22. Chapter 22
Harlow
Gray slept a lot longer than I did. He’s still asleep now, actually. After we had sex last night, he accused me of trying to suck his soul out through his cock—which… rude—then he passed out.
I was up for a while after that. Not because he didn’t wear me out too, but because I was too busy watching him to fall asleep.
It’s a new thing I’m doing. Not by choice.
Not consciously, anyway. I just find myself watching him, and he’s so hot and beautiful and sweet and perfect that I can’t help it.
If anything, it’s his fault. If he doesn’t want me looking at him, he’s gonna have to be… less. Less sweet. Less attractive. Less attentive to my needs. Just less.
But I don’t actually want that at all. If anything, I want the opposite. I’m starting to worry I have a crush on my fucking husband. Wildly embarrassing. Wildly problematic. This is Gray. We’ve been friends for so long now that I don’t know how to function without him. I don’t even want to try.
I’m aware it’s codependent, but we can both function on our own, so who’s it hurting? No one. Well, except for maybe me in a couple of months when he’s not my husband anymore, and I have to figure out how to make him just Grayson instead of husband.
Almost like he can sense me, his eyes flutter open, and I avert my gaze.
“I can tell you’re staring at me,” he says, his voice a low grumble that goes straight to my cock. Still on its whore shit today, I see.
I don’t know why it even surprises me anymore. It’s like watching myself kiss Gray awakened me. Not a gay awakening. That was Taylor Lautner. It wasn’t until I was fifteen and got the nerve to come out to him that Grayson realized my obsession with sparkly vampires wasn’t about the vampires at all.
I’m getting off track. The point is that kissing Grayson awakened something new in me, and just like back then, I’m obsessed.
Only this time, it’s not a fictional werewolf. It’s my very real best friend. Who fucks like a god and kisses me like it’s the last thing he’ll do. Like he’s starving, and I’m the only thing that will sate him.
It’s a problem.
“Are you not gonna talk to me?”
Oops. “Yeah, sorry.”
“It’s rare that you stay mute the morning after.”
My eyebrows draw together, and I turn my attention back to Grayson. He’s watching me in amusement, his lips tilted up in a small grin.
“What do you mean?”
I have to resist the urge to close my eyes when he laughs. The sound of his laughter has always been one of my favorite things, but now it’s even more amplified. I could listen to it forever. See what I mean? This is becoming a real problem.
Wrapping his arm around me, he tugs me down to him, and I collapse against his chest with an oomph. He slips his fingers into my knotted hair, making little circles on my scalp, and I practically turn into goo.
“After I fuck you real good, you always get real quiet,” he says softly. “Normally by morning, you’re back to being a chatterbox.”
I frown. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. You don’t like to hear me talk?”
Gray’s fingers freeze in my hair for a second before he starts back up with his gentle massage. “Your voice is one of my favorite sounds in the universe.”
My heart thunders. See, that’s the kind of shit I’m talking about right there. Why is my heart going all haywire when he says stuff like that to me?
I don’t even know what to say, so I just hum.
Gray uses his grip to tilt my head back and presses his lips to mine before tapping me on the ass. “Alright, we’ve gotta get moving.”
Ugh. I don’t want to move. I wanna stay here. “Why?”
He hums, brushing his nose over mine before sitting up and nearly knocking me off him. He ignores my glare and stretches. Which pretty much wipes my glare away because, goddamn, his muscles look good.
“Because you decided to let our parents plan a reception, and now we have to be there too.”
I groan. Bad enough that I already planned a wedding. Now I’ve gotta help plan a second reception?
He laughs, tossing the blankets off himself and standing up. A naked Grayson is always at the top of my stuff I want to see list, and I watch as he walks into the bathroom, his ass flexing and his back muscles rippling.
That fucking ass of his is obscene. Ugh.
One of these days, I’m gonna bury my face between his ass cheeks and make him come with just my tongue.
But not today. Today I have to help our moms to plan a damn reception and hope and pray I can get them to agree to do it soon enough that it’s before the end of our marriage.
I could tell they were getting suspicious, and that’s the only reason I agreed. Or maybe it’s not even that they’re suspicious so much as it is that I’m not a good liar, and even if I was, I’ve never liked lying to my parents.
It’s hard to break a habit. Not that it’s a habit I want to break, but it’s still necessary to lie for now.
I startle when Gray steps back into the bedroom. “Are you planning on getting up?”
Rolling my eyes, I toss the blanket off myself and climb out of bed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting up.”
“What about October 4th?”
I shake my head again. “No, it needs to be in the next month or so.”
My mom huffs, clearly fed up with my shit. “I don’t know why you’re trying to rush this.”
I’m not trying to rush anything. Okay, so I am, but only because I want to have this damn reception before our divorce is finalized, and October is too far out. Two months too far out, actually.
