Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

28

Summer

Idon’t see Gray when he gets back from the interview. He texts. Says he needs to catch up on the classes he missed from flying out to California. That he’s not ready to talk. Not just yet.

So I respect his wishes. I give him the time he needs. The space he desires. And I distract myself with other things. My own homework. My sorority. Helping Liz choose instruments for her independent study. Thursday night, I go out drinking with a bunch of my sisters, since I’ve been spending so much time lately with Gray’s friends, and I’m pleasant enough, even when Iris “accidentally” spills a drink down my dress.

I stay sober that whole night. Because if I let my mind wander, if I let myself be distracted from my distractions…

I’ll beg him not to let me go.

Which is why I’ve let him have that time and that space. Waited by the phone for him to call. I’m not entirely ready for the conversation we need to have, either. I’m terrified. Of the look on his face that night when I told him about Morris and me. That soul-crushing look of betrayal. What if he never wants to see me? Never wants to touch me or hold me or kiss me? What if I never see him smile my way ever again?

By the time I get his next message on Friday—Are you free to talk tonight?—I’m a ball of nerves as I reply that I am. And when he pulls up to the curb outside my apartment, where I’m standing, waiting for him, all I want to do is go to him. Kiss him, run my fingers through his hair, and just hold him and be held by him. Like I had that night in Kellermann’s. The night we first truly kissed. When he knocked my entire world off-kilter.

We say hello. I ask him about the interview as I get in his car. He curtly says it went fine. I ask him how the plane ride was. How his week went. Did he finish all his homework?

Like perfect strangers.

I’m sorry, I want to tell him after that perfunctory greeting. I should have told you, I want to tell him as he answers my questions with an inscrutable look on his face. I’m sorry and I miss you, I want to tell him as he drives us far away from campus.

Until I know exactly where we’re going. The same place we went that first night. The drive-in. But it’s empty when we arrive. Closed for the season. Because of the chill in the air and the frost that’s been appearing on the ground with each waking morning. And that tiny flare of hope in me, it dies out as Grayson pulls his car into a deserted dirt field on a cold dark night.

“I’m sorry,” I finally blurt out as he kills the ignition.

“I know,” he says, throwing his keys on the dashboard with abrupt clash. Then we’re quiet.

“Have you…” I huddle into my coat for warmth. “Have you talked to Morris?”

“And say what? I know you fucked my fake girlfriend freshman year and you didn’t tell me? For months?” He sees me flinch, and pinches the bridge of his nose with a shake of his head. “Summer—Fuck. Sorry. I just… I’m still processing it. And I don’t—I know I don’t have any real claim to you. Or anything you did before we met. Who you did. It’s just… Morris.”

Keeping his hands clenched on the steering wheel, Gray stares out the windshield. “Morris is… He’s my friend. My roommate. One of the only people I let get close.”

Your brother. He’s your brother, Gray. That’s why this hurts so much.

“But he’s also… Morris. He’s got the looks, the prestige, the glory. The car. The money. He’s the guy I’ll never be, Summer.” His hands drops to his lap, finally turning to me. “He could have any girl he wants. Any one at all. But he had you.”

Heat rushes through me. Not from shame. Or the guilt. But from unadulterated anger.

“Yes,” I bite out. “You’re right. You’re not Morris. You will never be Morris. Because you’re Gray. I’ve told you before. You’re double-degree, double-major, honors-program, Dean’s-List, Grayson James Rowe.”

Surprise lights his face. I tuck my legs under me and turn to face him on the seat. “Sure, you might not have all those things. But you will have them. And maybe Morris did have me, years ago. But you have me now. And you…” Curls fly in my face as I shake my head, and I brush them back. So I can see him. So he can see me, the sincerity and the desperation in my eyes, welling up with the tears. “You buy me flowers. You tell me facts. You help me with my homework and you—you take me to see dumb movies.”

I splay my hand out the windshield at the empty field. And I voice that fear that’s been lurking inside me all week. “Why did you bring me here? To put an end to it?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “Come on.”

