12. Heather
— ? —
Heather
The hotel room is dark except for the city lights spilling through the windows.
We stand just inside the door, not touching, barely breathing, the weight of what’s about to happen pressing down on both of us.
Grayson drove here in silence, his hand on my thigh the whole way - not moving, not stroking, just there - and every mile felt like a countdown to something I couldn’t name.
Now we’re here.
And I don’t know how to move forward.
The room is expensive in that anonymous way hotel rooms always are, king bed with too many pillows, generic art on the walls, a minibar I’ll probably raid later if my hands ever stop shaking.
But none of that matters. What matters is the six feet of charged air between us.
What matters is the way he’s looking at me like he’s waiting for permission to breathe.
“We can stop.” His voice is rough, scraped raw. “If you’re not ready-”
“I’m ready.” The words come out shakier than I intended. “I’ve been ready for weeks. I’ve just been pretending I wasn’t.”
“What changed?”
I think about the garage. His mouth on my throat. The way my back arched against the car and I forgot my own name.
“I stopped caring about the rules.” I turn to face him fully, and the movement feels monumental - a door opening that I won’t be able to close. “I stopped caring about the performance, and the narrative, and what anyone thinks. I just want-”
I can’t finish the sentence.
The want is too big. Too terrifying. It fills my whole chest and presses against my ribs and I don’t have words for something this overwhelming.
He finishes it for me.
“What do you want, Heather?”
“You.” The word comes out like a confession dragged from somewhere deep. “I want you. And I’m terrified of what that means.”
His jaw unclenches, just slightly, and he looks at me like he’s recalculating.
The careful control he wears like armor - the same control I watched him maintain through eight years of Penelope’s lies - cracks down the middle.
He crosses the room in three steps.
His hands frame my face, tilting it up to meet his eyes. His palms are warm against my cheeks, his thumbs brushing the corners of my mouth, and I’m suddenly aware of how close he is.
Close enough that I can see the individual lashes framing his eyes.
Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough that if I leaned forward two inches, we’d be breathing the same air.
“I’ve wanted you since the foundation gala six years ago.” His voice is barely a whisper. “You were wearing a blue dress, and you laughed at something someone said, and I thought - this is the most beautiful woman in the world, and she belongs to someone else.”
My heart stops.
“Grayson-”
“I’ve been watching you for years, Heather.
Noticing things. Remembering things.” His thumb traces my lower lip, and I forget how to inhale.
“The way you take your coffee. The way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re nervous.
The way you smile at people who don’t deserve it and mean it anyway, because that’s who you are. ”
“I didn’t know-”
“Of course you didn’t know. I made sure you didn’t know.” His jaw tightens. “You were married. I was married. And I told myself it was just observation, just paying attention, just-” He shakes his head. “It was never just anything. It was always this. It was always going to be this.”
The confession undoes something in my chest.
Six years. He’s been carrying this for six years, watching me across rooms, memorizing details I didn’t even know I was sharing, wanting something he thought he could never have.
And I was so busy being Kirk’s perfect wife that I never noticed the quiet man in the corner who saw me more clearly than my own husband ever did.
“I wasted so much time,” I whisper.
“We both did.”
“I should have-”
“Don’t.” His voice is gentle but firm. “Don’t think about should have. Think about now. Think about what you want right now, in this room, with me.”
I reach up and start working at his buttons.
“Then stop wasting time.”
This is a mistake, some distant part of my brain whispers. You’re rebounding. You’re vulnerable. You’re going to regret this in the morning.
I silence it by pulling his shirt free of his waistband.
I’m done listening to the voice that kept me small.
Rebound. Vulnerable. You’ll hate yourself at sunrise. The warnings line up like they always do, polite and reasonable and ten years too late. I unbutton his collar and let them talk to an empty room.
My fingers are clumsy with the buttons, trembling, fumbling, so desperate to touch skin that I nearly tear one off entirely. Grayson’s hands cover mine, stilling them.
