by LJ Evans
She seemed to assess my level of honesty. As if she wasn’t sure if I would keep my word. I leaned in and kissed her temple. Softly. Tenderly. A different kind of promise. A promise to love her like she deserved to be loved.
“If it happens again, I won’t take you back,” she said. It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even a warning. It was the truth. Grace was that strong. She’d walk away before she’d let someone continue to trample on her. On her heart. She said it with a confidence many people twice her age didn’t have.
It stemmed from her parents. I could see it when I saw them all together. They were tough. Just like the unoriginal saying, “tough as nails.” They weren’t going to take shit from anyone.
“It won’t happen again, but, Grace?”
She closed her eyes.
“You can’t close down on me again either.”
That had her opening her eyes and staring at me. As if she was surprised I’d seen her close down. That I’d seen her surround her wounded heart with steel spikes and leather and lace.
I kissed her jawline, running a finger along her arm and over to her breasts again, which caused her to arch off the wall into me, and I sighed because this was what I wanted. Her. Moaning, calling my name, arching up into me as we took our bodies and joined them into one.
I lifted her from the wall and took her back to my bed. I placed her down on the pillows, threw off my T-shirt and underwear, and then sat down beside her, sliding the T-shirt up her body, exposing her belly button ring and her breasts. I took the ring in my mouth, tugging gently, layering it with kisses. She ran her nails over my back as my lips journeyed from her belly button to take in one nipple while my hand caressed the other.
“May… Mayson, my love,” she breathed out my name, and I stilled at her words.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Do I what?”
“Do you love me?”
She closed her eyes, trying to hide. To protect the heart I knew beat deep inside her. The one she’d shielded behind a thick set of armor, not just because I’d hurt her, but also because she was Grace. Afraid and yet unafraid all at the same time. I moved up until I could kiss her chin, her mouth, and her closed eyes.
“Do you love me?” I repeated.
She opened her eyes and met mine with uncertain ones. “You first,” she said.
“More than Rick Blaine loved Ilsa, more than Johnny loved Baby, more than Sophia Danko loved Luke Collins,” I told her.
She laughed. “You know I disagree with you about everything regarding The Longest Ride.”
I smiled at her. “You’re postponing the inevitable.”
“I will never love The Longest Ride,” Grace breathed out and then said, “but I will always love you.”
I kissed her lips as soon as the words were out, thinking of a million notes and chords and frames that would try, and fail, to capture this moment. I kissed every single place on her body, claiming them so there was no other scent on her except mine. And she did the same. We kissed away the things that had held us apart until there was nothing left but her and me and our love.
Grace
GREATEST GIFT OF ALL
“Knowing you're in love with me
Is the greatest gift of all.”
Performed by Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers
Written by Jarvis / Barlow Jarvis
We spent the entire morning making up for months of lost time. Mayson made love to me as if it were our last time together when it was really the beginning. He made love to me as if he could somehow make up for the moments we’d lost, and I met his demands as the pain and ache of his loss slowly fell away. Until I began to believe we could do this. That we could be together, and he wouldn’t break my heart again.
He’d promised. And it hadn’t been a small promise for him to put me ahead of his family. To put me ahead of everything they wanted for him. Everything he was walking away from to be with me and to start a business with Cole and me. Our own production company. Our own movies. With Dylan Waters backing us.
After we made love for the third time—this time with me on the desk in his room—I brought us back to the discussion we’d had before. Because I needed to be sure what he’d said would be followed by actions that matched.
“So, you’re coming back to L.A. with me?” I looked up from where I’d rested my head on his chest. He kissed the tip of my nose sweetly.
“As soon as the godforsaken party is over.”
“But what about the album?” I asked. He was helping his uncle finish Watery Reflection’s twelfth album.
“He can find any schmuck to play keyboard for him,” he answered, and my heart sang with joy, but I also felt like he’d regret it if he didn’t at least finish this one thing.
“You’re not any schmuck. You play beautifully,” I said.
“Thank you, but I just meant he doesn’t need someone brilliant. He just needs someone who can play. He has his own brilliance.”
“You could stay and finish it.”
“I’m never going to waste a moment of our time together. Never again.” There was a slight growl in his voice as he said it, and it sent waves of pleasure over my heart and soul just like his kisses sent waves of pleasure over my body.
“Where are you going to live?” I asked.
“With you,” he said flippantly, as if it was a no-brainer.
“I live with Cole. I took over your room.”
“Yes. You don’t think we can share a bedroom?”
I patted his face. “My love, do you really want him hearing all this?”
I waved my hand around the room and the scattered papers and pens and files that had once been on his desk and now littered the wooden floors. He smiled a big huge smile at me.
“Say it again,” he said.
“What?”
“That you love me.”
I stared at him. We’d already said it, but it still felt strange to say it aloud when I’d been keeping it locked up inside me so he wouldn’t see it. I wasn’t easy to love. I was my father’s daughter in so many ways. Hard. Unyielding. But I hoped he could see past it. I hoped he’d see the heart at the center of me.
