Hard Facts by Penny Clarke
Epilogue
“Is your leg supposed to bend like that?”
I crane my neck, tilting the book on the coffee table to check. “No. It’s supposed to go under your butt.”
Gray frowns in concentration, then tries to move my leg. The angle’s too awkward, and I yelp, accidentally kicking him. He hisses in pain. Loses balance.
We topple right off the couch, in a heap of naked limbs and lighthearted laughter.
Sitting up on the floor, I grab the black marker next to the book. “All right, that one’s impossible.”
Gray lays on his side, still chuckling, with one arm thrown around my waist. “I don’t know. If we put our minds to it—”
“Nope,” I draw a big X over the page and hold it up for him to see.
The book had been a gift. I’d given Gray one a few days earlier—a new telescope, to replace the first—but told him he didn’t have to buy me anything. Still, I woke up Christmas morning to find a new vase of violets on my nightstand, and one other festively wrapped package, sitting on the seat beneath my bay window.
Gray had been attempting to make breakfast for us in the kitchen. But I’d known by its shape what that it would be, and held it up with a pout, “You got me a book. When I specifically requested that you at least try the prostate massager—”
He’d walked over to me, spatula in hand, with that smug grin to silence me with a kiss. “Just open it.”
So I did, happily tearing the paper to find a tome on sex positions so advanced, it makes the Kama Sutra blush. And well, I really couldn’t complain about a present like that. Especially not when we’d eagerly thought to recreate the very first one, right there on the spot. Until the abandoned eggs cooking on the stove set off my kitchen smoke alarm.
After his fireworks show, Grayson and I spend winter break together. Passing all this time—with no one else on campus, no classes to attend, no sorority obligations—to reacquaint ourselves with each other. We watch killer shark movies. Ask each other questions, tell each other secrets. He helps me plan my fundraiser, which has already been approved for spring. I help him get a head start on studying for the upcoming semester. Together, we check our final grades and discover we’d passed all our classes. Even statistics, which I get a B-plus in. Not the A that I was aiming for, but we celebrate with a full bottle of champagne all the same.
We go back and forth on what to do with all the money he gave back to me. In the end, we decide to donate it. Pour it back into resources for the local foster care system. We make the payment together, and after, he pulls me into a kiss with trembling hands.
Mind-blowing doesn’t even begin to cover how it’s been. Not just from all the sex, either. Though, I want to be perfectly clear, there’s been a lot of that, too. As Gray puts it, he wants to make up for all those lost moments he’d spent working so hard. And I’m only too willing to help him bring out all that passion he’d kept hidden for so long.
Now, he helps me off the floor, looking down at that crossed-out position. “I really think—”
“Grayson James,” I push him back on the couch. “Stop. Thinking.”
All debate dies in his throat when I straddle his thighs. Place a hand in the center of his chest, and slowly, teasingly, lower myself onto his hard cock with a relieved sigh. His head falls back onto the couch cushions, and instinctively, his hands seek out my hips to guide me further down.
Lifting his head, those honey-brown eyes watch as our bodies join together. “Fireworks again?”
It’s been my favorite topic of late, when we’re like this. Hearing him explain the chemistry behind that grandiose show he’d given me. Each time, remembering that night. Seeing that same memory reflected in the warmth of his eyes, his smile, his body loving mine.
I nod, pressing myself as close as possible to him. So I can feel our hearts, beating in tune. And he grips one hand at the back of my neck to drag my lips to his.
We come together in delirious, explosive heat. After, Gray brushes hair back from my face, kissing every inch of my skin that he can reach.
“I think you just invented with three new positions on your own,” he smiles against my forehead, my head nestled on his shoulder.
Under my hand, his chest rises and falls in comforting rhythm. I pant into his neck. “See? That’s what happens when you stop using your stupid brain so much.”
His chest shakes with laughter, and he squeezes my hip. “We’ve gotta get ready.”
I whine at the cold when he moves me off him, but he soothes our parting with another kiss. Then, he lets me get in the shower first, since I’m more than a little sticky after that sexperiment. When I’m done, he hops in after me, accidentally knocking over the conditioner I’d bought just for him, and I leave the bathroom, laughing at his confusion over why one person could have so many bottles of shampoo.
Once I change, I check my phone to find a text from Liz, telling me she can’t wait to see me when she gets back to campus in a few days. There’s another message, too. From Nolan’s assistant. When I see it, I return to the bathroom to fix my hair and makeup with an excited smile.
I’ve vowed, as a New Year’s resolution, to stop keeping secrets.
Not that there’s many left. By now, Gray knows everything about me. He knows me, better than I know myself, sometimes.
But I’ve kept this one from him. Because I want it to be a surprise. To see the animated smile on his face when his phone starts ringing. With interview requests. Opportunities for internships. Possibly, even, a job offer or two.
