6. Grayson
— ? —
Grayson
The hotel room has exactly one bed.
I’m standing in the doorway of the suite, overnight bag in hand, watching Heather argue with a front desk clerk who couldn’t look more apologetic if he tried.
“There must be another room,” she’s saying, her voice tight with the particular frustration of someone who’s had a very long day. “Any room. A closet with a cot. Something.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Moore-”
“Ms. Teagues.”
“-Ms. Teagues, but we’re completely booked.
The conference has taken every available room.
” He types frantically at his computer, as if pressing keys harder might conjure accommodations out of thin air.
“I can offer you a complimentary upgrade to a junior suite with a pullout couch, but that’s the best I can-”
“We’ll take it.” I set my bag down. “Which floor?”
Heather spins to face me. “Grayson-”
“It’s one night. We’re adults.” I accept the key cards and hand her one. “I’ll sleep on the pullout.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I know I don’t have to.” I start toward the elevator. “I’m choosing to. There’s a difference.”
She follows, because what else is she going to do?
The conference in the Hamptons was unavoidable.
Both our families have ties to the foundation hosting it, and skipping would generate more speculation than attending.
The double booking was just the universe’s way of reminding us that nothing about this situation will ever be simple.
The suite is nice, at least. Big windows facing the ocean, a sitting area with the promised pullout couch, and one king-size bed with approximately seven thousand decorative pillows.
Heather sets her bag down and stares at that bed like it personally offended her.
“I’ll take the couch,” she says.
“No.”
“Grayson-”
“You’ll sleep easier with the window facing the water.” The words come out before I think about them, before I register how much they reveal. “The light from the harbor is calmer than the highway side. You’ll rest better.”
She looks at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
“How did you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That I sleep better near water.” She says it quietly, like she’s not sure she wants the answer. “Kirk didn’t figure that out for three years. You’ve known me, what, a month?”
“I pay attention.” The phrase is becoming a refrain, and I’m starting to wonder what it says about me - about the years I spent in a marriage where I noticed everything about the wrong woman.
“And you mentioned once, at a foundation event, that your childhood summers were spent on the Cape. That you fall asleep fastest when you can hear the waves.”
“I said that six years ago.”
“I know.”
She holds my gaze. I can see her processing, the realization that I’ve been cataloging details about her for longer than either of us admitted, that what we’re calling a fake relationship has roots that reach back further than either of us planned.
“I’ll take the couch,” I say again, breaking the moment. “Get some sleep. We have panels starting at seven.”
***
The scream wakes me at 3 a.m.
I’m off the pullout and through the connecting archway before I’m fully conscious, bare feet on carpet, sleep pants and the t-shirt I grabbed on my way out the door.
The room is dark, the ocean sound dim through the sealed windows, and Heather is sitting up in bed, her breath coming in ragged gasps, tears tracking silver down her face.
She doesn’t see me at first. Her eyes are focused on something I can’t see, a nightmare, a memory, something that followed her out of sleep and won’t let go.
“Heather.”
She flinches. Her gaze snaps to me, and for a moment I think she might scream again.
“It’s okay.” I keep my voice low, the way you’d talk to something wounded. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“I was-” Her voice cracks. “He was there, and she was, and they were laughing, and I couldn’t - I couldn’t make them stop-”
Every instinct I have says touch her. Cross the room, sit on the bed, pull her against my chest and hold on until the shaking stops.
Every rule we made says we shouldn’t.
I compromise. I sit on the edge of the mattress, close enough that she could reach me if she wanted to, far enough that she doesn’t have to.
“It’s just a dream,” I say. “It can’t hurt you anymore.”
“It felt so real.” She wipes at her face with the back of her hand, like a child. “They were in our bed. Our bedroom. And I was just standing there watching, and I couldn’t move, and they kept-”
“Hey.” I don’t reach for her. I wait. “Look at me.”
She does. Her eyes are swollen, her face blotchy, her hair a disaster. She looks nothing like the composed woman who walked into that gala on my arm, and somehow she’s more beautiful than she’s ever been.
