12. Spencer
CHAPTER 12
SPENCER
Grady and I are lying next to each other under his duvet, while the last rays of sunlight cast a golden haze over the room. His eyes are closed, dark lashes resting softly on his cheek. I search his face for an answer to the question that popped into my mind after I came down off my last orgasmic high. The question that hasn’t left me alone. Why did that last time feel so different? Why am I lying here, staring at his face, the pink flush in his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw? Why does my chest feel like it’s been pried open, and the only way to soothe the raw vulnerability is to curl myself into Grady’s body?
Sex, for me, has always been fun, but this was different. This was layered. Grady looked me in the eyes, his strong hand cupping my jaw so that despite all of my instincts to look away, I had to peer back. To let him see me. He fucked me slowly, gently, letting each thrust go deeper until he had reached my inner sanctum. The part of me that I keep under lock and key. He fucked me until all of my pent-up feelings about my mother, about myself, disintegrated into nothing. All that was left was me and Grady. It was terrifying, yet I didn’t balk at it.
Until now.
Now the heat of the moment has dissipated, and I’m feeling exposed.
Grady’s eyelashes flutter as he opens them, catching me staring at him.
“What are you thinking about?” Grady says, his tone open and soft, still holding space for me and all of my fucked up, tangled mess of emotions. Ready to confront the swirling thoughts before I am.
“I’m thinking that I need to pee,” I say, getting up and grabbing the first piece of clothing I can find off the floor. When I slip it on, I realize it’s Grady’s T-shirt. The hem comes down to the tops of my thighs, so I don’t take it off to pad down the hallway to find the bathroom.
I open the door directly across the hall from Grady’s room and stand there, suddenly frozen in place, until I hear him approach me from behind.
His arm wraps around my waist and he buries his face in my hair.
“You know my room has an ensuite,” he mumbles. I don’t answer, because I’m stunned. What I’m standing in front of looks like a little girl’s nursery.
The walls are wallpapered with delicate florals in pinks and blues, and cornflower blue board and batten wrap the bottom portion all the way around the room. There’s a crib in one corner, a rocking chair in another, and on the far wall, a bookshelf already filled with books.
I pull away from Grady slightly. I can’t tell if he has a secret family, a child he’s never told me about, or an entire secret identity.
“If you’re thinking that this room is for a child of mine, then it’s not what you think,” he starts, and I turn to face him, his arms still wrapped around me.
“I don’t know what to think …”I frantically search his face for an answer as my mind races with every other possible explanation for this. I come up short.
See? My brain screams at me. This is why you shouldn’t trust people. You never know when they’re going to tell you they have a secret family.
“Well, if you’re thinking that I’m crazy because I turned a spare room in my house into a bedroom for my niece-to-be, then you’d be right on the money.”
I back away at what he’s just told me, not out of hurt or betrayal, just surprise. I wander around the room and take in the folded linens in the crib.
“Are you planning on kidnapping her?” I ask, and Grady laughs with a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes.
“No, but I’m sure it will be difficult to resist.” His expression falls as he brings his hand up to rub the back of his neck, and colour blooms across his cheeks. “Ally and Mason are always so busy with the clinic. I don’t know if they’ll be able to take much time off. I offered to babysit for them regularly. It’s why I hired Finn. I’ll be able to leave the bar a bit more and help them out. I just want her to feel at home here.”
I swallow past the lump that has formed in my throat. Ally is the one person in this world that I love more than anything, and now, by proxy, that extends to her daughter. The fact that Grady has done this … I can’t fathom it. He says that he doesn’t know how to show people how much he cares, but this. This right here is Grady’s heart exploded all over this beautiful, delicate, soft room. No one in my life has ever gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, or like I have a space to call my own. The best I got was a curtain around a couch in some middle-aged guy’s basement, and only if my mom remembered to ask.
I’m walking the perimeter of the room, taking in every word of what he’s saying and trying not to let my emotions get the better of me. I stop at the bookshelves in the corner that he’s stocked with every book a kid could ask for, and sit down on the rug.
“You know, I always dreamt of having something like this,” I say, running my finger along the colourful spines, and taking out an old classic, Where the Wild Things Are . I thumb through the pages, thinking about how much I related to Max as a kid. A wild imagination, a heart for adventure, but an insatiable need to return home.
“What, a library?” Grady asks, cocking his head to one side.
“No,” I answer simply. “A room.”