Opening his door, he grabs something from the back seat. When he hops on the hood of the car, he nods for me to do the same. The engine’s still warm beneath our bodies. Gray lies on his back, motioning for me to do the same.

“I just wanted… to give you this,” he whispers, looking straight up.

When I follow that honey gaze, a whole dark sky of stars stares back at me. Glittering faintly. Steadily bright. More than any one person can count. Only two thousand visible to the naked eye, I remind myself of that fact. The one he told me, the night we stared at his bedroom ceiling. The rest, hidden in the dark.

And as we lay there in silence, my mind racing with thoughts I don’t want to voice aloud—What does it mean, he wanted to give me this? As a goodbye? A send off? As an apology? A reassurance that we’ll be okay?—I feel something heavy press into my hands.

The item he took from the back seat. I glance down. It’s a book.

Great. He’s going to break up with me. And he’s going to use a statistics textbook to do it.

But there’s something inside the book. Sticking out from the pages. I sit up. Carefully pry the cover open.

It’s a stem. Of tiny purple flowers. Pressed flat between the pages.

“I looked it up,” Gray says, eyes still on the stars. “After the interview. Before I flew back. The cemetery where your mom’s buried. Those are… from the ones I put on her grave.”

Huge, wet tears fall onto number problems. On formulas. On those flowers.

“Summer.” And Gray says it so quietly, yet so strongly, but I can’t look at him. I’ll start crying even harder. “You never told me her name was Violet.”

I close the pages on those purple flowers. But I cradle the textbook in my lap. Hold it close, to keep those flowers warm through the heat of my coat. “And I never told you how she died.” My breath comes out in a burst, warm and shuddering. “I’ve never told anyone.”

“Can you tell me now?”

And I nod. Because he knows all my other secrets. Those ones that ate at me for so long. “I told you about the accident. Her leg. But I didn’t tell you about the pain. There was… somuch. Damage, from the crash. Years after it happened. In her back. Her nerves. But she was strong. She smiled through it. Pretended like she didn’t feel a thing. But there came a point, where it was too much. Too much to manage on her own.”

I trace my finger down the textbook’s spine, shutting my eyes on those memories. “And I was so young. I didn’t know… I thought they were candy, all those medications. The pills. And she just kept taking more and more and more. She and Nolan fought about it. All the time. She went to rehab. Once. And when she came back and I caught her taking even more… She told me it was a secret. That Daddy couldn’t know. And fuck, I know how wrong that is now. To ask your child to keep your addiction secret. But at the time, I saw her in all that pain and I knew the pills made her feel better, and I just wanted her to stop hurting so much.”

“But then she started taking so much. Too much. She’d take these naps and it would take forever for her to wake up. So I told. I went to Nolan, and I told him what she was doing. And their fight—She cried for days after it was all over. And when she stopped crying, she took more pills. Too many. And a maid—A maid found her. Couldn’t wake her up. And she was just… gone. And Nolan, he— ” I bitterly laugh. “He blamed me. I blamed me. It was my fault. I did this. She overdosed because of me. Because if I never told, if they never fought, and if she never went to nap that day—And I never told another secret again. Because if—If someone got hurt—and if it was my fault and I—”

“It’s not your fault, Summer. It was never your fault.” And I nod through my tears because Grayson Rowe knows every fact in the whole wide world, and he’s always right, so why wouldn’t he know this, why wouldn’t he be right about this?

Gray’s hand on my back is warm through my coat. I choke on gasping sobs because it’s the first time he’s touched me since—Since that night my secrets hurt him.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Gray. And I’m positive Morris didn’t, either,” I wipe away my tears, staring down at the gift he’d given me. “She would’ve liked you, I think. I wish… I wish you could’ve met her.”

“I wish you could’ve known her, Summer,” he chokes out. And when I look at him, he rubs a hand over his mouth. Those honey-brown eyes glittering like stars. “Longer than you did.”

Silently, I nod, wishing that, too. Then, “Ironically enough, after she passed, Nolan told me we had to keep it secret. That she’d had a problem. That she died from it. To keep appearances, you know. It was the first secret I started keeping. And it’ll be the last.” I turn to him, fully. “I don’t want to keep any more secrets from you, Gray. I want to tell you everything.”

