11. Chapter 11
Grayson
It’s official. I’ve ruined my friendship. My marriage? Both? Probably both.
I’m not a hundred percent sure what happened, but I know for sure that I woke up to Harlow jumping out of bed like his ass was on fire and the vague memory of a dream that I should not have been having.
Fuck.
My dick is still aching, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Not with Harlow just behind the closed bathroom door.
I rub my hands over my face. Should I get up and check on him? Probably not. If he needs space away from me, I don’t need to disturb him. The best thing I can do is leave him alone.
And maybe go ahead and pack my stuff and head back home.
He’s been in the bathroom for a long time, and I’m starting to get worried when finally the water turns on and then off, and he’s pushing the door open. I stare up at the ceiling, avoiding his gaze, though I can feel it on the side of my face.
Without a word, he slips back into bed with me, curling into my side.
I’m so surprised that for a long while, I just lie stock-still, not wanting to disturb the fragile peace. But when he nuzzles into my chest and rubs his head back and forth, I wrap an arm around him and pull him closer, burying my face in his hair.
My heart gives a dull thud. This is hard and getting harder by the second. There will be no reprieve either. We’ll be on this trip for another few days, and then we’ll be going home together. We’ll have to be around our friends and family. We’ll have to act like we’re married.
I mean, not all the time, of course, but enough that I already know it will hurt.
“Do you feel like I trapped you?” Harlow asks, breaking the silence.
“How?”
He sighs. “With this whole marriage thing. I mean… I don’t remember anything, but I probably suggested it, right? Makes the most sense. Upset about being left at the altar and shit like that.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. If you feel trapped, we don’t have to do this.”
If anything, I probably suggested it. Maybe drunk me figured the third time was the charm. Who knows? All I know is that if Harlow knew how I felt about him, he wouldn’t be so quick to assume it was his stupid-ass idea, or that I feel trapped.
I feel a little sad that I finally get to be married to Harlow, and it’s not even real, but… that’s not his fault. “No. I don’t feel trapped.”
“It would suck to tell everyone the truth, but I would if I needed to. If you wanted me to. I’d never want to do anything to hurt you.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. I’m starting to think that being in love with Harlow and being hurt go hand in hand, one not able to exist without the other. Even still, I wouldn’t change it for anything. The two have coexisted longer than I can remember, as much a part of me as he is.
Shifting us around, I grasp his chin and tilt his head back. His blue eyes search my face, his teeth sinking into his already abused and torn-up lip. I carefully tug it free of his hold, using every single bit of willpower I have to resist the urge to soothe the skin with my touch.
“We’re good, Harlow. I promise. You didn’t trick me. I don’t want to tell anyone that this isn’t real, okay?”
He nods slowly, his eyes dropping to my lips. My heart races as I watch his tongue dart out, licking a path across his bottom one before he drags his eyes back up to mine. He holds eye contact for a second, and my breath stutters in my lungs when his gaze falls again.
It really seems like he wants to kiss me, and I am so, so tired of fighting it. Maybe he’s right. If we’re going to fake it, we need a certain level of comfort with each other. Familiarity. It needs to feel genuine and not rehearsed.
I find myself leaning closer, which is really a bad, awful choice. But before I have a chance to do something stupid, Harlow sighs and shifts, resting his head back against my chest.
If he can hear the way my heart is pounding—and I’m sure he can—he doesn’t mention it.
“What do you want to do tonight?” I ask softly, needing to do something besides think about all the ways this is going to break my heart.
Harlow snorts. “Not drink.”
Yeah, I don’t want to drink either. I’m still kind of nursing a bit of a hangover, and while I feel much better than I did this morning, I don’t want to end up feeling sick for the whole trip.
“The hotel has a pool, right? Wanna go swim?”
Sighing, Harlow snuggles closer. “Sure, but can we just lie here for a little bit longer first? I feel like we haven’t gotten to just exist with each other in a long time.”
My heart skips. “Sure. But to be fair, you were engaged, so it’s not like it was my choice to not give you all the cuddles your heart desired.”
He laughs at that. “True. But now I’m not engaged. I’m married. To you.” Yeah, I couldn’t possibly forget that. “So, as my husband, I’d say it’s definitely your job to give me cuddles now.”
I swallow hard, my throat clicking. All my dreams, and still more like a nightmare than anything else, but I tighten my arm around Harlow and pull him in closer before running my fingers through his hair. “I’ll give you all the cuddles you want.”
Fuck. I’d give him anything he wanted. All he has to do is ask.
“Josh didn’t really like cuddling. He was never super tactile.”