“I love you. I’ve loved you for years,” I told him, because it was the truth. My crush had bloomed somewhere along the way into the full love that filled me now.
He buried his head in my chest. “I’m such a stupid male.”
I kissed the top of his head, heart so full it felt like it could explode, and I suddenly forgave a bunch of writers the lines that I used to scorn, because it did feel that way. Like the emotions were too much to contain in our human forms.
His bedroom door banged open, and Stephen walked in. It took him a second to register Mayson’s and my bare bodies twined together at the desk, but then he turned back toward the door.
“Shit, man. Lock the door next time.”
Mayson laughed, calling to him. “What did you want?”
“We’re going to the Dairy Queen. We were going to ask if you wanted to come, but I can see you’re otherwise engaged.”
He was talking to us as he was pulling the door shut.
“I’m hungry,” I told Mayson.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Stephen threw back.
“Don’t be an ass. Give us a couple of minutes, and we’ll be down,” Mayson said.
“Again, dude. Do you really want me to go there?”
He slammed the door behind him.
Mayson looked down at me. “We don’t have to go.”
“You going to keep me locked in your room, ravishing me all day?” I teased.
“Is that going to be a problem for you?”
But he was already easing away from me. We dressed in silence, me keeping his T-shirt but sliding my miniskirt and boots back on before we headed toward the door.
He stopped me there, pulling me back into his arms with a kiss.
“I love you,
Gracie-Lou,” he said with a huge smile.
I punched him in the stomach, not holding back. “I love you, too, but call me Gracie-Lou and you might have to find a new right ball.”
“I think we may need my balls,” he laughed.
“Eh. I think one would do.”
But my heart was full. Full of love and happiness for this man who was willing to give up everything in his world to be with me.
Mayson
YOU MAKE IT FEEL LIKE CHRISTMAS
“It barely took a breath to realize
We're gonna be a classic for all time.”
Performed by Gwen Stefani & Blake Shelton
Written by Shelton / Stefani / Tranter / Busbee
I held Grace’s hand as we made our way down the stairs to meet Stephen and my sister. They both had sly smiles on their faces, and I knew he’d already spilled the beans to Khiley about catching us, literally, in the act. I didn’t care. I was full of happiness. Lighter than I’d been in months.
Grace and I had spent the morning moving together seamlessly. Full of a passion and softness you didn’t expect from Grace. It felt like the glow of sunsets mingling into twilight. It felt like crickets chirping and the hush of a car in the morning light. Waves pounding the shoreline and rainbows of mist touching the sea.
Grace. Was. Everything. All of her. Mine.
I wasn’t ever letting her go again.
The talk was easy as the four of us ate lunch at the Dairy Queen. Even Grace, who was normally pretty close-lipped around people she didn’t know very well, was somehow softer. As if she, too, was feeling lighter.
After we ate, Stephen dropped us off at the hotel so we could retrieve Cole. He’d been alone for almost twenty-four hours, and I felt a twinge of guilt that we hadn’t let him know we’d made up. That we weren’t quitting on each other or him. But I couldn’t regret the time I’d spent with Grace.
Cole opened the hotel room door, took one look at our joined hands, and then smiled. He grabbed the takeout bag we’d brought with us and backed into the room, letting us in.
“Thank you, Jesus, Mary, and everyone in between.”
He dug into the food as if he hadn’t eaten in a week, which, to Cole, it probably felt like he hadn’t. He was tall and lanky but full of muscles. Muscles he’d built over years spent on the Ninja Warrior training grounds at his dad’s gym. His appetite was as aggressive as his workouts.
“Nice to see you and the she-devil made up,” he said after he’d inhaled most of the food.
“You’re lucky I already handed you your milkshake, otherwise you’d be wearing it,” Grace said. “I’m going to change real quick.”
She grabbed a few things from her luggage and then went into the bathroom. My eyes followed every move she made. I couldn’t wait to have her tucked up against me once more.
When I turned back to Cole, he was frowning at me.
“What’s the I’m-trying-to-be-a-hardass look for?” I asked.
“You can’t fuck with her again, Mayson.” His voice was quiet but held an unmistakable warning.
I understood where he was coming from. It was the same defensiveness Ty, Stephen, and I had for our sisters. We wouldn’t let anyone screw with them, and I’d screwed with Grace. I was lucky he was even letting me live.
“She’s all I want, Cole.”
We were still giving each other the staredown when Grace came out of the bathroom in jeans and a black top that slid off her shoulder more than it stayed in place. I loved it and hated it all at the same time. I would have loved it more if we were back in my bedroom where I could remove it.
“Okay, that feels better. At least no one else has to know about my walk of shame. Khiley and Stephen were enough,” she said with a small grimace.
“Where are we going?” Cole asked.
