“Wow,” I say on a breath, sinking back into the cushion beside him, looking up at his face. “It’s one thing to know you’ve done it—made a name for yourself. But it’s an entirely different experience to witness it firsthand.” His eyes meet mine. “It’s amazing, Greyson,” I continue. “You’re absolutely amazing.”
“Thank you,” he blushes the tiniest bit and clears his throat, “but nothing feels as amazing as this right here,” he says, lifting my chin in his fingers. His lips land on mine, and the entire night’s worth of excitement buzzes through our lips, through my fingertips grasping his shirt, through his tongue stroking mine.
He breaks our kiss a few minutes, or hours, or days too short. Would it be rude to ask if it’s time to go now? Back to his house, or mine, I don’t really care.
“You know…tonight’s the first time I’ve truly felt like it’s all come full circle for me,” he says quietly, redirecting my attention entirely.
“Yeah?” I say, looking up into his eyes.
He nods. “I know I wasn’t the best at articulating my feelings back then,” he continues, “but it meant the world to me that you were there for that first performance.”
I swallow, sliding my fingers through his as I push back a swell of emotions.
“Made me nervous as hell,” he laughs, and I smile at his words, looking down at our hands, “but you just sat there beside me, this calm force that settled most of those nerves back down.” He swallows, too, before saying, “I think that’s when I knew that I was falling for you…
“It scared the shit out of me more than anything.”
I squeeze his hand tighter between my fingers, my gaze sinking back into his. “Honestly, Greyson, I think I’ve loved you since the first second I saw you.”
His lips tilt into a smile. Captivating, shy.
“In fact, I think one of my first thoughts about you was something along the lines of: I want to marry him and beg him to let me have his babies someday,” I add.
He laughs, shaking his head. His laughter rumbles through my shoulder and into my chest, squeezing at my heart, constricting my airways.
My eyes are still glued to his as something hits me with overwhelming surety. I ignore the nerves swirling in my stomach and fluttering in my chest and quietly say, “I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped loving you, Greyson.”
“No?” he says, just as quiet.
“No.” I shake my head. “Not even a little bit.”
His lips slam down on mine between one breath and the next. He kisses me harder, deeper, than before. I get lost in it, in him. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still alone on an island of Jess and Greyson—just him, and me, and a blur of sounds that don’t even register.
His tongue grazes my bottom lip, and I sigh into his mouth.
“The Jessica Martinez!” someone says, but I don’t want to take my lips off of Greyson’s to see who.
But also, I’m a mature adult, so I force myself to do it anyway, breathing heavily as I tear my mouth from his.
“It is a pleasure,” the voice continues, and I look up at a tall, dark, and handsome man—the bassist, I’m pretty sure. “Ah, there she is! I didn’t recognize you with your face attached to my man’s there,” he extends his hand out to me, “Seriously, it’s a pleasure.”
I bite down on my smile and slide my hand into his. “Jess.”
“Trey.”
“It’s really nice to meet you, too,” I say.
My hand slips out of his as he brings his hand to his chest. “First off, thank you for fueling ninety percent of G-man’s songs and helping make us famous.”
Greyson kicks his leg out and it hits Trey in the shin.
He rubs out the pain with a mock scowl. “Right, right. Breaking bro-code. Anyway.” He straightens. “Second, where are we all heading to after this? Because I’ve got a shit-ton of questions.”
I laugh. I like him already. I like him a lot.
“You up for going out?” Greyson asks, his mouth an inch away from my ear, sending chills up and down my spine, down my arms.
“Yeah.” I smile, my bottom lip caught between my teeth. “I’m totally up for going out.”
“Woo!” Trey hoots, and the sound is quickly followed by my friends’ whoops and shouts of excitement.
And that’s how we end up here, at none other than our favorite place: Toca Madera, of course.
Two rounds of shots have already been passed through the group of us—all thirty of us.
Me, and my girls, and my Ricky, and our Sam, and Greyson and his band and their people—and what I’m quickly learning is his tight-knit, makeshift family.
We talk about anything and everything. Sports, art, music. The military. Recording. Touring. College. Highschool.
Greyson and me.
My friends, and his.
Laughter flows in abundance along with the drinks, and in the span of a single night, our worlds completely shift. Fusing Greyson’s and mine together.
It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
Seventy-four After
LADY’S DOOR SLAMS shut, jolting me out of my daze, and a giggle unwittingly pours out of me. I may have, probably, definitely, had a bit too much to drink tonight.
But I’m not mad about it. Because tonight was a blast. One of the best, ever. And I’d do it all over again.
Greyson slides into his seat, shifting my focus to him as he turns the engine over. I trail my eyes over his strong hands, languidly moving them up his muscled arms and broad shoulders before landing on his face. It’s a good face. A really good face. And those lips.
Fuck, those lips. They do so much more than the average lips, don’t they? The way they sing, and speak, and kiss, and laugh.
“Let me paint you,” I blurt. “I could paint you so hard.”
“Come again?” those lips reply with a smirk, and it takes everything in me not to climb across this car and kiss it from his face.