“I think what Harlow is trying to say,” Grayson says, coming to my rescue, “is that we’re just really excited, and we want to do this as soon as possible.”
Now it’s Ren’s turn to roll her eyes. “So excited that you both fought us on it for almost a month before you finally agreed.”
I shrug. “Well, now we’re not fighting, and we want to get it done.”
My mom grabs her phone, opening a search bar. “I don’t know what kind of venue we’re gonna be able to find in a month’s time.”
“We don’t need anything fancy.”
Mom huffs. “Your son only gets married once.”
Ouch. Well, no, actually, I guess that’s true enough. Didn’t get to the married part of it all with Josh. Speaking of, I should text him. I think he’ll get a kick out of all this. Not right now, though. I still haven’t told any of the parents that I’ve forgiven him and we’re friends.
“Are you okay with that, pretty boy?”
My stomach heats, and my face burns. Gray’s never used that name for me outside the bedroom and definitely never in front of our parents. He’s Pavloved me with it a little bit, though, because my dick starts to plump up.
Though, to be fair, it doesn’t take much where he’s concerned.
Okay, so wait, what? “Huh?”
“If we do it at Kincaid Park?”
I can’t help but smile. Gray and I used to hang out there as kids. It has a playground that we used to play at during summer break, but they also have a really nice building used for parties and shit. “Yeah, that’s cute. A little piece of our history.”
Gray’s eyes go soft, and butterflies take over my stomach. “That’s true,” he murmurs, leaning in like he’s about to kiss me before stopping himself.
Well, fuck that. I reach out, tangling my fingers in his shirt, and pull him the rest of the way to me.
I keep the kiss short, because hello, our moms are literally right there. But it doesn’t matter. I love every way we kiss.
My mom’s annoyed tsk drags me away from Grayson. “Still think you all deserve something nicer.”
I sigh. “I’ve had the big nice thing, Mom. Tons of guests. Tons of money.” Tons of bullshit I didn’t want to begin with. “Gray and I are simple. Our lives are simple. Our love is simple. Besides, Kincaid Park has a lot of really great memories for us.”
Grayson’s eyes are boring into the side of my head.
“It feels fitting in a way, I guess. We spent so much time there as kids, and to have it come full circle to celebrate our l-love,” I say, stumbling over the word love, “and our marriage just feels… right.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Gray says softly, and I turn to him, finding him gazing at me with what looks like real love in his eyes.
They’re all gooey and soft, the brown full to bursting with affection. My heart skips a beat, those butterflies finding their way back to me. Holy shit.
He’s really fucking good at pulling off the “we’re in love” thing.
“Okay, then,” Ren says, and I drag my eyes away from Grayson’s, trying and mostly failing to find my equilibrium. “We’ll do it at Kincaid. Now, what are we thinking for food?”
“We should do Russo’s,” I say. “They have the best food.”
My stomach growls just thinking about it. Their Alfredo is to die for.
“We can do that,” Gray says, grinning at me.
“You can’t just let him have whatever he wants all the time.”
My mother, ladies and gentleman.
Gray glances at her, then taps the tip of my nose before turning fully to her. “I’ve been giving him whatever he wants our whole lives. Why should now be any different?”
Josh didn’t goes unsaid.
It’s no secret that I didn’t get much say in anything that happened there, but now that I’m away from the situation, I can see that Josh didn’t get much say in it either. His parents are kind of controlling assholes. He’s opened up to me about it a little bit since our failed wedding.
Nothing major. Just enough that I’ve gotten the vague idea that maybe they aren’t great people.
“I don’t like those people,” Ren says, clearly hearing what Gray wasn’t saying.
“Me neither. The whole lot of them can rot in hell,” my mom agrees.
And that right there is why I haven’t said a word about my friendship with Josh. At first, I think Gray was skeptical, even, but not anymore. I think he almost feels bad for Josh. Hell, we both do.
“Okay,” I say. “We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about us and our wedding stuff.”
There’s no point in letting them dissolve into anger all over again.
I know that hell has no fury like a woman scorned, but they weren’t scorned; I was.
Try telling that to my mom and Ren, though.
They won’t hear a word of it. I’m their sweet little Harlow, and therefore Josh is a dick, and I’m a sad victim.
Which, okay, but can’t they see how happy I am to not be married to him and to be married to Gray instead?
Josh did us all a favor—but me especially.
Being married to Gray is my favorite thing in the entire world. God, it’s gonna suck so fucking badly when I’m not anymore.
Just the thought alone has my stomach aching, so I shift in my seat, leaning closer to him. He wraps his arm around me, turning his head to press his lips to my hair, and I snuggle into his side.
At least we’ll always be friends. Nothing’s going to change that.