Word on the grapevine is that some of Nolan’s competitors have heard about Gray rejecting the Prescott program. Apparently, they’re all curious about my double-degree, double-major, honors-program, Dean’s-List, nerd boyfriend. And they want to meet him. Because to turn down Nolan Prescott, this Grayson Rowe guy must have some balls.
As Gray steps out of shower, reaching for a towel to wrap around his waist, I watch him dry off in the mirror and attest, What balls, indeed.
He catches me eyeing him, then does the same to my sparkly dress. Sidling up behind me, he grabs his glasses from the counter, puts them on, then lets his fingers flirt with the short hem.
“Hmm…” he murmurs, voice low and husky. “How much do I want to bet that you’re not wearing anything under this.”
I shoo his hand away and continue detangling my curls. “You’re going to make us late. To your own house party.”
New Year’s Eve, at Main Desire. With just Gray and his friends, who’d all returned to campus over the past couple of days to ring in the new year together. Thankfully, none of them hold it against me that I’d busted his car windshield. We’d explained the situation—the whole situation, from start to finish, every last part, real or fake—and after, Kennedy hugged me, while Spencer muttered a rather scolding fucking shark to make Gray hang his head in chagrin. Rylie, even, had commented that she would have done the same, if it were her. Prompting a concerned look from Levi, who then joked that now when I come over, they’ll have to hide every bat, lightsaber, or celestial viewing object long enough to break any more windows.
“Don’t worry, Gray,” he’d teased. “That means your dick’s in the clear.”
Morris had had to break them up after Gray wrestled Levi to the living room floor.
It’s awkward, at first, between Morris and I. But the more time I spend with them, the easier it gets to get over that we’d seen each other naked once. He offers a genuine welcome when I just as sincerely thank him for his help with Gray’s fireworks show. More than anything, though, I think he’s relieved to have just a tiny portion of the rust chipped away from his own iron. And that Gray’s eating again.
The only hold out, however…
Well, Natalie and I have reached a tentative truce. While I hope that one day, we can be friends (or, at least, she stops calling me rich girl), for now, we have an understanding. That I’m not running anywhere. I’m staying right at Gray’s side. To prop him up when he doubts himself. To see him succeed in all his dreams. To be what he’s always needed. To give him all my love.
Gray shrugs, setting either hand on the counter to box me in and kiss the curve of my ear. My neck. My shoulder. He slides those strong arms around my waist, and I lean into him while he buries his face in my wet curls and whispers, “I love you, Summer.”
I close my eyes, turning into him, searching out his mouth with mine. He’s so shy about saying it. Not like I am. Because any chance I get to remind him of how I feel, I tell him. So he’ll always know.
Little by little, though, he’s getting the hang of it. Making it into his own experiment. Testing when and where and how to say those words next, just to see what I’ll do. When I’m styling my hair. In the middle of me reading him an article about bees. Mixing him a naughtily named drink. Trying on a new pair of heels. Smiling over my violets. Always, it’s enough for me to drop whatever I’m doing to rush over, kiss him, and repeat them right back.
But I love it most when he’s thrusting inside me, and he says it so fiercely and surely and passionately, that we come, with the words echoing between us.
“I love you, too,” I sigh, pulling back from our kiss. In a lighter tone, I wave him away, “Now, stop distracting me. My hair is a wreck.”
He refuses to budge, one of his hands falling back to my dress. Fingers hitch under it, softly searching, and I gasp when one strokes me. In the mirror, Gray watches me with that smug-as-fuck smile. “Nothing. I knew it.”
“That was supposed to be a surprise for after the party,” but a small moan utters in my throat, feeling his lengthening hardness against my ass. More fingers join the first, gently rubbing. All the while, honey-brown eyes stay on mine in the mirror. Observing my face flush and my mouth part with sighs. And just as those knowledgeable fingers find my clit—
They stop.
“No. You’re right,” Gray nods at my reflection, and even he can’t keep a straight face. “We should save it for later.”
He exits the bathroom, unable to contain his laughter, and I march right after him, fuming. “Grayson James, if you think you can just leave me like—”
I’m pushed back against the wall as Gray’s lips find mine. He presses into me, with his whole body, his whole heart, and all his love. Once my mouth has been fully ravished, he pulls back, breathing heavy, to tell me, “Never.”
“That a fact?” I murmur into his lips, and he murmurs back, “Yes. Always.”
So I wrap my arms around his neck. Pull his body, his mouth, back to mine. Forget we have somewhere to be. That we’ll be late. Nothing else matters now. Because I want Gray. With all the love in my heart, all the love I have to give, I want him. Forever.
Right before our lips meet, I tell him, “Prove it.”
Grinning, he lifts me in his arms. Bumps into the bedroom door. Loses his glasses along the way. But he, quite thoroughly, does that very thing.
And, theoretically, we are super late to the party.