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“No.” He comes as close to sulking as he’s ever going to get. “But I’m not an infant. Why should I be referred to as one?”
“So you’ve decided on daddy, then.”
“No.”
I turn around. We’re still hogging the binoculars. “Honey? Sugar Lumps? Sweet Cheeks?” He looks like he’s about to be sick. I tap his chest. “You got to pick my name; why don’t I get to pick yours?”
“Fine. I give up.” His glare fizzles instantly when he sees how big I’m smiling. “You’re happy,” he murmurs, kind of a sentence, kind of a question.
“I don’t know what it is. I’ve never felt this way before in my life.”
“I’m not sure I have, either. I used to hate this kind of thing.” He glances up and down the sidewalk, at the wide view and the people everywhere, his friends sitting on the railing all sappy, whispering things to each other. “Can I kiss you? I want everyone to see.”
As I nod, I realize I’m not scared anymore. Only a little, the way your stomach twists at the top of a roller coaster. “Please.”
He takes my face in his hands, running his thumbs along my cheekbones, then pulls me up onto my toes and kisses me firm and sweet, lips parting mine until our tongues meet, just for a moment. When we break away, he realizes I’m struggling not to adjust myself and smirks. “You’d better not touch that, filthy boy. That’s mine.”
I groan, pressing my hand against my thigh. “I might as well go get a dom. He’d be nicer to me.”
His laugh like a pool of sunlight on a summer afternoon, that grin. “If you had a dom, your ass would be red every minute of every damn day.”
As we walk back toward Ethan and Victor, a melancholy part of me wonders whether Gray is in my dream right now or if I’m in his. Which one of us is going to wake up and realize none of this was ever real. I hope it’s me, because sometimes I think I’m a little bit stronger than him.
Gray’s friends have found a man selling cups of hot chocolate from a red and white pop-up stand by the path. Ethan passes over a few crumpled bills and carefully puts a lid on the steaming drink before handing it to Victor. I focus on the river view, trying not to look jealous. The blond man immediately turns around and gives it to me, then holds his hands out to Ethan again with a coy smirk. The bigger man just sighs, fighting a smile, and goes to order another one.
Before I can take a sip, Gray plucks the cup away from me and drops it back in Victor’s hands. “I can take care of my own date, thank you very much,” he rumbles, digging out his wallet and heading over to the stand. He’s so tall he has to lean back to see the vendor under the edge of the awning. Victor winks at me behind Gray’s back while I just stand there all awkward and trying not to look too much like a lovesick girl from a romcom when her date wins her the prize from the carnival stand.
As we hike back up the path to the car, finishing our drinks, Victor tells me all about some horror movie we’re going to watch this evening. I nod along, pretending I’ve seen a horror movie before and that I’m not at all worried about wetting my pants in front of three people I’m trying really hard to impress.
I can barely fit in the back seats of the DB11, and Victor has his knees curled almost to his chest as we drive home. While I rest my head on the window and watch the winter trees give way to skyscrapers, a thought hits me like a blow, knocking the wind out of me. For the entire afternoon, Gray always stood on my right side. He never hesitated, never second-guessed or had to switch, never once held on to my hand when I needed it to do something.
I always told myself that would be the sign. Someone out there would write me into their body, know me so well that I became instinct to them, and it would be the most intimate moment of my life.
I’m gone, dangerously gone. I can’t come back from this. Even if we break up, even if I never see him again, some part of me will forever be stuck on the moment where Gray Freeman remembered my hand.