“Summer,” he whispers.

His face is cold under my fingers. But I wipe my thumb at the corner of his eye and the tear it catches is warm. “You’re not Morris. But you’re Gray. My Gray. And you can make any claim on me that you want.”

“Summer.”

“Because I’m yours. Every part of me. I’ve never—No one makes me feel like you. No one makes my heart beat as fast and as hard as it does, whenever I so much as think about you. I can’t get it to stop. I don’t want it to stop. That’s how much I’m in love with you.”

“Summer,” and his voice is thick with emotion.

“I love you, Gray.”

He shakes his head. Like I’m making a mistake. Like we’re making a mistake.

“I love you so much.”

Squeezes his eyes shut. Mouths for me to stop.

But how could I, when all my secrets, all my love—it’s all finally ready to come out.

“I don’t want this to be fake anymore. Not when what I feel for you is this real.”

And he makes me stop. By crushing his mouth to mine. Desperately. As though he’s missed it, too. Like he couldn’t bear all those moments he held himself back from me. He pulls away and I say it again, how much I love him. So he silences me with another kiss. And I whisper it in his ear as his hands fumble with the buttons of my coat. They shake and I help him, though mine are shaking, too. I tell him again, so he bruises my lips. Sweeps his tongue against mine, and his hands tremble as they slip under my sweater. All of him trembles. From the heat. From the cold. From me, whispering, whispering, whispering, those words.

I take those trembling hands. Slide off the hood, leading him with me to the back seat. Where I take off my coat and he takes off his. And I laugh when I see his shirt, because I know what the chemical symbol of Fe stands for, thanks to him, and I understand the Iron Man pun it’s making. Just as quickly, though, my smile disappears when he removes it. Then removes my sweater, my bra. Pressing those hard muscles to my soft skin as he pulls me onto his lap. Kissing and licking and caressing and all those things he knows I like.

My hand snakes into his hair, fingers gentle but prodding his mouth back to mine. As we snare each other’s mouths in fierce nibbles and drawn-out sucks, hands glide over my back. Up and down. At the same time. In opposite directions. All over. Alternating between feather-light drifts and urgent, desperate clutches.

His lips move down my jaw. Scattering open-mouthed kisses and drags of his tongue along my neck. At the crook where throat meets collarbone. Over his head, steamed windows shroud the field, at complete odds with the cold outside. I don’t feel cold. Because the temperature in the back seat gradually rises, rises, rises, and I think my mind melts with each degree Gray sends me higher and higher.

I stroke his arms. Lovingly pet the smooth stretch of skin between his shoulder and neck. He shudders under my touch, my hands on him, and his throat bobs with nerves, with anticipation. I settle the tips of my fingers over his pulse. Feeling it race, just as my heart races. He places his mouth over my heart. Feeling it beat for him, and again, I whisper that I love him.

Gray kisses me, so strongly, so deeply, with such passion, that I know, without words, I know, he feels the same.

“My purse is at home,” I tell him as his hand slides under my skirt, my tights. Finding heat and wetness, all for him. I gasp as his tongue flicks my nipple. As his fingers glide into my slit. Push deep inside me, mimicking the motions of his cock. “I—I don’t have anything.”

“Glove box,” he mumbles. So I leave him to crawl over the front seat, and as I reach out to open the compartment, he pulls down my skirt. My leggings. Grips my ass and draws his tongue over the entirety of my folds. I cry out, forgetting my task, as he works his tongue inside me. Over my clit. Licking and sucking and readying my body for his.

He keeps me like that, bent over the front seat with my moans growing louder and louder, until I can’t take it and I push his head away. Rifle through the glove box. Find the square foil. And I laugh, holding up the super logo for Gray to see, and his face flushes, muttering about his roommate putting it there.

Scrambling back to him, I hand him the condom. He tears the wrapper open while I help him get off the rest of his clothes. Straddle his lap once we’re both completely naked, and he’s rolling it over him, pumping his own hand over his hardness. Then—

The sound of snapping latex.

