20. Griffin
CHAPTER 20
GRIFFIN
The airport at three in the morning on Christmas Day is surprisingly calm. There’s colorful lights lining the terminals, creating fun patterns on the tile.
I check my phone for what has to be the tenth time hoping for a text from my sister, but all I see are anxious check-ins from my boyfriend.
Is she there?
Is she okay?
Are you okay?
It’s been twenty minutes since the plane landed, holiday jingles playing overhead with garbled announcements breaking up the monotony. There’s a cookie shop just past the gates that’s been wafting some butterscotch chocolate mix that I’ll be bugging Riley about finding a recipe for. The thought of food makes my stomach grumble and churn all at once.
My leg bounces its nervous rhythm, and I can imagine Locke sitting beside me, clamping his hand over my knee at how mad it drives him. It’s a habit that won’t break until I can lay eyes on my sister and know she’s alright.
Ten more minutes pass before people start filtering out through the gates, but it feels like an eternity until I see Cam’s normally carefully braided pastel green hair pop into view looking like she got into a fight with a blow dryer.
As soon as she’s in arms reach, I pull her into a hug where she presses her damp face to my shoulder.
“You okay?” I ask, and she nods.
“I just needed my big brother.”
Cam is tall, nearly even with me in height, but the way she scrunches her shoulders and folds in on herself makes her appear smaller.
She sniffles and laughs, then steps back and adjusts the strap on her bag.
“I’m sorry for coming out here so late. Things just—they hit the shit, and I knew I could drive home, but the thought of going back to that apartment and hiding in my room so I didn’t have to explain the black eye to my roommates was overwhelming. I was going to book a hotel for the night, but I saw an open flight here, and?—”
Her shoulders droop, and her eyes remain downcast. “I knew you’d get it.”
Because I might be the only person in her immediate sphere who does.
“It’s fine. I’m here for you. Riley is even making you up a spot on the couch.”
“I’m so sorry for imposing on them.”
I shake my head. “No worries. The Easton family is actually really sweet.”
Her lips turn up the slightest bit at the corners, and it isn’t until we’re both in the car with the airport disappearing into the rearview that her body relaxes and nearly melts into the seat of Riley’s car—the one that I borrowed because I still don’t have one of my own.
Really need to remedy that.
“What happened, Cam?”
Because our Dad is a bigot, albeit a seemingly quiet one, but violence has never been a worry of ours.
Cam’s jaw ticks and tears spring to her eyes again that she quickly wipes away. “He called me Cameron.”
I offer her a hand, and she takes it without question, squeezing my fingers in a death grip.
“I’ve made this so easy on him,” she says in a vehement whisper. “I picked a name that he’s already used to calling me. I tone down my femininity anytime we have to be near each other. I don’t talk about anything that has to do with my transition. All I ask is that he uses three simple words. She, daughter, and Cam. That’s it. He never has to acknowledge that Camry exists. I can always be Cam for him, but?—”
Her thin body shakes as her nails dig into the palm of my hand.
Home trips are reserved for holidays, and even then it’s only maybe once or twice a year. They’re cordial when they’re together, like they’re putting on appearances for an imaginary audience.
If you ask me, the only reason she even visits is some misguided guilt over Dad having a heart attack three years ago when she gathered us around the kitchen table and told us she was trans. That she’d gone to Planned Parenthood and started the process of getting hormones.
I’ve told her time and again that she doesn’t owe him anything. Not her time. Not her presence. But every time the response is, “He’s my daddy, and I love him. He loves me, too. Deep down. I know it.”
“I flinched,” she says once her voice is under control. “He took offense and asked what was wrong with my name that I had to change it? What was wrong with the name he gave me?”
“Did you tell him to shove it?”
She laughs, but it’s a sad, wet sound. “I told him I just wasn’t that person anymore. That he served me well, but I didn’t want to live in a cage for the rest of my life, and he said—you know what he said, Griff?”
The southern twang is coming out hard now, one she can never seem to shake when she’s angry.
“He said it’s all that liberal, devil music I ran out to make. That he should have pushed me into sports like you, and that he never should have let me take all those drummin’ lessons. He called it trash and brainwash. I told him he was a hypocrite when it was him pushing God and all of these arbitrary rules onto us like we’re his puppets and not his children.”
I free my hand from hers to wrap it around the back of her neck. Squeezing in a gentle pattern until her heartbeat settles and the fight drains out of her.
“It doesn’t matter. He hit me; I ran like a scared little girl.”
I wish I could take her into my arms and tell her it’s alright to be a scared, little girl. It’s alright to be afraid, to want acceptance and to push for it. That she has done nothing wrong, and it’s the world that needs to get with it.
“How about this? We get you settled at Riley’s, and I’ll make you some honey tea and re-braid that hair for you. Deal?”
The smile she gives me is real—small, but real. “I’d like that.”
Cam has kept her hair grown out for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it was just scraggly and down by her ears, then shoulder length; once it was nearing her elbows and Dad cut it off in the kitchen because he said it was a nightmare to maintain.
Now it’s somewhere in-between and no longer the dirty blond color she was born with. She’s constantly changing between hues, but this shade of green seems to be her happy spot.
When we were kids, I used to find myself mindlessly playing with it. Brushing it, braiding it, and it always seemed to relax her, so it’s a ritual we’ve kept up through the years.
