hart?” Xavier asks, leaning in close and dropping a kiss on my lips. It’s chaste and familiar, sweet like the scent wafting up from the flowers in his hands.
“Always,” I murmur against his lips, a little too much truth in the statement.
Xavier arches a brow as he pulls away. “Careful, I might start to think you actually want me around.”
“Are these for me?” I run a finger over the petals of the roses, ignoring his statement because it’s too close to the truth, which is that I’d regretted my decision not to tell him about the launch as soon as I got here to today.
Something about seeing Jax here supporting Amina, and Chris here supporting Mallory, made me long for Xavier. For his smart mouth and assessing eyes, for his small gestures of support and sneaky little ways of boosting my confidence. There was a part of me—the one that runs parallel to the part of me that decided not to invite him because I wanted to prove I could do this without a man—that wanted to call him and ask him to come, but I’d refrained, knowing I’d feel worse if I reached out and he denied me his presence.
He takes a step back, holding the bouquet out of my reach. “That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether I can stay,” he says, voice soft but rough. “I mean, I’ll probably give them to you either way, but in case you need an extra incentive.” The smile he gives me is lopsided and a bit self-deprecating, like he hates himself for asking because he might be crossing a boundary, and it warms my heart, but not as much as what he says next. “I promise I won’t get in your way. I just want to be here to share this moment with you. You’ve worked so hard for this, and I want to cheer you on in person, not on a live with a million other strangers on the internet.”
A wave of emotion crests inside of me, crashing into a rolling body of warm, liquid happiness that crowds my vision for a moment. Lifting up on my tip toes, I wrap my arms around Xavier’s neck and squeeze him tight. He’s momentarily stunned at the sudden show of affection, but it doesn’t take him long to reciprocate. The petals of the flowers brush against the skin bared by the backless dress I’m wearing, and he kisses my cheek.
“Stay, please,” I whisper in his ear before retreating from his embrace, conscious of all the eyes on us, even though they’re not on Xavier’s radar at all. His attention is only on me. His smile wide and lined with satisfaction as he holds the bouquet out for me to take.
“These are yours.”
Taking the flowers from his outstretched hands, I bring them up to my nose and inhale deeply, trying to remember the last time Brian bought me flowers and coming up empty. Realizations like this used to hurt, used to press salt into the open wounds my marriage left me with, but now it doesn’t move me at all. It’s just a simple fact that I get to set aside along with all the other baggage I used to carry.
Brian never bought me flowers, but Xavier does, and if ever I want some when he doesn’t feel the need to provide them, I can buy them my damn self. That’s the power of this moment in my life. The gift of having someone who does nice things for me, being able to do them for myself as well, and knowing that in both instances, I deserve them.
I deserve nice things.
The thought echoes in my mind. And after the show begins, when I’m watching my dreams come to fruition from the wings with Xavier at my side—his hand resting on the small of my back, his thoughts and praises for every piece in my ear—it occurs to me that out of all the indulgences I’ve allowed myself to have since leaving Brian, this thing with Xavier might be the nicest of them all.
After the show is done, we move from the event space to the dining area of the restaurant to gorge ourselves on all the deliciousness Jax and his team have put together for us. He refused to let me pay for anything, saying it was the least he could do after everything I’ve done for him and his business over the years. As far as parting gifts go, a free catered dinner from a renowned chef for a party with over a hundred and fifty people in attendance is a damn good one.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Xavier asks, laying a kiss on my shoulder while gazing up at me with heated eyes. If we weren’t sharing a table with my family, I’d probably tell him that the moment he spoke all of my thoughts shifted to sex, but since we’re far from alone, I go for a more tame answer.
“Just thinking about how good life is right now.”
His fingers, which have never been resting on my thigh, run a smooth, soothing line over the fabric covering my skin, and I shiver. “How good you’ve made it.”
“Hmm?” My breath stalls in my lungs, making me acutely aware of the liquid heat pooling in my core as he comes ridiculously close to my pussy and then retreats.
“How good you’ve made it,” Xavier repeats, his voice pitched low. “All of this goodness is your own doing. A result of your strength, your courage, your resilience. Don’t use passive language to make it seem like it just happened. You made your life good. Say it .”
Up until this very moment, I had been cataloging all the good things in my life. Holding them close so I could access them whenever I needed to be reminded that I was no longer the woman Brian half loved and gleefully abused. But never once did I acknowledge myself as the source of those good things, as the catalyst that created the conditions in which they were born, but right here, right now, with Xavier’s eyes on my face and his hands on my body, and his words ringing in my ears, it’s kind of impossible not to see it that way, to not want to speak it.
I lick my lips, tasting the unspoken truth on my tongue. “I made my life good.”
The kiss he gives me afterwards catches me off guard. His mouth crashing into mine before I’ve gotten the words out completely. Despite how quickly it comes on, the kiss is relatively tame, lasting for long, devastating seconds filled with just the right amount of tongue before we come up for air.
“Well, now I’ve officially lost my appetite,” A’ja says, glaring at us from across the table as she pushes her plate away.
Xavier chuckles, the humor filled sound low and dark as it curls around me. “Sorry, A’ja.”
She doesn’t respond, her attention now on the tablet in her hand that she’s been using to monitor sales on the website. Her mouth is hanging open, and her eyes are wide. “Holy shit. We sold out!”
“What?!” I yell, standing up just enough to reach over the table and grab the tablet from her hands before sinking back down into my seat, eyes glued to the screen. My heart pounds against my ribcage as I take it all in. The bright red letters under every piece in the collection spelling out the words ‘out of stock.’
I turn to Xavier, hands shaking, tears blurring my vision, and shove the tablet into his hands. “Tell me this is real.”
He glances at the screen even though he already knows. After one cursory sweep over the screen, those dark eyes find mine. He reaches up and grips my cheek. “It’s real, Hart, and it’s everything you deserve.”