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I laugh with him, my tears fading. "Seriously, I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he says. "I'm...flattered, I guess. God, this is really happening. I can't believe I just did that to you."
I start to answer, but he cuts me off by dragging his thumb over my lips.
"You're my woman," he says. "I'm gonna take care of you. Alright?"
I don't know what he means. With the contract, all we're obligated to do is get pregnant, then he can leave.
But I let myself lean into it.
I let myself want him.
I can let myself daydream when I see him. It’s nothing more than that. There’s no clause against daydreaming.
"Alright," I whisper.
And he takes me into his arms.
Chapter thirteen
Gray
IkeepworkingonClaire's house.
I keep trying to get her pregnant.
We fall into a pattern--one I'm not anxious to get out of.
I finish fixing up the porch. I fuck her over the railing in broad daylight, her tits in my hands, my cock buried inside her.
I move a handmade kitchen island into the cabin, because she loves cooking. That night, I lay her out on top of it and I lick her until she comes.
She starts putting in a garden for the spring. I find her outside, hands and knees in the soil, and I bare her ass and spank her while I take her from behind.
And Claire...she fucking blossoms in Fern Hollow.
Like the flowers in her garden, she comes to life as the weather gets warmer. I know it's the place, the house, her freedom from her old life and the city--but I hope it's also me. I like keeping her in a hazy afterglow, pink and gold, her brown curls spilling down her back. She gets wilder, too, like the city had locked her in.
We're brushing our teeth one morning before work--before I start fixing up her house again and she starts on her consulting tasks for the day--when she cracks open a drawer and gestures at it. I look down with a frown, and Claire gestures again after she spits out her toothpaste.
"It's yours," she says, "if you want it."
I cock my head. "Are you sure?"
She nods with a smile. "Positive."
That's just the beginning of it, too. I make her mine when we're twisted in the sheets each night, and she makes me hers in every other way. At the dining table, where she always sets a place for me. In the bedroom, where she buys me a new pillow. In the living room, where she spoils Luna with a new dog bed and so many toys the dog doesn't know what to do with herself.
For some reason, her love for the dog is the thing that makes my heart ache most. Luna was a fighting dog rescue, and she had a lot of work to do to get where she's at now. But Claire embraces her with open arms.
I wonder if she could embrace me that way if she knew my past. If she knew I'm a felon.
That I almost killed a man.
I'm considering telling her one night a month or so into our arrangement. I roll up to the driveway after a gig at somebody else's house--because the crew demanded I start doing something other than favors for my girlfriend--and I start sweating as soon as I turn off the car. Tonight's the night. I'm going to tell her everything about who I am, how I got here, the path that led me from Texas to Oregon five years ago.
I walk fast up the driveway, eager to tell her while I still have the heart. But as I come in the door, she's nowhere to be found. Neither is the dog, which is weird, but they're usually inseparable. I put my jacket down on the back of one of the kitchen stairs and look around, anxious to find out where she is.
