“Do you have an innie?”
“You mean my belly button?” I ask, more than aware that I’m absolutely naked beneath the cool sheets sliding over my skin.
“No, silly.” He laughs, and in that moment, Grayson jolts in awareness beside me. But he’s good. He stays still despite his breathing telling me he’s silently freaking out. “I mean a vagina. An innie. Sam told me that men love women because they have vaginas. Dad said that’s not true. He also said that boys have outies and girls have innies. So is it true?”
I cough in response as I try not to laugh at him or embarrass him when he shouldn’t be, but my sleep-drugged mind is freaking out about whether his question refers more to marriage or more to sex and how exactly I should answer.
“Well, I am a girl,” I say with a soft smile, remembering just how sweet he was to me last night as we talked Creepers and Justice League and then went through the PS4 games that were his. Not the ones in the top cabinet that were ones he could only play with his dad. “So, I guess that means I have an innie.”
“Hmm.” He puts his index finger on his chin as if he’s thinking. “How come you slept in here last night instead of my bed?”
Knowing Grayson is listening makes this so much more nerve-racking because I fear I’m going to say the wrong thing. “Your bed was kind of small, so your dad offered to let me sleep in here, so I didn’t have to drive home when I was tired.”
That curious smile that melts my heart reappears and tells me he isn’t buying my story. “Justin told me his parents sleep in the same bed. He even said that sometimes he hears weird noises coming from their room when the door is shut, but his dad told him it was just him and his mom playing their PS4. I think they’re lying to him. Parents don’t have PS4s in their rooms.”
I choke on my breath of air. “What do you think they’re doing?”
His cheeks flush, and he clears his throat before he talks. “I think they’re wrestling. Or kissing. One of the two.”
“Oh.” I’m sure the expression on my face is priceless, but so is the one on his.
“I’ve gotta get ready for school. Are you going to take me, or is dad?”
I stutter momentarily at how easily Luke is accepting this situation. “Your dad is. Why don’t you go get dressed, and I’ll get him up? Make sure to brush your teeth and wash your face.”
“Are you going to remind him to do the same?” He lifts his chin over to his dad.
“Definitely. I’ll even make sure to have him wash behind his ears.”
“Ewww!” Luke says as he bounds toward the door. “Hey, Sidney.” He stops and turns back to face me. “Thanks for spending the night. It was fun. Hopefully Dad will let you do it again soon.”
I stare at him and nod as tears fill my eyes. This—a kid, or rather, a man with a kid—used to scare me, but now, the whole situation seems so very normal.
As I watch Luke retreat down the hallway, I try not to think of last night. Of the tenderness in Grayson’s touch. Of the intimacy we shared. Of what felt like making love but couldn’t possibly have been.
“Thank you.” Grayson’s voice is gruff as he moves his arm off his forehead and turns to face me.
My God, he’s breathtaking. With his hair mussed and sleep lines etched in his face. But it’s his eyes full of unspoken emotion that do me in.
“I know you’re cautious of what he knows . . . just tried to cover as best as I could.”
“You did fine,” he says as he grabs my hand and presses a kiss to the center of my palm. Every part of me swoons and wants to curl up next to him and waste the day away. “He handled that better than I expected.”
“He’s a good kid, Grayson. You’ve done a great job with him.”
He nods but doesn’t speak as my words hit his heart. “Thank you.”
We both fall silent, our fingers intertwined, both of us staring at them instead of looking at each other.
“We should get up,” he says but doesn’t move. “You know, before he figures out that you’re supposed to stick the outie into the innie.”
I stifle my laugh, knowing damn well he could be listening down the hallway. “Maybe I could stay over again soon and play PS4 with you.”
He squeezes my hand. “I’m pretty versed in which buttons to push.”
“That you are.”
“I bet you can’t wait to get that cute little ass of yours back to San Francisco.” I look up to where Rissa is standing with her shoulder against the wall as she people watches the flow of traffic outside of my window.
Her words launch a bittersweet pang to my system. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” she asks.
“Sorry, I’m just preoccupied with this,” I say, pointing to the blank Word document she can’t see.
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Do you want to go over the rundown now or later?”
I roll my shoulders and lean back. It isn’t as if my father hasn’t grilled me over it ten times already this week. “Sure. Let’s get it out of the way.” And use it as a reminder that the time left on my clock in Sunnyville is ticking.
“The plus side, which I’m sure your dad has said over and over, is that the numbers look fabulous. You really improved every facet of the visibility, and for that, I owe you. Keeping my job is definitely a plus.”
I nod. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure the idea would take.”
“What? You thought once you become a mom, your sex drive dies and you can’t appreciate a good-looking man?” Rissa laughs at the look on my face. “I’m so glad we’ve proven you wrong.”
“You definitely have.” Images of a naked Grayson come to mind. Then of him bending over Luke helping him with homework. Both are sexy in different ways. I owe Zoey an apology. She was right. A man and his child can definitely be sexy.
“And to think we’re almost in the homestretch. In a few weeks, a man will be crowned Hot Dad, and even if we only retain fifty percent of the new interest, it still leaves our numbers above what our target was, so there will be absolutely no complaints on our part.”