Grady is quiet for a moment, unsure of what to say. I’ve just opened up about a very tumultuous time in my childhood, a part of me that is so far from his own reality, and I’m sure it will be too much for him.
“Spencer …” His voice has dropped in pitch. “You never had a room?” His tone reveals the realization like a heavy weight has been placed across his shoulders.
“Nope. Well, occasionally. When we had enough money for a place. But I never decorated or anything because it was almost always a temporary space.” I try to say it with as much neutrality and nonchalance as I can muster. Even after almost three decades of living in my reality, the wound still feels fresh, raw. I’m still flipping through the pages, examining the illustrations. Anything so I don’t have to look Grady in the eye. “Mostly we slept at my mom’s boyfriends’ houses. It wouldn’t have been so bad if any of them ever cared about me or remotely wanted me sleeping on their couch.”
“Well, how would you have decorated your bedroom, if you could have?” he asks, and he comes to sit beside me on the rug.
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” I admit. “That’s how I used to fall asleep at night, lying on whatever lumpy couch I could find. I’d try to build a mental map of a room and imagine myself there, cozy in my bed.” It feels odd telling Grady about this. I said no personal questions, yet here we are, and I’m offering it to him without prompting. Friends can share things like this with each other, right?
“The walls are a dark, cozy green,” I start. I haven’t let myself think about that bedroom for years now. I told myself that I had made it on my own, so I no longer needed it as a coping mechanism. I close my eyes and let my mind find that room again, trying to recall all the details. A feeling of warmth washes over me like it always did. “It’s moody, but offset by the fact that everything else, all the decor and accents, would be baby pink. And there would be so many florals, like walking through a rose garden. I always imagined fairy lights across the ceiling, and I’d pretend that I was lying in bed staring up at them. I’d save those fairy lights for the worst nights.” I pause, because the memory of that loneliness is still painful. I like to think that I am who I am in spite of those nights.
“I always pictured myself in a white bed, with a proper headboard and footboard, and there were always more blankets than I could use. I’d have one of those canopies over it. But more than that, I used to—” My voice cracks. The last detail of the room that I can’t get out. When I glance up at Grady’s face, his expression is soft and open. A safe space. So, I continue.
“I used to imagine my mom’s room being right next to mine. You remember when you were a kid, and you would go to bed before the adults and you could still hear everyone moving around the house? I used to love listening to my mom and dad up late talking or doing whatever. So, after my dad left and we had to couch surf, I would imagine falling asleep in that room listening to her in there, getting ready for bed. I used to imagine the light from her room casting a glow into the hall. Just enough that I knew she was there. Maybe that sounds pathetic,” I say, shrugging off the uncomfortable vulnerability.
“It’s not pathetic,” he says, though he’s looking down into his lap now. “I used to do the same thing after my mom died. The house was always so quiet, even with the four of us boys. I’d hold onto that feeling of listening to my mom around the house. She would hum softly, and it felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket, comforting and cozy. That’s why I did this. I want my niece to know the feeling of having her family around her. No matter where she is, if her mom and dad are busy working at the clinic, she can always come here and feel the warmth of people she loves around her.”
“She is so lucky to have you for an uncle, Grady.” He shrugs off my comment, so I rise from where I’m seated on the floor, and Grady follows. I stretch up, wrapping my arms around his neck. The hem of the T-shirt I’m wearing rises over my thighs. “I mean that. You don’t know what I would have given to have one of the men in my life care about me the way you care about her. She’s not even been born yet, and here you are, making sure she feels loved. I’m literally jealous of a fetus.”
Grady’s hands cover the curve of my ass, scooping upwards and lifting me onto my tiptoes as he leans down to kiss me.
“Any man who hasn’t realized how special you are is either blind or stupid, Spence,” he mutters with a smile against my lips. “All I want to do is show you how special you are.” Grady interrupts himself, planting soft kisses on my mouth.
“I want to spoil you.”
Another kiss.
“I want to give you all the love you never had.”
Another kiss.
“I want to make you come over and over again.”
Those few words have my pulse quickening, the pressure growing between my thighs. I take Grady’s hand in mine as I pull away from our kiss. Tugging him back towards the bedroom, I flash him a grin over my shoulder. I shove back the thought of the rule that we’re breaking now. One night has turned into two, and willpower is no longer in my vocabulary.
I turn and sit on the edge of the bed, spreading my legs towards Grady, bared to him as his T-shirt rides up around my waist.
