Chapter 30
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Gianna
Moonlight streams through Drake’s bedroom windows, creating a peaceful ambiance as we lie together.
His bedside lamp provides enough light for us to flip through Mercy Malone’s tour pictures.
Drake points out little details that I would never notice—things like faces in the crowd, inconsistencies across venues in the stage design, and the subtle interactions between the dancers and the band.
His perspective is fascinating. I have to wonder if it’s because he’s used to reading plays and picking up on cracks in defenses and player habits.
My habits are more of the let’s meet a random person at a laundromat and buy a few thousand plastic spoons that were headed for the landfill variety.
Not super helpful in any situation outside of, well, my life.
Even then, sometimes my propensities are less helpful and more enthusiastic, well-intentioned calamities.
I glance up at my man, the black framed glasses he wears at night giving his features a smart, sophisticated aura. It’s my favorite look of his, and the first time I saw him wearing his glasses, I made him wear them while I sucked his dick.
Drake’s foot crosses mine beneath the sheets, and his toes wiggle against mine every few minutes as if to remind him I’m still here. A shy grin pulls at the corner of his lips every time, and I don’t think he notices. But I do.
His phone rings, breaking the silence of the night. “Who the hell is calling me this late?” He grabs the device and groans. “It’s my sister Evie.”
“Take it if you need to. It won’t bother me.”
He kisses me quickly before answering it, immediately putting the call on speakerphone and pulling me closer to his side.
Men don’t usually do this in front of me—talk so openly to a random call in the middle of the night.
Probably because they’re on bullshit. It’s just another thing about Drake that I love.
“Hey, Eves,” he says.
“Hey, so, Elodie told me that she was thinking about moving to Raleigh, and you knew it, and neither of you told me.”
He chuckles softly, as if he expected this conversation to happen. “True.”
“What the fuck, Drake?”
“She hadn’t made up her mind yet and asked me not to say anything, so I didn’t.”
She gasps. “Where is your loyalty?”
“Well, at that moment, it was with Elodie.” He chuckles louder. “She’s not going, so it doesn’t matter. Relax.”
“I’m like the blond-headed baby child of this family, and no one takes me seriously.”
I cover my mouth with my hand to suppress my giggle. Drake rolls his eyes.
“I wonder why no one takes you seriously, Evie,” he says. “Is that all you called me for? Because I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
He lifts his brows, looking over his shoulder at me with a curious look.
I shrug. “I don’t care,” I whisper, knowing he’s asking for permission to tell her that I’m here. It’s not like the world isn’t already in our business.
“Oh, I’m not doing much,” he says, a taunt in his tone. “Just lying here with Gianna.”
Evie shrieks. “No, you are not.”
“Yes, I really am.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I love that you say it like you’re surprised that she’d be with me, you little shit.”
“Did you tell her I’m a fan? That I’m obsessed with her? That my entire office listens to her every week—oh! Tell her she needs merch! Do you know how many sweatshirts, hats, and hoodies people would buy? A fuckton. I have design ideas, if she needs them.”
“More attention. Tons of branded merch.”
Evie’s suggestion brings back my conversation with Francine today, and I can feel the stress of it building in my shoulders once again—only more this time.
Because if people are going to be wearing stuff with my name on it, I need to control what it says.
And something tells me that if I let Canoodle rebrand me, that won’t be the case.
“I’ll let her know,” Drake says, unaware that my thoughts strayed. “She’s listening if you want to say anything to her.”
“What? Drake! Why didn’t you warn me that she could hear me?” She groans. “You really do hate me, don’t you?”
I lean closer to the phone. “Hey, Evie.”
She squeals. “Hey, Gianna. This is not how I thought we’d meet because, obviously, this is not my best look.
But this is me with my brother and not me in the street.
The me in the street is much cooler than the me with Drake.
And please don’t judge me based on this conversation or anything that he might’ve told you about me.
And if he’s still listening,” she says louder, “I know things about him that I could share, too.”
I laugh, stroking my fingertips over Drake’s abs. “It’s fine. I have a sister, so I understand.”
“Thank God.”
Drake yawns. “Okay, that’s all you get of my girl tonight. We’re going to bed.”
My girl. I burrow my face against his side so he can’t see me beam.
“Fine,” she says. “I just wanted to yell at you for not telling me about Elodie. Now I’m pissed at you for this, too, you fuckhead.”
“Love you, too,” Drake says, laughing through another yawn.
“Ugh. Love you, too. It was so nice to meet you, Gianna!”
I laugh. “It was nice to meet you, too, Evie.”
Drake ends the call before Evie can carry on, then plops the phone on the nightstand. “Do you need anything before I turn this light off?”
“Nope.” I wait for him to roll back over, facing me, before I get situated at his side. One arm draped over his middle, I sigh. “Evie sounds fun.”