“You heard me. I’m painting you,” I decide for the both of us, a smile spreading across my lips. “You can’t say no,” I add with a shrug, and he laughs in response.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” he says.
“No?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I look forward to it,” he adds, and I smile even wider.
“Okay. Thank you.”
He glances over at me, eyes shining with amusement, his lips matching the sentiment, and says, “I want to be a dragon.”
“What?” My face scrunches up in a weird way that feels funny and ridiculous, but I know I must’ve had even more to drink tonight than I thought I did, because did he just say dragon?
He wants to be a dragon.
What? “What?” my words quickly echo my thoughts and give voice to the expression on my face.
“We are talking about body paint here, right?” he says, seemingly dead serious. “So paint me into a dragon.”
A laugh bursts out of me. “Oh my God, I love you.”
He smirks. “Joking.”
“I know.” I smile. “I mean, that does sound like a lot of fun—believe me, it does—but I think I’ll stick to what I know.”
“Sounds good.” And he smiles, too.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t still get naked,” I add. “Just so we’re clear. Naked portraits are my specialty.”
He raises his brows. “Are they now?”
“Yep.”
“Funny, I didn’t catch any of those at your showing.”
“Well, of course not. Those are personal.” I’m barely holding back my laughter. I mash my lips down on my smile in an attempt to anyway.
“Mmhmm.” He smirks. “We’ll see about that.”
And I know I’m only joking—I’ve never actually painted anyone naked before. Not from a real, live model, anyway. But the thought of painting Greyson that way feels suddenly, absolutely and obscenely necessary.
Yeah. It has to happen. I’m going to make sure it does.
I don’t even try to hide my smile at that thought.
Greyson laughs in response, probably already knowing where my mind has headed. “Did you enjoy yourself tonight?” he asks, switching gears, his tone shifting into a more serious one.
“I did. Probably a little too much,” I say, sighing and sinking back into Lady’s seat. “But your people are awesome.”
“Yours are too.” He chuckles.
“Yeah, they are,” I say, and my eyes drift closed. Lady rumbles beneath me, soothing. “I’m so happy you kept her.”
“Hmm?”
“Lady. I’m really glad you still have her.”
“Yeah? And why is that?” I can hear the smile in his voice.
I shrug, a small lift of my shoulders. “Remember that day you drove me down to the beach?”
There’s a beat of pause before, “Yeah, of course I do.”
“I never thanked you for that.”
“You didn’t need to, Jess,” he says quietly. His hand wraps firmly around my knee and squeezes once, reassuringly.
I open my eyes and nod, but I feel the need to thank him anyway. “It helped me,” I say. “I’d never really allowed myself to sit with my feelings like that, until that day. To sort through them and see where they laid. You gave me a safe place to do that, and I…
“I finally started healing that day. So, thank you.” I smile for the millionth time tonight, but this one feels wholly different from the rest.
His eyes meet mine. “You’re welcome, but that was all you,” he says.
“No.” I shake my head. “You helped me more than you know. In so many ways.”
He smiles, too, and nods, his eyes back on the road as he laces his fingers through mine. “You helped me, too, you know.”
I squeeze his fingers tighter and turn my body in my seat to fully face him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He swallows. “Talking to you about what happened with my parents…with my father. It helped me move on from it, too.”
“I’m glad,” I tell him, and I mean it with every fiber of my being. After all I’ve felt like he’s given me, it’s nice to know that I was able to give him back a little something, too...
I don’t realize we’re here until Greyson gently shakes me awake, and I startle a little in Lady’s seat.
“Sorry.” Greyson softly chuckles, and I smile into a yawn. “But we’re home.” He glances out the front windshield and up to his house with a crooked tilt of his lips.
Home, he said, and I like the sound of it.
I like it a lot.
Seventy-five After
I’M PAINTING—GREYSON. Naked. In the flesh. Mirroring the image of him onto the canvas in front of me.
Painting is my passion, my dream, my breath of fresh air and my slice of freedom in a chaotic world. But right now, there are a million other things I’d rather be doing with that naked body.
He laughs, already knowing where my thoughts have been bathing for the past half-hour. Soaking in the dirtiest corners of my mind like a hot, bubbling bath of depravity.
I close my eyes and shake my head. You’re better than this, Jess.
Am I, though?
I take a deep breath and focus on the task at hand, dipping my brush into the black paint, and adding more detail to the hairs that trail down his stomach and head straight towards his—
“You know what, I can’t do this. You’re too distracting,” I say, setting the brush down on the tray of paints, a little less than gently. The tray rattles, and the brush rolls down it, hanging precariously over the edge before I catch it and set it down on my easel.
“Come on, Jess.” He laughs again—unwittingly. Moving. Parts. Of himself. It draws my attention straight to those parts. He clears his throat, dragging my gaze back to his. “I want my custom Jessica Martinez work of art.”
And then it’s my turn to laugh. “If you thought this was going to be hanging anywhere but my bedroom wall, you were sorely mistaken.”
The sound of our mingled laughter bounces off my studio walls.
“Here,” I say, standing up and grabbing my camera from the shelf beside me. I switch it on and make a few adjustments to the ISO and shutter speed, before lining up the perfect shot. I peer over my camera at him. “This okay?” I ask.