“I’m glad you called.” When she raises a skeptical brow, I ruffle her hair. “Really. My baby sister will absolutely not be alone and crying on Christmas.”
“I love you, big brother.”
“And I love you, Camry Foster. The one and only.”
It’s nearing sunrise when Cam finally settles under the throw blanket on the couch and falls asleep. We made tea, a snack, talked for awhile, and when her head hit my shoulder with unmistakable little snores popping out, I laid her down and tiptoed back to Riley’s room.
He’s waiting for me with open arms that I readily sink into. His beard tickles the side of my neck, but I settle in closer and breathe him in.
“It’s been a long night,” I say, and he squeezes me tight.
“It has.” His lips graze my ear. “Lucky for you both the Easton household are late risers, so there’s time to rest.”
When I groan, he flips me onto my back and presses me to the mattress with his weight. His hands still hold onto me as his lips pass like a ghost over mine.
“Sleep, frat boy.”
I want to, but I’m wound so tight not even Riley’s soothing hands along my body can loosen me up.
“He hit her, Riley. His own daughter. Him and I have gotten into it before, but he’s never laid a hand on me.”
“I know, baby. But you’ve done everything you can tonight. Focus on getting some rest and having a good day with her tomorrow.”
I huff, and he nips at my chin. “I love you, Riley.”
“Go to sleep, Griffin.”
Cam blends in with the Eastons well. She cooks with Mrs. Easton, gets along easy with Riley, and a few times I caught her playing games with Parker in the backyard.
I haven’t seen her this carefree in years, but I hate the circumstances that lead us here. While I should be enjoying the day with everyone else, the worry keeps me captive and out of the moment.
“Bend over.”
I blink out of whatever black hole swallowed me this time to the sound of my boyfriend’s growled voice in my ear.
“Huh?”
“I said, bend over.” A hand slides up my back, the other gripping my hip and keeping me steady as he pushes my face to the mattress. “If nothing else gets you out of your head, this will.”
Before I can question him, my pants are yanked down around my knees, and a cool, wet finger pushes past my entrance.
“Oh god,” I moan into the comforter as the burn radiates through my backside. “Riley. Fuck.”
He makes quick work of loosening me for a second finger, scissoring them inside so slow and meticulous that I have no choice but to thrust back to beg him to go deeper, harder.
“That’s it, baby. You want to be filled, don’t you?”
Even with a head full of worries, my body responds to him without question.
It’s a rough, dirty fuck where Riley holds my head to the mattress to muffle the indecent noises I’m spewing. His cock punches inside with an intense rhythm, going straight for my prostate and shoving me so far up the bed with each thrust that my feet leave the ground and trap my cock beneath my body and the bed.
“Riley,” I gasp out, turning my head when he loosens his hold a fraction. “Lube, please?”
The pounding slows but doesn’t stop as he reaches for the bottle on the side table. “My cock or yours?”
“Mine.”
He picks my hips up and shoves my knees beneath me, all while staying firmly lodged in my ass. His hands make a pass over my spread cheeks, down my thighs, and when he grips my cock in one calloused hand, he dribbles lube over me with the other before working it in.
Which includes a fast and steady attack on my dick while he pegs me harder in the one spot it’s impossible to keep my composure.
“Fuck. That’s it, baby. You take me so good. Just a little more. C’mon, baby, let loose. Clench around me just like that. Fuck, you’re gonna make me come.”
Riley’s hands, his dick, his words, they’re all too much and everything at once. The perfect combination to send me spiraling over, crying into my own hand as I spill into his.
There’s a single, blissful, white out moment before I come down, where Riley’s mouth latches onto my neck and sucks a deep, purple bruise as his hips slam into my ass one final time, and his release pulses inside of me.
My limbs are too light to hold me up, but when I crash down, it’s into Riley’s arms. Sweaty and covered in cum, his mouth latches onto mine for a slow and coaxing kiss.
“Do you feel better?”
I sigh into his mouth and drop my head back on the mattress. “I’m still sad, but … the haze is gone.”
“Good.” He kisses my mouth again. “It feels like you haven’t been here all day, and you have to leave in the morning.”
Right. My last day with Riley before packing it up and heading back to Tennessee. Back to hockey.
“Are you coming back?” I ask.
He opens his mouth, closes it, and drops his forehead to mine. “I don’t know. I stepped away because I felt like we needed some breathing room, but now that I’m here … I realize how much I’ve missed this. Missed them. Parker still has a couple of years left before he goes off to college, and I want to know him. I want him to know me.”
“I’ll never stand in the way of what you want in life, Riley. If what you need is your family, be here with them. It’s not like I’m going anywhere you can’t find me.”
Riley rolls, cups my cheek in his hand and gives me the most loving smile that squeezes right around my heart.
“Thank you for being patient with me through all of this.”
“What am I going to do? Tell you to march downstairs and tell your parents we’re dating even though I see how much you struggle with it?”
He sighs, kisses me softly, and sighs again. “No. But you could decide it isn’t worth it. That we aren’t worth the secrecy.”
“Of course we’re worth the secrecy,” I say. “What you have to decide is when we’re worth the honesty.”
I don’t know how much waiting I have left in me, but I know I can’t take losing him again.
At least for now, I can give him a little more time.