A few weeks . . . hearing her say it makes it all the more real. The project I’ve eaten, slept, and breathed is almost over . . . and then what? I should be happy, right? I should be thrilled to be getting back to my life and hopefully moving on to my opportunity at Haute, so why am I not?
Grayson.
“Uh-oh. You have that look on your face.”
“What look?” I force a smile, although I know she’s not going to buy it.
“The one that says as sad as we are going to be with you leaving, you’re going to be even sadder leaving someone else.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I say while silently begging to talk to someone about all of this.
Rissa gives me the motherly glance any child recognizes before they are able to stand, and shuts the door, cutting us off from the rest of the staff.
“You’re horrible at hiding your emotions, Sidney.”
“Emotions about what?” I feign innocence, even though I know she knows.
“Love.”
“Love?” I laugh out the word. “What about it?”
“So, it’s just lust then?”
I chortle a laugh. “Lust? I’m not following you.” But I damn well am.
“Mm-hmm. Says the woman who took off out of here a few weeks ago like a bat out of hell to break some rules . . . and hopefully a headboard.” I choke on the air I’m breathing and stare at her wide-eyed. “Girl, you wear it on your sleeve.”
“What exactly am I wearing on my sleeve?”
“You’re going to try to play it off like this whole thing with Grayson, the thing you can hide from everyone else but me, is just a case of lust and sex and everything in between . . . but I can see it in your eyes. I can tell by how sad you get every time we talk about this project wrapping up and you moving on. You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
“Love?” I repeat the word again.
“Yeah. Love. It’s a wrecking ball flying
through the air, and you, my friend, have been hit with it. Classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Rissa,” I warn.
“What?” She flashes a smile. “Isn’t that how you feel right now? Blindsided and overwhelmed by it all?”
“I’m not in love with anyone.”
“The door is shut. The conversation is off the record. Do you care to revise your previous statement?”
I laugh. My nerves rattle, but every other part of me wants to talk. “Are you going all investigative journalist on me right now?”
“Damn straight, I am. Look,” she says, and everything about her softens—expression, smile, eyes. “You’ve been high on Grayson Malone since that first meeting. It only got worse after the first gossip column. And every time you’ve tried to hide him talking to you on the phone . . . or, uh, texting you, I’ve seen it.” She winks, and I want to die.
“Being in love with Grayson Malone . . . that’s a new one.”
“Nah. You’ve known it for a while, but you’ve just refused to admit it to yourself.” I hate that she can see right through me and love knowing I’m not alone, all at the same time. “But you have now, haven’t you?”
I nod. My first and only indication to anyone other than Zoey that I’m in love with Grayson. And that simple gesture is such a relief.
“Okay. That’s the first step.” She winks before turning serious. “Now, should I guess he’s the reason you look downright miserable when I mentioned Haute?”
I stare at her and tell myself not to talk, but my lips speak anyway. “I’m leaving soon.”
“Uh-huh. And you don’t want to leave?”
My smile is soft as I fight back the emotion. “I don’t know how it happened.” And I don’t. I’ve tried to pinpoint when Grayson Malone became more than just a hot dad in a contest I was running and became someone I fell in love with—God, even thinking those words surprise me—and I can’t.
“No one ever knows how it happens, Sidney. It kind of just creeps up on you and then subtly hits you everywhere at once.” I laugh despite the tears welling in my eyes. “Did you have a fight?” she asks.
I sigh because I still don’t know what we have. “Yes and no. We fought. We made up. We admitted this was more than just a thing . . . but we never went beyond that.”
“And what does he say about you leaving? Are you going to try to make things work—oh. Oh.” The expression on my face must give everything away, because the shocked look in her eyes and her sudden epiphany tells me she gets it. “You haven’t told him, have you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know how to.”
“Sidney.” It’s a scold. It’s shock. It’s compassion.
“One minute we were nothing, just a little fling to have some fun—and the next minute he’s telling me he wants to try to figure this out. Take each day as it comes. When I tried to tell him, he cut me off with his own apology.”
“You have to tell him.” The foreboding in her voice has nothing on how I feel and what I fear inside.
“I know. Communication doesn’t seem to be our strong suit.” I shake my head, using the cop-out, which is nothing more than a bullshit excuse.
“Love is a bitch, ain’t it?”
“You can say that again.”
“Let me ask you this, if he were to ask you to stay, would you?”
“I don’t know.” The answer is automatic, and yet, my head and my heart don’t match up on this one.
“What would it hurt to try it and stay? I can find a spot for you here. You’ve done a hell of a job so far, so I know you’re good for it.”
“But I have a life back home.”
“Do you?” She angles her head and studies me for a moment. “Do you really want to go home to an empty apartment at the end of every day when you’re so very used to going home to him?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
“Why did that woman over there tell the other woman that you’re leaving soon to go back to San Francisco?”
In an instant, Luke’s words yank my attention away from Grayson and the camera crew currently interviewing him.
Panic ensues. The kind that has your body shaking and sweat beading and heart pumping.