He clears his throat, eyes intense. “I’m good with whatever you want, Jess.”
I lick my lips, biting down on the bottom one with a smile. “Okay,” I say quietly. And I take the shot.
I set the camera down on a small table set against the wall and walk over to Greyson, holding my hand down to him. “Come on.” I swallow thickly. “Your custom Jessica Martinez will be on its way to you soon. Now let’s find our way back to my bed.”
The intensity in his eyes increases tenfold, and I almost climb on top of him right here and now, before we could ever make it to my house, let alone my bedroom.
Turns out, we only make it just outside my studio doors.
And my favorite place to ground? The one smack-dab in the middle of my self-made meadow? That’s where we collide together and strip, and taste, and feel.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t anywhere in the rulebooks of how it’s done, but I can say this: I’ve never felt more grounded in my life.
Seventy-six After
I WATCH GREYSON, quietly, as he makes his way around his kitchen. His back and arms flexing as he reaches up into his cabinets for two bowls. His fingers wrapped around a matching pair of spoons before setting them down onto his marble countertop.
The way he licks his lips as he lifts the lid from an ice cream container—his green eyes catching mine watching him as he scoops said ice cream into the bowls sitting in front of him.
I smile, not at all ashamed at being caught. He’s something to watch, this man. The ease and surety in which he moves about a room. The calmness that seems to emanate from his every pore.
Just being in his presence puts me at ease. Calms something inside of me, too.
He winks at me with a soft smirk before looking back down and continuing to put together our desserts. Chocolate brownie, vanilla ice cream, caramel drizzle, crushed almonds, whipped cream, and a cherry on top.
He knows me well. I bite back another smile, hiding the evidence of it behind my clasped hands. He is too, too good to me. If this dessert has anything to say about it, anyway. “You’re too good to me,” I voice my thoughts.
He shakes his head with a hidden smile of his own. “It’s just dessert, Jess.”
I quickly suck in a breath with wide eyes and feigned shock that borders on disapproval. “I cannot believe you just said that to me. ‘Just dessert.’ Who are you?” I slide my bowl from the counter and spin around on his stool, making my way towards his back doors with my dessert in hand. “Dessert is everything,” I finish.
He laughs, shaking his head. “Of course it is, babe. Of course it is,” he relents. “Forgive me.”
I try not to smile while pretending to think about it. “Hmm…Okay. You’re forgiven. I guess.” I shrug and roll my eyes.
He laughs again, and we slip into his backyard, settling into the two oversized chairs at the side of his pool that face his view of our shared city.
“You think we could find my house from here?” I ask, even though I know it’s probably impossible to find my own little speck in the cluster of at least a thousand others.
But he points out in front of him somewhere, in the general vicinity of where I live. “Approximately…there,” he says. “Seventeen minutes’ drive time, thirty-two with traffic.” He says it as if he’s dead serious, and I snort with laughter.
“Should I be impressed, or slightly afraid for my life?” I ask, taking a bite of my dessert.
He shrugs a shoulder with a tilt of his lips. His smile is devastating. “These are important, need to know things, Jess.”
“Really.”
“Absolutely.”
I can’t keep my laughter from spilling forward. But Greyson quickly draws my attent
ion back to him, his eyes on mine as he slides his spoon out from between his lips.
“Okay,” I follow the movement, taking a breath of clarity, “So…did you follow me to Seattle, then?” I ask with a subtle smirk.
He relaxes back into his chair, kicking his legs out in front of him. “I think so. Intentionally, or unintentionally,” he pauses for a moment, eating another spoonful of ice cream before continuing, “Life sort of worked out in my favor that way, but I think I would’ve ended up here either way…in the hopes of finding you again.”
I nod, swallowing back a sudden swell of emotions, before saying, “I don’t think it was a possibility—in any version of our reality—that I wouldn’t have found my way back to you, Greyson.”
The air around us grows thick with emotion, too, squeezing at my airways. Because…
I love him. So fucking much.
I can see the sentiment mirrored right back at me through his eyes, can feel it in the graze of his thumb against my cheek. It slips in, slinking through my awareness and into every cell of my body, warming me from the inside out.
He picks my hand up in his and presses a kiss to the center of my palm, before caging it against his chest as he digs back into his dessert.
I look out at the view, soaking in this moment. The quiet surety of it all. It’s what startles me most, I think. What throws me a little off-kilter—how I seem to know without a doubt that this is exactly where I’m meant to be. In the right place, with the right person, but finally at the right time. Finally at the right time.
“I still don’t know how you ever leave this place,” I cut through my own thoughts, and the handful of others I see playing behind his eyes, too.
The right side of his mouth pulls up into a smirk. “A wise and very beautiful woman once told me, in so many words, that I should try to bring my world here, so I won’t have to leave half as much.”
“Mmhmm,” I hum on a half-smirk of my own.
He sets his bowl down onto the small table beside him and turns to face me dead-on. I watch as his Adam’s apple slides up and down his throat, his eyes intent on holding me in place, right where I am.
Before & After You Page 23