“She’s a giant pain in my ass.”
I chuckle.
Drake rests his chin on the top of my head and exhales softly. His shoulders sink into the pillows while his chest rises and falls in slow, even movements. I close my eyes and absorb his peace.
This is nice.
I’ve always been a night owl, mainly because my brain seems to turn on when the sun turns off.
The nighttime hours are when I generally feel most creative, and I get my best inspiration sometime after midnight.
But over the last couple of weeks, since I started spending nights with Drake, that’s begun to shift.
Drake is disciplined when it comes to rest. He says it’s a vital part of being an athlete, even more important than the work at times.
Without downtime and sleep, the go hours, as he calls them, aren’t as successful.
So it’s ingrained in him at this point to slow down in the evenings and be asleep by the time I’m usually just hitting the gas.
It’s been an interesting change to be in his world of routine. He never expects me to follow his schedule, but I’ve found a rhythm to it that I enjoy. Or maybe it’s just being with him that I love.
“Mario called me this evening before you got here,” he says softly. “He said that he expects them to decide who’s taking the true crime slot next week.”
I force a swallow, remembering that I promised Francine that I wouldn’t share with him what she told me—just in case she’s wrong. “I heard something like that, too.”
“We haven’t talked about that,” he says quietly.
I shrug, knowing we need to talk about this before it happens, but wishing it wasn’t right now. I haven’t sorted my feelings about it. We don’t even know for sure what the decision will be. Hopefully, we get a heads-up before it happens so it’s not awkward.
It’s not every day that you go head-to-head with your boyfriend for the biggest promotion at your company—and everyone you know, plus thousands of others, are watching.
“No, we haven’t,” I say. “But I think if we open that door, there are other things that we might have to discuss, too.” Like what will happen between us when this is over.
He hums sleepily. “Yeah. We have time,” he says, the words drifting off as he falls asleep.
I try to sleep, too, but can’t. My mind has been activated, and when it moves this quickly, there’s no stopping it. Not even with Drake.
I’ve been trying to live in the moment and not think too much about what happens when our experiment is complete.
This last month has been the greatest few weeks of my life—and that’s a problem.
It’s so great with Drake. It exceeds any dream I ever could’ve imagined.
He’s all the things from handsome to intelligent to protective in a way that still lets me breathe.
He lets me be me.
But the problem with that is … I’m me.
I love who I am, and I like myself as a person, which I think matters a whole hell of a lot in the grand scheme of things.
But I know from personal experience with people who were required to love me, who were genetically designed to have affection toward me, that I’m not lovable long-term.
I’m too quirky. Too honest. I don’t always value the same things as everyone else, and that’s often a dealbreaker.
So even though Drake seems amused by my dumpster diving and ketchup-stained shirts, I must keep my expectations realistic. I’m fun, but I’m probably not forever.
“It’s a part of the fun of this whole thing. I have a window to say all the things I want to say before I have to go back to being your co-worker.”
His words from our date at Hess sear into my brain.
“You and I would never be together under normal circumstances. I want to fall in love and have a family.”
My chest constricts so tightly that I can barely breathe. It caught me off guard when he said it before, but thinking about it now, it hits differently. Those are his words, his confession—our truth, and nothing has changed.
He’s control, and I’m chaos. He’s disciplined, and I’m a disaster. He wants devotion, and I’m a disappointment, and there’s no way I can be anything different.
It’s only natural that Drake will want a wife who can be as warm and nurturing as Barb.
I killed Matilda. He’s a slightly smaller version of Big Ed, and it makes sense that he wants a big family, a dog, and tea ready in the kitchen.
I can’t even get to my kitchen table, thanks to the aluminum-can butterflies.
There was a bird bath in the Bennett’s front yard. There’s a urinal in mine, for fuck’s sake.
Drake groans, rolling over and onto his back. His forehead wrinkles as if he’s deep in thought or pain.
“Hey, are you okay?” I ask, propping up on one elbow.
A smile ghosts his lips, and the wrinkling of his brow eases before my eyes. “Yeah. I love you.”
He mumbles something incoherent, still deep asleep, and I stare at him in disbelief.
Tears fill my eyes, clouding my vision. His hand brushes against mine, and he instinctively pulls me against him and holds me tightly. I don’t have the heart, nor the want, to extract myself from his arms.
My chest tightens, filling with a warmth so hot that it almost burns my ribs. A lump the size of Ohio seals my throat as I memorize the heat of his body, the sound of his breath, the smell of his skin. The feel of this moment.
Because I might have been wrong all along. Maybe love is a chemical reaction that you can’t control. But that doesn’t mean it’s smart to succumb to it … even if you want to.
I snuggle deeper against him, kissing his shoulder and squeezing my eyes shut.
“I love you, too,” I whisper, and try to fall asleep.