Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 133321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 667(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 667(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
How much I need him, I think. “I’m still angry.”
“I’m angry with you, too,” he says, and his mouth comes down on mine, with his promise that the next time he kisses me he won’t stop in the air between us but it doesn’t matter.
Right now is just like after the funeral. We’re here. We’re alone. I have been so alone without him and I don’t want to think about the past. I want to think about the here and now and him. The muscles low in my belly clench. My nipples ache. My heart melts. He turns me and presses me against the wall of the lighthouse in a small alcove between the stairs and the cutout view.
He reaches for the zipper of my hoodie and the lick of his tongue consumes me. I moan into his mouth and somehow his hand has caressed up my sweater to cup my breast. I gasp and arch into the touch, but a rumble of thunder shocks me, pulling me back to reality. I grab Grayson’s hand. “Wait. Wait. Not here.” I press on his chest and when he pulls back just enough to look at me, I add, “This place is special and not for one reason. I don’t want to be here with you when we’re like we are now.”
“It is special, which is exactly why we need to be here, to remember who we are together. I know you don’t want to talk now, but we have to talk. It’s time, Mia. It’s past time.”
“I know,” I concede, “but not before we—not tonight. I don’t want to need to leave again. And I don’t want this place to become about a final goodbye.”
His lashes lower and he cuts his gaze, torment etched in his handsome face before he looks at me again. “Be clear, Mia,” he says softly. “We will not part ways in the middle again. I want you. I will fight for you, but we’re in or we’re out. We’re together or we both move on once and for all.”
Chapter ten
Mia
The past, a year and three months ago
The sky and the ocean are the same blue today, I think, my hands resting on the ledge of the cutout inside the lighthouse that sits a couple of miles down from Grayson’s family home. So blue, so perfect that despite the sky and the ocean starting at different places, they meld together as one. The way I do with Grayson. I rotate and rest my elbows on the ledge, my gaze landing on Grayson where he sits in one of the cozy chairs we picked out recently for our many hours spent here. His gaze is downturned, focused on his MacBook as he goes over numbers on the newest of his nationwide expansion of his father’s law firm, this one opening in Washington. He’s so damn good looking, so unassuming in faded jeans and a black snug T-shirt that hugs his impressive chest, his dark wavy hair rumpled and not from the wind. Because I can’t ever keep my fingers out of it.
He glances up and his green eyes meet mine, and even after nine months and almost every day since with him, I feel the punch of that connection. I feel him in every part of me. He winks the way he does often like we’re sharing a private secret, which we often do, and I smile, reaching for my wine glass on the table beside him. He catches my hand and pulls me to him, kissing me before he scowls into the phone. “Negative, Eric,” he says, and then releases me. “I do not like the numbers on that building. Tell Davis if he can’t negotiate better than that, I’ll do it myself.”
My lips curve because Davis, like Eric, is one of Grayson’s closest friends, but Grayson doesn’t pull any punches with them. When it comes to business, he’s smart, savvy, and if need be, brutal but he’s always honest. The honest part is probably the thing that makes me love him beyond all else, and there is plenty of else.
“That’s it,” Grayson says behind me. “I’m done for the day.”
I rotate to find him standing up and walking toward me with his wine glass in hand. Instantly, my stomach flutters like a schoolgirl who is about to stand next to her crush. That’s what this man does to me and has since that day I ran into him. “Did you notice which wine this is?” he asks, both of us facing each other, our elbows on the railing.
“That cheap but good one that I fell in love with in Sonoma last weekend after I learned there are wines to taste and wines to drink. And that the expensive ones are barely tolerable. Yes. I did. Thank you. I still love it.”