“He doesn’t get to live in your head rent-free,” I tell her. “Not anymore. He lost that right when he lost you.”
Her breath hitches. And then she’s the one who closes the distance.
Her fingers fist in my shirt - and she buries her face in my shoulder and shakes. I hold on because she needs me to. I hold on and I ask her nothing, demand nothing, expect nothing.
But God help me, I notice everything.
The way her hair smells, something floral, jasmine maybe, warm from sleep. The curve of her bare shoulder where her sleep shirt has slipped. The heat of her breath against my collarbone, each exhale sending electricity down my spine.
She’s crying, I remind myself. She’s vulnerable. She trusts you. Don’t be the kind of man who takes advantage of that.
She’s wearing a sleep shirt that’s slipped off one shoulder.
I notice and hate myself for noticing. Her skin is pale in the darkness, smooth and soft where the fabric has fallen away, and I can see the delicate architecture of her collarbone, the gentle curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
Stop.
But my hands have ideas of their own. One slides up her back, pressing her closer, and I feel the warmth of her through the thin cotton.
No bra. The realization hits me like a punch to the gut, she’s pressed against my chest in nothing but this flimsy shirt and whatever she wears to sleep, and I can feel everything.
The soft give of her breasts against my ribs. The heat of her thigh where it’s somehow ended up pressed between mine. The way her breath ghosts across my collarbone, each exhale sending electricity skating down my spine.
My mouth goes dry.
She’s crying. Her husband cheated on her. She had a nightmare about watching them together, and you’re lying here cataloging the way her body feels against yours.
I’m a monster.
But I can’t stop noticing.
The jasmine scent of her hair, warm from sleep. The dampness of her tears soaking through my shirt, her face pressed into the curve of my neck. The small, broken sounds she makes every few seconds, not quite sobs anymore, just the residual shuddering of someone who’s cried themselves almost empty.
And underneath all of it, the awareness I can’t escape: my body is responding to hers in ways I absolutely cannot control.
She’s going to feel it, I think, panic threading through the heat. She’s going to shift wrong and feel exactly what kind of bastard you are, holding a crying woman in the dark while you-
“Don’t let go.” Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. “Please. Just... don’t let go yet.”
“I won’t.” The words come out rougher than I intended, scraped raw by the effort of keeping still. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She presses closer.
I stop breathing.
Her thigh slides higher between mine - innocent, unconscious, just seeking comfort - and grazes against exactly the wrong place. I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache, willing my body to stand down, to remember that this isn’t about me.
She trusts you. She’s letting you hold her because she feels safe with you. Don’t ruin this.
But God, the feel of her. The weight of her in my arms, warm and soft and wanting to be held. Penelope never wanted to be held.
The realization is its own kind of grief. Penelope tolerated my touch. She’d let me put my arms around her at parties, in photos, the performance of a happy marriage.
Heather is clinging to me like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s gone liquid.
I don’t know what to do with the difference.
So I just hold on.
I hold her until her breathing evens out. Until her grip loosens. Until she falls asleep with her cheek pressed to my chest, her body finally still, her thigh still warm between mine.
I don’t sleep.
I lie there in the dark, achingly aware of every place our bodies touch, and I count every reason I shouldn’t want this.
I lose count somewhere around three hundred.
***
By morning, I’m back on the pullout, pretending I slept.
I didn’t. After Heather finally stopped shaking, after her breathing evened out, after she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to my chest, I stayed. I stayed until I was sure she wouldn’t wake, and then I extracted myself carefully, inch by inch, and went back to the couch.
I stared at the ceiling until dawn, trying to remember the last time someone needed me.
Not my money. Not my connections. Not the version of Grayson Falkner that shows up at galas and makes appropriate small talk. Me.
When she appears in the doorway of the kitchenette, I’m already pouring coffee.
“Oat milk,” I say without turning around. “Two sugars. Stirred counterclockwise.”
“You remember how I take my coffee.”
“I remember everything.” I hand her the cup. “Sleep okay? Eventually?”