“Slow down.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” He brings my fingers to his lips, pressing a kiss to each knuckle. “We have all night. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t want slow.” My voice breaks on the last word. “I’ve spent ten years going slow. Being patient. Waiting for Kirk to notice me, to want me, to make me feel like I was worth something. I’m done being patient.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.
“Then tell me what you need.”
“I need you to stop being careful with me.” I fist my hands in his half-open shirt, dragging him closer. “I need you to want me like you’ve been wanting me for six years. I need you to show me what it feels like to be wanted by someone who actually sees me.”
His control shatters.
One moment he’s standing there, holding himself in check, and the next his mouth is on mine - hard, desperate, nothing like the careful kisses we’ve shared before.
His hands are in my hair, on my waist, sliding down to grip my hips and pull me flush against him.
I can feel exactly how much he wants this - wants me - pressing hot and insistent against my stomach, and the evidence of his desire makes me dizzy.
“Like this?” he growls against my mouth. “Is this what you need?”
“Yes-”
“I’ve been thinking about this for six years.
” He spins me around, my back against his chest, and his lips find the curve of my neck.
“Six years of watching you laugh at parties and wishing I was the one making you laugh. Six years of watching Kirk ignore you and wanting to shake him for not seeing what he had.”
His hands slide up my sides, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts through the thin fabric of my dress. I arch back against him, a moan escaping before I can stop it.
“Six years of lying awake next to Penelope and thinking about you.” His teeth graze my earlobe. “Do you have any idea how many times I imagined this? How many ways I’ve pictured having you?”
“Tell me.” The words come out breathless, wrecked. “Tell me what you imagined.”
“I imagined you in a hotel room exactly like this one.” His fingers find my zipper, drawing it down slowly. “I imagined peeling this dress off you and laying you out on that bed and taking my time with every inch of your body.”
The dress loosens around my shoulders.
“I imagined making you come so many times you forgot your own name.” The fabric slides down my arms, catches briefly on my hips, then pools at my feet. “I imagined hearing you say my name instead of his.”
I’m standing there in nothing but black lace, the city lights painting my skin gold and white, and he’s looking at me like I’m the answer to every question he’s ever asked.
“Heather.” He says my name like a prayer. “God, look at you.”
I turn to face him.
“Your turn.”
We circle the room and each other, half-afraid of what happens the second we stop moving.
I pour two drinks from the minibar, whiskey for him, something clear and cold for me. He loosens his tie with one hand, watching me the whole time. I kick off my heels. He shrugs off his jacket.
We’re both stalling. Both savoring. Both so wound up with anticipation that the actual touching feels almost too big to contemplate.
The tension is so thick I can taste it.
Something electric. Inevitable. A storm about to break.
I take a sip of my drink and watch him over the rim of the glass. He’s standing by the window, shirt half-unbuttoned, his chest rising and falling faster than normal. The city lights carve shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the column of his throat.
I want to put my mouth there. Right at the base of his neck, where his pulse is visible beneath the skin.
I shouldn’t be thinking about his throat. We should be talking about this. Being sensible. Making sure we don’t regret-
“Come here,” he says.
I go.
He takes the glass from my hand and sets it aside. Then his fingers find my chin, tilting my face up, and he just... looks at me. Studies me. Like he’s memorizing every detail for later.
“I need to know something,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“Is this real?”
The question catches me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“I mean-” He exhales, runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve wanted this for so long that I’m not sure I trust it. Part of me keeps waiting for you to change your mind. To realize you’re just doing this because you’re hurt, or angry, or trying to prove something to Kirk.”
“Grayson-”
“Because if that’s what this is, I need to know now.
” His voice is raw in a way I’ve never heard from him.
“I need to know before I touch you again, because once I start, I’m not going to be able to stop.
And I can’t-” His jaw clenches. “I can’t have you and then lose you. I’m not strong enough for that.”
The vulnerability in his face breaks something open in my chest.
This man - this controlled, careful, endlessly patient man - is standing in front of me with his heart in his hands, asking me not to break it.
I close the distance between us and press my palm flat against his chest, right over his heart. I can feel it pounding beneath my fingers, fast and desperate.
“This is real,” I say. “You are real. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Heather-”