We both look down. At that hard cock. The remnants of a torn condom still in his hands.

“Fucking Levi,” Gray hisses, tossing the broken pieces to the floor. I’d find it hilarious, if I weren’t so wet. If this car wasn’t so hot. If Gray wasn’t so hard, right underneath me.

Telling myself to cool down, to open a window, to get off his lap, I nod that it’s all right. “It… It’s fine. We can—We can go back home. We can wait, Gray. Or we can do any of the other things. Use our bodies. Use our hands. Mouths. Tongues. It doesn’t—We don’t have to—”

But fuck, do I want to. I love him. I love Grayson Rowe so much, I think my body might explode if it doesn’t have him, right now.

Gray doesn’t speak. But slowly, his hand finds me again. Slips between my thighs, spread open above his lap. I sigh, gasp, moan, as he pushes fingers inside my tight heat. And together, we watch, as he moves those fingers. Takes them out, all soaked and glistening with my arousal. And runs them over the tip of his straining desire.

His eyes narrow in concentration, a soft gasp breaking through his lips while his fingers spread my wetness down his shaft. His thumb rubs slickly over that slit on the head of his cock. And I moan, feeling that touch to my very core.

Before I know it, he’s moving. Pulling me to him. Kissing me. Laying me flat on my back. His hips flush against mine as he positions himself. Fisting his cock. Lining himself at that entrance to that soft, wet, hot place between my thighs.

“Summer,” he gasps, as that tip parts through my folds. Dips inside me.

With nothing in between.

“Please, yes,” I beg him. “Yes, Gray, fuck, yes, I’ve wanted this, I want you, I want you so much, I love—”

And he slams inside me. All the way. Groaning at the feel of me, all slick and hot around him. And I sob it again, louder, because fuck, he feels amazing. All hot and hardness and hot, hard, hot, hard, bare Gray moving above me. Slowly dragging that cock out. Quickly plunging himself back in. So hard and so slow and fast and god, he’s bare and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing keeping him from me this time.

“I love you, Gray, I love you, I love you,” and with each panting sob, he pumps harder, harder, harder. Punishing me with that cock. Rasping and mouthing for me to stop, fuck, Summer, stop, I’m going to come, stop, please, Summer, stop saying it.

But I can’t. I’ve kept secrets from him so long. Now, I want him to know. To prove it to him. Make it fact that Summer Prescott loves him. Loves Grayson Rowe. For all that he is. All that he will be. All that he ever was. For him. Giving herself, giving her love, giving him all the love he’s ever deserved.

I don’t ask him for facts this time. To tell me any more about the stars. I’m not even thinking about chemistry. I’m thinking about Gray. Gray, over me. Inside me. In my heart. Saying my name. Showing me with his body what he’s not ready to say yet in words. Gray, who I know, I just fucking know, loves me back.

“I’m close, I’m so close, you, I need you—”

I nod, bucking my hips to meet him. Brushing my clit over that patch of hair above his cock. Letting that growing pressure build from our bodies joining in furious beating. “Me, too, Gray. I’m gonna come for you. Come for me. Come for me.”

“Where—Where—”

“Anywhere. Anywhere, I don’t care,” but even as I say it, my hands strangle his hips. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He leans back, still moving, moving, moving, hands on my thighs to push me closer as I pull him in the same direction. I see those honey-brown eyes behind those glasses, running over my tits, my face, debating, until they fall lower. Where his body collides with mine, and then there’s no more debate. He surges forward, glasses falling off his face. To the floor. And he thrusts harder, so much gloriously harder, as he holds me as tight as he can against him.

With a low groan, he thrusts harder than he ever had before. At that first twitch, that first release of Gray’s hot cum inside me, I grip his ass hard enough to leave marks, bringing his body flush against my clit. Screaming and squirming and sharing all my love with his in a seismic climax.

After, he slumps over me with all his weight. I cradle him into my body. His head in my arms. His body in my legs. His hips with mine as I feel him soften inside me. And as the heat dies out, the cold sets in, I wrap his body in mine. Warming and cuddling and kissing him with all the love in my still rapidly beating heart.