She takes it, her fingers brushing mine. She’s wearing the hotel robe, her hair damp from a shower, her face bare. Without makeup, she looks younger. Softer. Vulnerable in a way that makes something protective clench in my chest.
“You didn’t have to stay,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“You didn’t have to hold me.”
“I know that too.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
She watches me over the rim of her cup, and I can see her working through something, questions she wants to ask, things she’s not sure she should say.
“Why?” she finally asks.
It’s a complicated question. The simple answer is that she was in pain and I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer. The complicated answer involves eight years of marriage to a woman who never needed me, and four weeks of pretending with a woman who makes me feel more real than anything has in years.
I give her the simple answer.
“Because you needed it.” I pour my own coffee, black, no nonsense. “And because I could.”
Something shifts in her face, not gratitude, not exactly. Something closer to confusion, like kindness without conditions is a language she’s forgotten.
“Kirk would have gone back to bed,” she says. “He would have told me it was just a dream and rolled over and been snoring in thirty seconds.”
“Kirk is an idiot.”
“I’m starting to think so.”
We stand there in the kitchenette, the early morning light soft through the windows, both of us pretending this is normal. Pretending we didn’t cross a line last night, didn’t blur the edges of our carefully constructed theater.
“The panel starts in two hours,” I say finally. “We should probably-”
“Yes.” She nods too quickly. “Absolutely. Professional faces.”
But she doesn’t move. Neither do I.
“Thank you,” she says again. “For... for all of it.”
“Stop thanking me.”
“Stop being worth thanking.”
***
We perform all day.
Panels, networking, the endless small talk of professional obligation. I keep my hand at the small of her back, and she leans into my shoulder, and by mid-afternoon I’ve stopped clocking which touches are for show and which ones aren’t.
I suspect she stopped hours ago.
At dinner, we’re seated with a dozen foundation donors, making conversation about things I couldn’t care less about. Heather smiles and nods and says all the right things, and under the table, her knee presses against mine.
I don’t pull away.
Across the dining room, Penelope appears.
She’s here with the same foundation that brought us, some board connection I forgot about, some obligation she couldn’t escape. She looks good, I note distantly. Pregnancy suits her. The dress is well-chosen, hiding and emphasizing in equal measure.
I feel absolutely nothing.
It’s been six weeks since the terrace, and somewhere in that time, Penelope stopped occupying space in my chest. She’s just... a person now. Someone I used to know. Someone who made choices I can’t understand and wouldn’t want to.
But she’s watching Heather with an expression I don’t like.
When Heather excuses herself to find the restroom, Penelope follows.
I track their progress across the room, my shoulders tightening, every muscle tensing. They disappear around a corner. Ten minutes pass. I’m halfway out of my chair when Heather reappears.
Her expression is smooth. Her lipstick is fresh. There’s no sign that anything happened.
She slides into the seat beside me and leans close, her breath warm against my ear.
“She said I’m only with you to hurt her.”
I can smell her shampoo. Something floral, familiar now in a way that unsettles me.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I’m with you because you actually came home at night.”
Her hand finds mine under the table. I thread my fingers through hers.
We stay like that for the rest of the evening, connected, anchored, something I can’t name passing between us in the warmth of our interlaced hands.
When the dinner ends and we return to the suite, neither of us mentions the nightmare from the night before. Neither of us mentions the way we held each other. Neither of us mentions the fact that my pullout bed looks barely touched, or that hers shows clear evidence of a restless night.
But when I head for the couch, she stops me.
“Grayson.”
“Yeah?”
She stands in the doorway between the sitting room and the bedroom, haloed by the lamplight, looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Thank you,” she says again. “For everything.”
“You need to stop thanking me.”
“I know.” She almost smiles. “I just don’t know what else to say.”
She disappears into the bedroom. The door closes.
I lie on the pullout and listen to the ocean through the sealed windows, and I think about the way her hand felt in mine, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing.
Theater, I remind myself. This is all for show.
But the ache in my chest doesn’t feel like a performance.