Page 62

“I’m looking,” I say, but I’m not looking at the stars. I’m looking at her.

She catches me and smiles. “You’re supposed to be looking at the sky, Gray.”

“The sky can wait.”

Sienna pulls her sweatshirt back over her head and shakes her braids loose, and I get my jeans on and drop back into the lupine beside her. She folds herself against my side with her legs stretched out and her head tipped back, looking up at the sky, and I put my arm around her and she fits into it the way she always has, like the space was made for her, which I’m starting to think it was.

The field has darkened around us. The sun finished setting while we were not paying attention, and the sky above the tree line is doing the thing Maine skies do in August, going from orange to pink to the specific dark blue that shows up before the stars do, deep and clear and showing off.

“Fucking under the stars.” Her hand finds mine, and our fingers lace together, and the ring on her finger glints in the starlight as the night settles around us. “I can check that off my bucket list.”

“Hmm,” I say. “And what else is on your bucket list?”

“The Eiffel Tower. Mile high club. In the catacombs.” She cuddles up closer. “Ooh in a pyramid.”

“I don’t think any of them are legal.”

“And this is?” She furrows her brow, her smile still playing at the corners of her mouth.

I snort. “With the right calls we could cross another one off the list next week.”

“No!” She bats my arm playfully. “We can’t plan it. That takes away all the magic of spontaneous sex in a dangerous location!”

“Fine, but just so you know this is my only passion in life now.” I trace a constellation in the sky with my eyes. “So, you might want to add more places to the list.”

Her fingers find my forearm where it rests across her stomach, tracing something idle and absent along the inside of my wrist. I run my thumb slowly up the side of her ribcage through the sweatshirt and feel her exhale against me.

“You know you shouldn’t abandon your passions so quickly.” Her tone is serious. “I mean, where are your Gray cars? I remember you had a whole imaginary dealership in your head when you were younger. You were going to be the next Lamborghini.”

She turns her head against my shoulder to look at me.

“What happened to the car dream?” she asks, her fingers still moving on my wrist. “You have more than enough money to make it happen.”

“My father got his diagnosis, and the board started circling; they wanted a Douglas in the building.” I pause. “I don’t resent it. I want to be clear about that. I love what he built, and I want to protect it. I just didn’t expect to be doing it at twenty-nine while he is still alive and doesn’t remember my name.”

Her hand stills on my wrist. Then she turns it over and laces her fingers through mine.

“I never wanted this either,” she says, looking back up at the sky. “Not this version.”

“What did you want?”

“To write songs for other people, stay behind the scenes, be the name in the credits that nobody outside the industry knows. If I was going to perform at all, I wanted it to be small. Specific. Willow Smith.”

“Or Sia,” I say.

“I love the mysterious Sia she was earlier in her career.” Sienna’s thumb moves in a circle over my knuckle. “I wanted to do what I loved and still live my normal life.”

“You could still have that,” I say.

She looks at the ring.

“Maybe,” she sighs. “But I’d have to get out of my contract first, and with my streaming numbers, I can’t imagine my label will let me leave so easily. Or they’ll shelve my songs, and I’ll never perform again. I can’t let that happen either.”

“That will never happen to you,” I reassure her. “I won’t let it.”

“Unless you buy the label, you have no control over it, Gray. Neither do I.”

I shrug, pulling her body closer. “I could use a label.”