I hum, since I don’t know what else to say. It doesn’t matter. Harlow’s always been good at filling my silences, and he proves that a second later.
“I was okay with that, I thought. But now, I’m like… I don’t know—was that a sign that we just weren’t compatible to begin with? Do you think I would have been sad about not having physical touch like this?”
“I’m not sure. It’s possible, I think. I mean, you were happy with him, though. So maybe things would have been okay.”
Harlow lays his hand on my chest, then tiptoes his fingers around.
“Was I? I’m not sure. And how sad is that?
I think I might have started that way. I think we both started that way.
But… I’m just not sure. I feel like after a while, it turned into us being together because we were already on that path, you know?
We were dating, and then we got engaged, and I think we were both just comfortable. ”
Raising himself up, Harlow folds his arms over my chest and then rests his chin on them, staring up at me. Our faces are incredibly close, just inches apart.
“I want a love that sets me on fire.”
“You deserve that,” I croak out, my throat tightening with my agony.
His lips quirk up. “Our kiss set me on fire.”
The words stop me dead. “You don’t even remember our kiss.”
“No, but I saw it. Saw myself. Saw you. Know how it made me feel.” He raises an eyebrow. “Can you really tell me it made you feel nothing to see that?”
No, I can’t say that. It made me feel everything. Too much, even.
I shake my head instead of answering out loud.
Triumph lights up his eyes. “See.”
This is dangerous territory. It opens me up to the potential for hurt, and I’m okay with that. But it opens Harlow up to being hurt too, and that’s something I have a harder time risking.
“We could just try,” he whispers, his eyes falling to my mouth. “Maybe it was just the alcohol, or maybe it wasn’t, but all I know is I can’t stop thinking about it. About watching myself kiss you.”
I want to say yes. My mind is screaming at me to open my mouth and say it. Pleading with me. My heart is more guarded. Begging for me to protect it and say no. It’s hard to reconcile.
Before I have a chance to do either, Harlow surges forward and slams his mouth down onto mine.
I freeze, everything going still as my brain screeches to a halt. Harlow is fucking kissing me, and I’m stuck.
He nips at my bottom lip, and my heart jumps into my throat. Then his tongue is coming out to soothe the sting.
“Kiss me back, Gray,” he whispers against my lips.
My fingers sink into his hair without thought, and I drag him closer, parting my lips in invitation. His soft moan rattles around in my head, and all my systems seem to go offline.
There’s just Harlow. His scent in my nose and his taste on my tongue. His thick waves knotted and tangled around my fingers. His tongue sweeping past my lips. His breathy gasp against my mouth.
I’m in heaven and hell all at once. Holding all the things I want for my future in my hands, but knowing it’s not really mine to keep—he’s not mine to keep.
It’s that realization that has me breaking away from him with a gasp.
He presses his forehead to mine, his breath puffing out over my tingling lips.
“Fire,” he murmurs. “Just like I knew it would be.”
This is too much. I can’t do this.
I carefully move him off me, doing my best to ignore his whine of protest, and climb out of bed.
“Gray?”
“I just need a minute,” I respond without looking back.
I slip into the bathroom and close the door softly, then rest my forehead against the cool wood.
That was a mistake. I don’t even know what I’m doing. What we’re doing. Obviously I can’t hang out in here forever, though, so I take a couple of seconds to collect myself, and then I push open the door to the bathroom.
Harlow is sitting up on the bed, picking at his cuticles, and when the door creaks open, his head whips in my direction. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth.
I shake my head. “Nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
If anything, he did everything right, and somehow that makes it worse.
“I think we need to talk about this.”
“The kiss?” he asks, cocking his head.
“No.” I sit down on the edge of the bed. “Our marriage.”
His eyebrows draw together as he looks down at his lap. “We can end it. I’ll call and tell everyone. Post on socials and stuff.”
Goddammit. I can’t even resist. Reaching out, I tilt his head back so he’s forced to look at me.
“We don’t need to do that, but I do think we actually need to talk about it.
What it means for us. Our boundaries. Our plans.
How long it’s going to last.” That part makes me swallow hard, but I know it’s something we need to address.
“How long it’s going to last?” Harlow echoes.
“Yes.” I drop his chin, letting my hand fall away.
“We can’t just be married forever. You already said you want a love that sets you on fire.
” And that’s not me. It hasn’t been me so far, and I don’t think it’s going to be me now.
“And I…” Well, I just want him, but that’s not going to happen.
I clear my throat and try again. “I want you to have what you want. So we need to set a time limit on this. I think we need that. We also need to set boundaries and parameters and define what this means for us. Both in private and around other people.”