“To Derek’s so I can resign,” I told him.
“Wow. She really did kick you back in line. High five, Gracie-Lou,” Cole said, smiling and holding out his hand. She ignored it.
“You truly are going to get something spilled on you today,” she growled, but behind the growl was a smile. A smile I returned. I loved these two. I loved that we were going to start a business together built on their imagination and my obsession with music. It wasn’t going to be easy, and we were likely to fight as much as we got along, but it was going to happen.
When we got to Aunt Mia and Uncle Derek’s house, there was a battle going on in the kitchen about what was going to be done for Eliza and Brett’s marriage and subsequent move to Texas. Lost in my own hot-and-heavy reunion with Grace, I’d forgotten about Eliza’s elopement, even after all the toasts at the bar the night before.
Eliza was quiet, and her boyfriend—scratch that—husband was equally quiet. They just watched as the parents and grandparents squabbled about receptions and no receptions, and how to get the couple out to Texas with everything the family felt was required to start their new life together.
We said a brief hello and then eased down to the studio in the basement to wait for a better moment to talk to Uncle Derek.
“Why don’t I play the changes I made to the final score,” I said, sitting down at the piano.
Grace joined me on the bench, and Cole leaned on the lid. When I’d reworked the song last month, I’d been hoping and imagining just this moment. The moment when Grace and I made up. The moment where our future started. It had been a vague hope, but now, it was full of all my dreams come true.
We were about halfway through the song when a throat being cleared behind me startled my hands into stillness. Uncle Derek was there, watching us.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Cole and Grace looked at me. This was the time to just get it out and stop hiding. To stop being a coward. To stand up for my dreams. For Grace. I looked at her, and the thought of going back to L.A. with her and starting on this adventure together was worth everything and anything. I would risk hurting him because I didn’t have another choice. I waved him over so he could see the sheet music better.
“It’s the finale for our musical,” I told him.
“Musical? Really?” His interest in any and every form of music made this part easy. The part where I told him what I really wanted to do.
“Yep. We’ve been working on it for a few years now.”
“It sounded really good.” He picked up a few of the chords and played them at the top of the keys, higher than I intended them to be, but the melody was there anyway. Uncle Derek could play almost any instrument there was to be played, and he’d passed that love and skill on to me. I owed him for turning me into the musician I was.
“The outro is innovative. It’s really good,” he told me.
I smiled, proud. I couldn’t help it. Having my mentor say my score was good…it meant everything. But I also knew I had to rip off the Band-Aid, whether it would let him down or not.
“Dylan thought so, too,” I said.
“Dylan, as in my brother Dylan?”
I nodded. “He’s backing it. The three of us are meeting with the casting directors next month.”
He took a look at all of us. “You’re making a musical? Backed by my brother? And it’s starting production that soon?”
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“Why are you sorry?”
“It means I can’t finish the album with you. I can’t go on tour this round.”
He didn’t respond at first, and my anxiety increased. It was a crappy way to pay him back. To leave in the middle of an incomplete album. I could feel the disappointment wafting off of him as he rubbed his hands over his face. Then, he stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocked back and forth a little.
“Well, shit,” he finally said.
“The timing sucks,” I said with an apologetic shrug.
“Really sucks,” he agreed.
“But I have to follow this where it leads. We all do,” I said, picking up Grace�
�s hand and tucking it up against my heart.
Uncle Derek’s eyes were drawn to our joined hands, and then to Grace’s face, and then to mine.
“I see.”
“You can play the piano pieces yourself for now. You still have plenty of time to find a replacement before you go on tour.”
He was nodding before I even got to the end of my little spiel, and then his face broke into a wry grin. “Goddamnit, now I owe Lonnie fifty bucks.”
I frowned.
Uncle Derek continued, “Lonnie bet me you wouldn’t make it to round two.”
“What?”
“Lonnie and I have been in this business for a long time. A really long time. We can usually tell the ones who are going to stay and the ones who are going to leave. You had all the signs, but I liked playing with you so much I ignored them. I enjoyed having one of you kids alongside me. It felt like the band might actually be able to live past our limited time on this earth.”
The guilt twisted again because I’d liked being with him and the band. But I hadn’t liked the impossible tour schedule, no sleep, and screaming crowds grabbing at you every day. I hadn’t liked the paparazzi or the almost stalker-like focus of people I didn’t know bombarding my social media accounts.
“I’m really sorry,” I said again.
“Stop, you don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Grace finally spoke up. “This is your dream―our dream.” She waved a hand between the three of us. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to make it come true.”
Uncle Derek considered her for a moment. “I think you need to keep this one. She seems pretty smart. Johnny Cash was pretty smart, too, and he once said, ‘If you aren’t gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.’ And I think that’s kind of true about music, too. If you aren’t gonna make the music in your heart, you might as well not play at all. I don’t want that for you, Mayson. I’d much rather you create incredible and original scores like that one right there.”