6. Grant
GRANT
I wake up before she does, which gives me a few minutes to look at her without an audience, the gulf outside the window still deciding what kind of day it wants to be.
Her hair’s across my pillow, dark against the white cotton, one arm thrown over my chest like she claimed the space in her sleep and never bothered asking permission.
Sunday morning light falls through the blinds in stripes across her shoulder.
I lie there and let myself look, and I don’t feel a single second of the guilt I rehearsed on the drive home from Tampa.
I’m forty-two years old. I don’t make accidental decisions — not in business, not in the draft room, not in my own house.
I picked this weekend. I could have told her the guys were coming and let her make other plans.
I could have suggested a hotel, a friend’s couch, anywhere that wasn’t under my roof while three men who’ve known me since college watched me lose a battle I never tried to win.
I didn’t do any of that. The part of me that planned this weekend is the same part that kept her in my bed last night, and I’m done pretending those are two different men.
She stirs. Opens her eyes. Doesn’t look surprised to find herself here, which is its own kind of answer. “Morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
She stretches, languid, entirely unselfconscious about it, and props herself up on one elbow to look at me the way she looked at me last night — like she’s still weighing something she hasn’t finished deciding about.
“You’re staring again,” she says. “I’m allowed to now.”
“Says who?”
“Says the guy whose bed you’re in.” I run a thumb along her jaw, and she leans into it instead of pulling away, and something settles in my chest that’s been unsettled since that backyard in Tampa. “You have any regrets I should know about before the guys wake up?”
She considers the question longer than I expect her to. “No,” she says finally. “Should I?” “No.” It comes out rougher than I mean it to. “Not from me.”
She doesn’t ask what happens now. Neither do I. We both already know the conversation’s coming — it’s a question of who says the first sentence, and neither of us is in a hurry to find out.
The draft resumes at ten, and the guys already know. It’s in the air the second I walk into the great room — Jax doesn’t even try to hide his grin.
“Morning, Commissioner.” He raises his coffee like a toast. “Draft your best player last night?” “Careful,” I tell him, and he laughs like I confirmed something instead of warning him off it.
Sun’s already climbing hot over the water by the time Mia comes out in the jersey.
Back on — I recognize it the second she walks in, and it hits different than it did Friday morning.
Friday it was an accident, a coincidence, a thing she grabbed out of a drawer.
Today it’s a choice. She sits down at the table, and instead of taking her spot across from me, she pulls the chair in next to mine.
Brooks notices. Doesn’t say anything — adjusts his glasses and goes back to his laptop, but the corner of his mouth gives him away. Tate grins outright. Jax says nothing at all, which from Jax is louder than words.
I let the round play out. Then I stand, grab a beer from the cooler, and head for the deck.
They follow. All three of them, unprompted, the way they always do when I need to say something that matters. That instinct runs deep between us, and I’m about to test it.
“You’ve all been looking at her,” I say, “since she sat down at that table Friday morning.” Nobody argues. Tate has the decency to look briefly guilty. Jax doesn’t bother.
“And?” Jax says.
“And if she wants it, it happens. My house. My rules.” I take a drink, let the silence do some of the work. “Nobody touches her without her say-so. And certain things stay mine.”
I don’t elaborate. Old friendship means I don’t have to.
Tate’s the first to speak, arms crossed, more serious than I’ve seen him all weekend, sweat still drying on his shoulders from whatever workout he snuck in before breakfast. "You sure about this, Grant? Because I’ll walk it back right now if you say the word.
She’s — " He stops, recalibrates. “She matters to you. I’m not looking to complicate that for a weekend.”
“I know you’re not.” And I do know it — Tate’s the least calculating man I’ve ever called a friend, which is why I trust him with this in a way I wouldn’t trust a stranger. “It’s not complicated if everyone follows the rules.”
Brooks adjusts his glasses, quiet for a moment, weighing the question the way he weighs everything — carefully, without rushing to an answer he hasn’t tested. “And if she changes her mind. Mid-weekend. About any of it.”
“Then it stops. Immediately. No negotiation, no ‘just five more minutes.’ Her word ends it, every time, no exceptions.” I look at each of them in turn to make sure it sticks. “That’s not a suggestion.”
“Wasn’t asking because I doubted you,” Brooks says. “Asking because I wanted to hear you say it out loud.”
Jax hasn’t said anything yet, which is unlike him.
When he finally does, the usual performance is missing from his voice entirely.
“You’ve been in love with her since Tampa, whatever you kept telling yourself it was.
And you’re standing here handing us a piece of that.
” He shakes his head, something almost respectful in it.