“So eager.” Grady’s voice dips as he admires my pussy, his gaze motivated. I am eager. So eager, and so, so horny. More so than I have ever felt before for a hook-up. The thought is brief, and I don’t pause to pay it any attention because Grady has removed his blue-striped boxers, and his cock is rock hard in front of me. My teeth sink into my bottom lip to stop myself from whimpering at the pressure building behind my swollen clit.
The T-shirt lifts over my head, Grady’s hands coming to cup my breasts as he pushes me back on the bed. His movements are more hurried now, desperate, and I match his need as he pulls my hips to the edge of the bed. He finds my opening with his tip but doesn’t give me what I want. Instead, he drags it in languid movements up and down my slit.
“Don’t tease me,” I rasp, my back arching with every movement of his tip on my clit.
“I’m not teasing you, Spencer. I’m just getting started,” Grady says, the end of his sentence trailing off with a moan as he finally gives me what I want, filling me inch by sweet fucking inch.
Grady leans down toward me, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck as he drives further into me. His eyes never leave mine as our foreheads come together. I thought that it was sex with Grady that I was addicted to, the pure carnal pleasure, yet staring into Grady’s eyes, I realize I was wrong. It’s him.
“Fuck me like it’s your last time,” I whisper to Grady, repeating the words I spoke our first night together. I’m free falling. And I need to pull the rip cord.
Something flashes across his hazel eyes for less than a second, almost imperceptible. For the moment it was there, it looked like disappointment. He schools his features, and brushes his lips against mine, bringing his mouth down to my ear. His breath as he whispers sends a shiver through me, and his words make me melt more than they should.
“You and I both know that this isn’t the last time, Rebel,” he murmurs. “You and I are inevitable, and if you can’t see that yet, let me see it for the both of us.”
The only noise I’m capable of making in response is a muffled moan as I bury my face into his neck, and he buries himself deeper in me.
Grady slows his movements, but he doesn’t stop, and I match his rhythm. Our hips rock against each other creating a delicious friction that warms me through to my very core, my very soul.
We find our release together, our bodies melting into each other. The feeling overtakes me and I want to be closer. I want to feel him in all my cracks, my broken spaces, in between each of my cells.
When Grady and I finally pull ourselves apart, unravelling our limbs and untangling the less tangible parts of ourselves from one another, we lie back in bed. There are no sounds except the occasional creak of the old house settling on its foundation as the temperature outside drops. Moonlight casts shadows on our faces through the window, lighting up the high points of our contented smiles.
Contentedness. That’s the soft, supple emotion that has settled within me. It’s probably just the endorphins, the oxytocin coursing through my veins. A physical response to a physical feeling. A human body having a human experience.
Not because of the way my eyes stung with held-back tears as Grady gazed down at me, seeing me as I’ve never been seen before. Not because of the way Grady claimed me, or because of how confident he was that what we shared is not over. No, those feelings are not the cause of my contentment. Those feelings are terrifying. Allowing those feelings would be na?ve, ignorant to the path of destruction all the Sinclair women leave in the wake of their love lives, the way I leave a path of destruction, whether Grady chooses to see that or not.
My emotional capacity is for sex and sex only. I have proven that to myself time and time again. It’s better to be upfront about that right from the start.
“I should go home,” I whisper in the dark.
“What? You want to go home?” Grady brings a hand up to brush a piece of hair away that had fallen over my face. The sensation of his calloused fingertips on my cheek warms my skin, but the tenderness with which he did it makes my heart drop. I made a promise to myself; no relationships. Sleeping over is the first step into relationship territory. “Are you okay? Did I do something to make you feel?—”
“No, nothing like that,” I interrupt him, my voice still hushed. “I think we need to re-establish some rules,” I say, the only way I know how to protect myself in these situations. “You know, before things get out of hand.”
“Out of hand? All I want is to get out of hand with you.”
Fuck. This has already gone too far, and as I suspected, I’m the only one now who can see it for what it is.
“No strings, remember? That’s the only rule we have left. We can do this, but there’s no expectations. Let’s call it a friends-with-benefits situation.” Deep down, I know friends-with-benefits is still risky. I don’t trust Grady to keep his feelings in check, but I don’t want this to end yet.
“Whatever you need, Spencer,” Grady says. “You don’t have to worry about me.” He makes an X over his heart like he did that first night, a promise to keep it guarded. Okay. Maybe this will work.