13. Heather
— ? —
Heather
I wake tangled in Grayson, sunlight through the curtains, his arm heavy across my waist.
For a moment, I don’t move. Don’t breathe. Just lie there cataloging the reality of him, the warmth of his skin against mine, the weight of his leg thrown over my thigh, the soft rhythm of his breath stirring my hair.
This is real.
The thought keeps circling back, insistent, like my brain can’t quite believe it. Last night wasn’t a fever dream.
I didn’t imagine the way he touched me, the way he looked at me, the way he said my name like it meant something different in his mouth than it ever did in Kirk’s.
I watch him sleep for a full minute, the way his face softens without the armor, the dark lashes fanned against his cheeks, the slight part of his lips.
Awake, he’s all sharp edges and careful control. Asleep, he looks younger. Vulnerable in a way that makes my chest ache.
I trace a finger along his collarbone, following the line of bone beneath warm skin, and he stirs. His eyes open slow, unfocused at first, then finding me, then seeing me, and the smile that spreads across his face is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
His arm tightens around my waist, pulling me closer until there’s no space between us. He buries his face in my hair and inhales deeply, like he’s memorizing the scent of me.
“What time is it?”
“Early.” I press my lips to his shoulder, tasting salt and sleep and something that’s just him. “We have time.”
“Time for what?”
But he’s already kissing my neck. My shoulder. The curve of my jaw. Lazy, unhurried kisses that leave trails of heat across my skin. His hand slides down my side, over my hip, pulling my thigh up over his.
“I thought you’d be tired,” I murmur against his throat.
“I thought so too.” His teeth graze my earlobe, and I shiver. “Apparently I was wrong.”
“We should probably-” I lose the thought when his hand slides between my thighs. “We should - oh-”
“Should what?” He’s smiling against my skin now, smug and sleepy and devastatingly attractive. “I’m listening.”
“I can’t remember.”
“Good.”
We don’t leave the bed for another hour.
This is different from last night, slower, softer, the desperate edge worn down to something tender. We learn each other in the morning light, no shadows to hide in, everything exposed.
He learns that I gasp when he kisses the inside of my wrist. That my hips buck when he traces his tongue along my hip bone. That I come hardest when he’s whispering in my ear, telling me exactly what he wants to do to me.
I learn that he makes a sound low in his throat when I drag my nails down his back. That his breath catches when I take him in my hand.
That he says my name like a prayer when he’s close - Heather, Heather, Heather - like it’s the only word he knows.
Room service knocks at some point. Neither of us answers.
The cart sits outside, eggs going cold, coffee turning lukewarm, while his mouth maps territories Kirk never bothered to explore.
I come twice before he finally slides inside me - once with his fingers, once with his tongue - and by the time he does, I’m so sensitive that every stroke feels like electricity.
“Look at me,” he says, the same words from last night, but softer now. “I want to see you in the daylight.”
I open my eyes.
The morning sun catches the gold in his hair, the amber flecks in his irises I never noticed before. He’s beautiful like this, above me, inside me, his face open in a way I’ve never seen from him.
“There you are,” he whispers. “There’s my girl.”
My girl.
The possessiveness of it should bother me. Two weeks ago, it would have. But hearing it from his mouth, in this bed, with his body moving inside mine-
It feels like coming home.
“Say it again,” I breathe.
“My girl.” He punctuates each word with a thrust. “Mine.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I’m yours.” The words come out broken, scattered between gasps. “I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m-”
The orgasm crashes through me without warning, pulling him over the edge with me. He groans my name into my throat and I feel him pulse inside me and for sixty unhurried seconds, nothing exists except the place where our bodies are joined.
After, we lie in a tangle of limbs and ruined sheets, both of us breathing hard.
“That was...” He shakes his head against the pillow. “I don’t have words.”
“Better than last night?”
“Different than last night.” He turns his head to look at me, his eyes soft. “Last night was six years of wanting finally getting released. This was...” He trails off.
“What?”
“This was the beginning of something.” His hand finds mine, fingers interlacing. “Last night was about finally having you. This morning was about getting to keep you.”
My throat tightens.
“You’re going to make me cry again.”
“I hope so.” He brings our joined hands to his lips. “I plan to make you cry a lot. Only the good kind, though. I promise.”
I laugh - a wet, ridiculous sound - and roll on top of him, pressing kisses to his face until he’s laughing too.
“We should shower,” I say eventually.
“Probably.”
“And eat something.”
“Definitely.”
“And check our phones.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Grayson-”
“Five more minutes.” He wraps his arms around me, holding me in place. “Just give me five more minutes where it’s only us.”
I settle against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
“Five minutes,” I agree.
We stay like that for twenty. Then I reach for my phone.
And the world crashes in.
Seventeen missed calls. Forty-two texts. My name is trending.
A long lens caught us leaving the hotel at dawn. His hand on my lower back. My head on his shoulder. Both of us looking at each other like no one else exists.
The photos are everywhere within the hour.
Not staged. Not approved. Not ours to control.
She was cheating too - called it. -RealTalkRandi
Actually they look happy? Maybe she deserves this. -marina_h_77
Gold-digger energy. -DTownDispatch
He’s so much hotter than Kirk anyway. -justhereforthedrama
BETRAYED WIFE MOVES ON WITH EX’S FRIEND - read more...