“That’s where I live,” I say, trying to remain calm.
“No, silly. You live here. In Sunnyville.” His brown eyes search mine in a way that makes me want to crawl into the corner and hide.
“You’re right. I do live here. But I also have a home in San Francisco, which is where I lived before I came here.”
“So, are you going back there or are you staying here?”
Grayson’s laughter with the reporter for E! News filters our way. “For now, I’m staying here.” I’m lying to a kid. Bold-faced lying.
“But when the contest is over?”
I can’t look at his face, at the hurt that’s there, when I can already feel it crashing down on him.
Two weeks. That’s the answer I can’t bring myself to tell him.
“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” I try to explain. “I work for a huge corporation, and sometimes, they send me to certain places to do certain jobs, and then when I complete them, I do the next one.”
God how time has flown. The past two weeks have been a lot of working and a lot of Grayson and me taking things day by day. There has been a lot of pretending that nothing is bugging us when everything is. The me not telling him my assignment is almost up and the him not telling me whatever is preoccupying him. The kind of bugging where asking if something is wrong just prompts a million reassurances that everything is all right.
“If you leave for a different assignment, you’re still coming back here after, right? You’re still coming back to the Kraft house when you’re done?”
I turn from where Grayson is standing and answering questions. One of his helicopters is at his back, and the reporter is interviewing him, asking the same set of questions she’s asked the other top five contestants. When I meet Luke’s eyes, I kneel so I’m on his level.
“Of course.” The words get caught in my throat, right next to where my heart is lodged.
He eyes me, uncertain if he believes me, and the confused expression on his face only serves to tear me apart even more. “My mom left me. My dad tells me she still loves me, but she wouldn’t have left me if she did. People who leave never come back, even when they promise.”
Chills blanket my body as his words hit me one by one, and I take my hand and put it over his heart. “I’ll prove differently, Luke Malone. I promise you if I have to leave, I’ll be coming back to see you.”
His skepticism slowly blurs with tears welling in his eyes. Then he nods. “I believe you . . . but don’t come back just because of me. Come back because of my dad. I think he really likes you.”
Oh, my heart.
“He does, does he? What makes you say that?” I feel ridiculous asking an eight-year-old to tell me why his dad likes me, but I’ll own it.
“Because he doesn’t need coffee in the morning to not be grumpy anymore. Because he puts cologne on before you come over. That, and he said he’s going to move the PS4 into his bedroom. I think he wants you to come over and play with him some more.”
I burst out laughing. I can’t help it, and then I have to apologize to the camera crew for ruining their take, even though I’m not sorry at all. Luke and his comments are all I need to hear to encourage my thoughts to keep going in the direction they have been headed.
“It’s true isn’t it?”
Grayson stands in my doorway. I haven’t even opened the screen door, but his words are out and now there is a whole hell of a lot more between us than the piece of wood-framed mesh.
“Is what true?” I push open the door, but he just holds it still, almost as if it’s a barrier protecting him from the truth.
But I know he knows. It’s in his posture. In the tension of his body. It’s in the hurt in his eyes.
> “You’re leaving.”
I stare down at my fingers twisting before looking back to meet his eyes. “I’ve tried telling you.”
“Not hard enough.” It’s the first trace of anger.
I wish there was more. This would be easier if there was a ton more. Rage, I can deal with. Defeat is a whole different emotion.
“Gray . . . we were casual. We were enjoying the secret-lovers thing. You made it clear that there would be nothing more between us, so I figured that by the time I had to leave, you’d be done with me.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth to make this easier on you, Sidney. Don’t turn this on me. I made a lot of fucking mistakes—things I did and the things I said to you . . . but when it came to how I felt—to how I feel about you, I never lied.”
I shift my feet. I go to push open the door again, needing to connect with him, but his hand holds it firmly shut. Shit. Tears well, and I blink them away.
“You’re right. I . . . I don’t have an excuse. We were fun and flirty one minute, and then the next you said you wanted to try to figure this out. You wanted to try to make this work. I should have told you then. I should have—”
“You should have let me have a choice in the matter whether or not I fell in love with you. But you didn’t. And now it’s for nothing.”
“Grayson.” His name is a broken plea as every part of me absorbs the words I didn’t expect but now know I don’t deserve.
“I thought you were staying. I took a chance on this—on us—because I thought . . . Christ, I don’t know what I thought.” He runs a hand through his hair and lifts his head to the night sky above. The tendons in his neck are taut and his hands fist and unclench as he processes everything.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No. You’re not.” He shakes his head as he lowers it back down and the gravity in his eyes tells me all I need to know. I’ve already lost him. “You let me fall in love with you when you knew there wasn’t a future here.”
“Please.”
“Save it, Sid. You knew what you were doing all along.”
“No. I didn’t. I mean . . . I knew the project was going to end, but you, I never expected you.” My voice breaks right alongside my heart. “Believe me when I tell you I know I messed up. I should have told you.” The first tear slips down my cheek as that all-consuming panic takes hold. “I should have, and then we kept getting deeper into this thing, and there was no perfect time to tell you, so—”