“That’s not a small thing you’re doing, Grant. ”
“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
Brooks nods once, like he’s already calculating what this means for the rest of the weekend. Tate’s grin creeps back despite himself, which is somehow both reassuring and exactly the problem. Jax looks at me for a long second, and for once there’s no joke behind his eyes.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
That’s it. That’s the whole negotiation. Trust like ours doesn’t need more words than that — and somehow, having said it out loud to the three men I trust more than almost anyone, the weight of it feels lighter instead of heavier.
I find Mia in the kitchen an hour later, alone, coffee in hand, watching the water through the window.
“They want you,” I tell her. No preamble. She turns, and I keep going before I lose the nerve. “You know that. If you want them — any of them, all of them — I’ll be there. But some things are only mine.”
“Which things.”
I tell her. Plain, no dressing it up. Breeding stays mine alone. No one else finishes inside her — not once, not ever. They can have whatever she says yes to; that one thing is only ever me.
She takes a breath, processing it, and I watch her run the idea through whatever internal calculus she uses to weigh things that matter.
It doesn’t take her long. It never seems to, with her — she decides fast and commits completely, none of the second-guessing I’ve spent a lifetime doing about smaller things than this.
She sets her coffee down slowly, like she needs both hands free for this conversation. “You’re serious.” “I don’t say things I’m not serious about.”
“No,” she agrees. “You don’t.” She studies me a moment, and I can see her turning it over — not the mechanics of it, but the weight underneath. “That’s a lot of control for one man to keep.”
“It’s not about control.” I mean it, and I need her to hear that I mean it. “It’s the one thing in this that stays only ours. Everything else — who, when, how far — that’s yours to decide. I’m not taking that away from you. I’m asking for one thing to keep.”
Something in her face changes, softens, like she understood what I was actually offering instead of what she thought I was demanding. “Okay,” she says. “That I can live with.”
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask why again, doesn’t need it explained twice. She looks at me for a long moment, weighing something else now, and I watch her get there — watch the decision land on her face before she says it out loud.
“Jax,” she says. “Tonight. You watch.”
She’s made a selection — chosen, certain, entirely hers.
My jaw works before I can stop it. Jax, of every man in this house, is the one who’s been pushing since Friday morning, the one whose mouth runs faster than his sense. I know why she picked him, and it isn’t because she wants him most.
She wants to see what it costs me to watch.
“Fine,” I say, and the word costs exactly what she wanted it to cost. I feel it leave my chest like something I can’t take back.
She sees it land. Something satisfied moves behind her eyes, quiet and a little dangerous, and she sets her coffee down and crosses the kitchen and kisses me slow, like she’s got all the confirmation she needs.
“Tonight,” she says again, against my mouth this time, and walks out to rejoin the draft like she didn’t rearrange the rest of my weekend on her way through the kitchen.
I stand there a long moment, coffee going cold on the counter, and think about what I agreed to. Not the mechanics of it — I made peace with those the second I said the word breeding out loud and meant it.
It’s the rest of it. Watching another man’s hands on her tonight, knowing I gave the permission myself, knowing I’ll be in the room while it happens because she asked me to be.
I’ve built a career on controlling outcomes, on making sure every variable in a deal lands where I put it.
Tonight I’m handing one of the biggest variables of my life to a twenty-one-year-old with a bourbon habit and more nerve than sense, and trusting her to bring it back to me in one piece.
I find Jax on the deck a while later, alone, feet up on the rail, watching the water like he already knows I’m coming, a beer sweating untouched on the armrest beside him.
“So,” he says, without turning around. “Tonight.”
“Tonight.” I sit down across from him. “You heard the rules already. I’m telling you again anyway, because I want it said to your face.
Her word ends anything, the second she says it.
You’re gentle until she tells you otherwise.
And when it’s over, she’s mine again — not partway, not eventually. Immediately.”
Jax turns to look at me, and for once there’s nothing performative in his expression at all.
“Grant. I’ve known you since college. I’ve watched you build a company, bury a marriage, and never once ask any of us for anything you didn’t need.
You think I don’t understand what tonight costs you?
” He shakes his head. “I’ll take care of her.
Better than take care of her — I’ll make sure she knows exactly whose house this is the whole time. ”
“That’s all I needed to hear.”
“Yeah.” He looks back out at the water, quiet a moment, choosing his words instead of reaching for the first easy ones. “For what it’s worth — I’ve never seen you fight for anything the way you’ve fought for this one without saying a word about it. Don’t lose it over one night.”
“I don’t intend to.”
He nods, and that’s the end of it — the whole conversation, settled the way things between us always settle, with fewer words than the moment probably deserves and enough understanding to make up the difference.
Game on.