I set the phone down. My hands are shaking.
“Hey.” Grayson’s voice, soft behind me. His hand finds my shoulder, warm and steady, grounding me before I spiral completely.
“I know.”
“It doesn’t change anything.” He takes the phone from my trembling fingers and sets it face-down on the nightstand, deliberately, like removing a weapon from a crime scene.
“I know that too.”
But my chest is tight, and my stomach is churning, and all I can think about is every person I know seeing those photos and drawing their own conclusions. I press my palm flat against my sternum, trying to slow my breathing, trying to remember how to exist in a world that’s suddenly watching.
“Look at me.” He turns me by the shoulders until I have to. His hair’s a mess, there’s a pillow crease on his cheek, and he has never looked more sure of anything. “What did the photo actually show?”
“Us. Leaving a hotel. At dawn. Like we-”
“Like we what?”
“Like we’re together.” My voice cracks on the word. “Like it was real the whole time. Like everything Penelope said was true.”
“Heather.” He says it so gently it makes my throat ache.
“It is real. That’s the part you keep skipping.
For six weeks I’ve held your hand for an audience and let go the second the cameras turned away.
I have hated every single one of those releases.
” His thumb wipes a tear I didn’t know had fallen.
“Some stranger with a long lens finally caught the one true thing in this entire mess. And you want me to be sorry about it?”
“People are going to say I’m exactly what they always thought I was.”
“People are going to say a lot of things. They always have.” He tips his forehead to mine. “But you’ll know. And I’ll know. And for once the version they’re whispering about is the one I actually want to be true.”
I pull back to look at him, searching for the angle, the performance, the careful calculation I spent ten years learning to expect from a man.
There isn’t one. There’s just Grayson, looking at me like the whole exposed, humiliating, world-ending mess of it is the best thing that’s happened to him in eight years.
Grayson pulls me back against his chest, his arms wrapping around me from behind. I feel his heartbeat against my shoulder blade, steady, calm, the opposite of the chaos erupting on my phone.
“Breathe,” he murmurs into my hair. “We’ll handle this. Together.”
I nod, but I can’t stop shaking.
***
The foundation meeting puts all four of us in one room.
It’s unavoidable, the final joint obligation, the last tangled thread that needs cutting. Kirk looks haggard, his suit slightly rumpled, his eyes bloodshot. Penelope hovers at his elbow, her hand on her belly, her face pale.
“You had no right.” Kirk’s voice shakes with barely contained rage. “You turned everyone against me. The boards, our friends, my own mother won’t return my calls-”
“There is no ‘ours.’” I keep my voice level. “There hasn’t been for years. You just didn’t notice because I was still playing along. I didn’t turn anyone. I just stopped covering for you. They walked away on their own once they saw what was underneath.”
“This is vindictive-”
“This is what happens when people finally see who you are.” Grayson’s voice is cold. “She didn’t take anything from you, Kirk. You burned it down yourself, one lie at a time. She just stopped handing you matches.”
Penelope rounds on him. “You did this to humiliate me. You planned it-”
“You humiliated yourself.” His control finally slips, something dark flashing in his eyes. “I just stopped looking away.”
Kirk lunges.
His fist catches Grayson’s jaw, snapping his head sideways. I hear myself scream - or maybe I just think I do - but Grayson doesn’t swing back.
Kirk winds up for another shot.
Grayson steps offline.
Kirk’s own momentum carries him into the edge of the conference table. Glasses crash. Water splashes. Papers scatter like startled birds.
He comes up off the floor with blood streaming from his nose, security already pulling him back.
Penelope is crying. The room is dead silent.
I stand. Smooth my skirt.
“I think we’re finished here.”
I walk out without looking back.
In the hallway, the silence follows us out, the kind that means everyone in that room will be telling the story by morning.
Kirk will hear how it ended. Everyone will.
I let them.
***
In the elevator, Grayson’s hands won’t stop shaking.
Not from the fight. From the adrenaline. From three years of holding still while a man like that swung at him.
I fold them between both of mine, the way he once folded mine in a different elevator, on a different worst night, when I was the one coming apart and he was the one holding the line.
“You okay?”
“I’ve wanted to stop catching him for three years.”
“I know.” I press my lips to his knuckles. “I know.”
“I keep waiting to feel bad about it.” He stares at our hands like they belong to someone else. “He’s on the floor with a broken nose and his whole life in pieces and I feel - nothing. Is that supposed to scare me?”
“No.” I turn his face to mine. “It’s supposed to tell you it’s over. You don’t grieve a man who spent eight years lying to you. You just put him down and walk away.”
“When did you get so steady?”
“Recently.” A breath of a laugh escapes me.
“I had a good teacher. He stood next to me at a party once and told me I could vanish, or I could walk back into every room that was laughing and make them choke.” I press his shaking hands flat against my chest, over my heart, until the tremor in them starts to slow against me.
“So that’s what we’re doing. We’re walking out.
And we’re not looking back at any of them. ”
His breathing evens. The shaking quiets. Somewhere between one floor and the next, the man who’s spent his whole life bracing for impact finally lets his shoulders drop.
“There you are,” I tell him - his words from this morning, handed back.
Something in his face breaks open, and he laughs, low and wrecked and real, and pulls me into him until I can feel his heart going under my palm.