“We’re all grateful for that too, Blair.” Rhys says, and she raises her middle finger at her husband playfully.
Fletcher stares at me from his seat across the table, and I wait for him to tell me to get the hell out of his house and away from his brother or something. But he only asks me to pass the rolls, which I do. He grins smugly at me, shaking his head. “Fucking Grayson Lancaster.”
Rhett raises his own middle finger, and Fletcher tosses a roll at him.
“No. No food fights, you messy, messy children,” Blair scolds, but the woman is clearly joking. I’ve never seen such proud parents as they both look around the table.
“So, what are you up to this summer, Grayson?” Blair asks me, and they all wait for the answer.
“Not much, to be honest. It’s kind of weird. I’ve never had so much free time,” I admit. Now that high school and are over, I’m left with nothing.
I turn to look at the broody boy next to me and smile. Well, except Rhett.
“Yeah. Well, enjoy it. The summer before college is pretty magical,” Blair says to me, but then eyes Fletcher too, who I know is also heading off to college in the fall.
I feel Rhett’s body tense next to mine, though, and we’re both thinking about the end of the magical summer. I know it. “Yeah well, Rhett keeps me busy volunteering at the mission, at least.”
Her eyes light up again. “He told me you like to volunteer there. That’s wonderful.”
“What about your cabin?” Bree asks.
I turn to her. “What about it?”
She snorts and takes a quick drink. “If I had a cabin at the lake, that’s where my entire summer would be spent.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat because that was my plan before Rhett. To spend the last few months before college at my cabin. But I couldn’t leave him, knowing he has to stay here and work.
I play it off though. “Maybe at the end of the summer, I will.”
I see a small smile play on Rhett’s plump lips like he’s waiting for the invitation. One I will definitely be extending to him later.
After dinner, I thank them, and Blair hugs the life out of Rhett and me yet again before we drive back to his place. We immediately make our way to his bed, our mouths fused together, pulling apart only to rip our clothes off.
“Your family really is great.”
“Yeah. Maybe we can talk about them later when my hand isn’t wrapped around your cock,” he says and strokes my naked dick with his hand, making me groan and completely forget about what I was talking about.
“Yeah. Okay, yeah,” I say and kiss his mouth, sucking on his tongue as I thrust into his hand.
He grabs the lube and a condom quickly from his drawer, something we’ve done many times now. It all seems so effortless. Switching it up, depending on our moods. But tonight, it’s clear he wants to fuck, and I want to be fucked.
We don’t even have to talk about it. He preps me, and before I know it, his slick cock is inside me, both of us soaring toward bliss. “I want you to come with me to the cabin,” I say in a gasp when he hits that sweet spot inside of me.
“You’re still talking.” I’m on all fours as he slams into me from behind, and I grin when he pulls me up, his hand stroking my dick. “I must be doing something wrong.” He thrusts deeper into me, and my cock dribbles out precum onto his hand as I pant and shake my head.
“No. Not wrong. So, so right. Please.”
“So why are you still talking?”
My mind is mush at this point, and I don’t even know what he’s talking about. “No talking. None. Just fuck me.”
I can feel his smug grin against my shoulder as he slams into me, working my cock in his hand over and over until stars burst behind my eyes. I thrust back into him, squeezing him with my ass and letting go. Cum spurts from my cock as I cry out in relief and pleasure when I feel his dick jerk in my ass, his voice straining as he says my name.
We fall onto the bed, both breathless and happy, his hand falling over my heart.
“Yeah. I’ll ask Kole for a week off at the end of summer.”
I smile at that until that feeling comes back, the impending doom.
The end of summer.
THIRTY-NINE
How the hell are we at the end of summer already? It doesn’t make sense. I’m happy to be here at Grayson’s cabin, but my stomach literally hurts when I think about it being the last damn week with him.
We spent the summer fucking and me working at Hostile Ink. We volunteered at the mission. And now it’s almost over. This is it.
Hell, we even had dinner with my family once a week. It’s been the greatest fucking summer of my life, and now it’s coming to a close.
Even though I’m lying in bed with a naked Grayson, I can’t fight the melancholy of my heart. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” He drags a finger down the side of my jaw and rolls to his side.
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” he says quickly.
I sigh heavily because I shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than the fact we’re lying here naked and looking out at a pretty fantastic view of the lake. “I can’t ask you to stay.”
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. I roll to my side, looking directly at him. “I know.” He abuses his bottom lip, gnawing on it deep in thought. “I mean . . . you could.”
I shake my head quickly, covering his heart with my palm. “I can’t. If you don’t go to the school he wants, you have no chance of getting your grandfather’s company, do you?”
His face drops, taking my heart with it. “No. I don’t think so.”
I can’t ask him to do that, no matter how badly I want to. “And especially if it’s to stay here with some guy.”
His fingers slide through my hair, and he leans in, his nose brushing against mine. “You aren’t just some guy, and you know it.”
I do. I can feel the shift—whatever it was—we aren’t just “friends who fuck” or kiss or anything. We’re much more than this, and I’m back to drowning again. Wallowing in hatred of the world because why can’t one goddamn thing just be easy?
“I guess I can’t ask you to come with me either, right?” I can hear the sadness in his question.
“Right.” My eyes flutter closed as his forehead rests against mine. “I may not know my exact identity, but I know whoever I’m with, I want it to be out loud.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while, and we just lie there, our foreheads touching, my hand over his warm chest, feeling his beating heart with his hand covering my hair. “You deserve that.”
The words are barely choked out, and his voice breaks on the last part. “So do you.”
My eyes open, and I see he’s closed his. “Maybe it isn’t worth the cost anymore.”
His eyes open slowly and meet mine as he pulls back just a little, but I can’t ask him to do that. To give it all up for me. “Maybe it is. I know how important it is to you. I get it, Grayson.”
“But that’s it for us.”
I nod, even though it wasn’t a question. “Yeah. We knew that though.” I try like hell to put the wall back up, to be strong, “We’re eighteen. This is only the beginning of our lives, you know? You’re going to college, and I’m going to stay here and work my ass off. Then you’ll get your company.”
I roll onto my back and pull him with me, so his head rests on my chest. “In like thirty years.”
For the first time, I hear just how tired he is. How exhausting it must be to live for someone else. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to do this. That he can be himself and be loved, but I don’t think it’s my place.
I think he has to figure that out for himself. I can’t beg him to stay any more than he can beg me to come with him. We’re too young. Too unsure. Too fucking everything. And even if I do think I may be in love with him, I don’t believe in love being enough. Everything else needs to fall in place too, and it’s just not.
Not at all.
“Enough of this shit.” I kiss the top of his head and then roll away to climb off the bed in all my naked glory. “We need a shower. We need blowjobs and all the orgasms we can fit in. We need to go for a hike, and we need to go jump in that warm lake, now that our balls won’t fall off from the cold. We have a week together. Let’s not waste it on shit we can’t control.”
He grins at that—thankfully—and climbs over to my side of the bed, pulling me to him by my hips and kissing me fiercely, making me forget about every sad thing I couldn’t stop thinking about only moments ago. “I like that plan.”
I grin, dragging my hand over his ridiculously sculpted chest and abs. “Me too.”
I wrap my hand around his cock that seems to really, really like my plan and stroke him slowly as I kiss the hell out of him.
I don’t want to think about anything else for now.
FORTY