Percy.
Grace presses herself into my chest and peers over my shoulder.
“Hey, Grace.Welcome home.”Percy’s tone is sheer delight.
Grace buries her face in the crook of my neck and releases something caught between a giggle and a groan, her greeting muffled against my skin.Her shoulders shake with laughter she’s absolutely failing to suppress.
I turn around and keep most of my body in front of her, blocking Percy’s view so she can redo her buttons.
“Um, sorry, Perce.”I rub at the back of my neck.“I guess we, uh?—”
“Missed each other.”Percy grabs her bag off the hall table with an expression that says she intends to hold this over me indefinitely.
She lifts her coat from the hook.“Grace, don’t get dressed on my account.I’m leaving.I’d hug you, but this one might tackle me.”
She guffaws at her own joke, utterly delighted with herself, and slips out the door with a light squeeze to Grace’s arm.“I’ll text you so we can catch up.You look beautiful.”
The door clicks shut, and Grace is unusually quiet, her face a spectacular shade of crimson, lips pressed together in a thin, mortified line.
“Oh my God.”She covers her face with both hands and dissolves into laughter, shoulders shaking, the sound of it filling the entryway and doing something irreversible to my chest.
I cringe, needing to explain, end her embarrassment.“I saw you, and I just?—”
She kisses me, her smile pressing warm against my lips, cutting off whatever excuse I was assembling.
“Mad.”She pulls back just enough to look at me.“Anyone else here?Your mom?Katie?”
“Not yet.”I kiss her deeper this time, slower, making a point.“We’ve got maybe an hour.”
She laughs softly against my mouth.“Slow down, tiger.We have right now, and we have later after everyone leaves.”Her fingers trace along my jaw.“We have all night and the rest of our lives.”
She’s right.She is completely right, and it doesn’t slow me down even slightly.Now that I’ve had a taste of her, the rest of the evening feels like an obstacle.What was I thinking, having a party the night she came home?
I cup her face in both hands and hold it there, steadying myself in the sight of her.Blue eyes warm and familiar, pretty pink mouth curved up at the corner, real and here and mine.“I figured something out while you were gone.”
Her brows lift.“What’s that?”
“I love you, Buchanan.”The words lodge somewhere behind my ribs every time I look at her, every time she isn’t in the room, and I feel the shape of where she should be.
Her smile settles into something soft and certain.“I love you, too, Coach.”
I slide my hand into her hair, palm warm against her scalp, and she leans into it without hesitation, like she’s been doing it her whole life.I walk her backward toward the stairs, and once we reach the top, something in the air shifts—thinner, charged, the quiet of the house folding in around us.
Nudging the bedroom door open, I draw her inside.Grace turns to face me and rests her palm flat against my chest, right over my sternum.It’s like she’s checking for something—for me, for this, for the reality of us in the same room again after three weeks of distance.
I cover her hand with mine and press it there, and then my mouth finds her jaw, slow at first, a deliberate drag that turns into the graze of my teeth, just enough to pull a sharp inhale from her lips.
I want urgency.But I want to draw this out more.“Look at me.”
She does, her eyes dark, lips parted, and waiting.
“I’ve got you.”My lips brush her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, barely a touch.“I’m not going anywhere.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt, twisting the fabric.“Good,” she whispers.“Because neither am I.”
I kiss her deep and claiming and completely unrestrained, the sound of it filling the quiet room, hungry and unhurried all at once.I walk her backward until the backs of her knees meet the bed, never breaking the kiss, my hands firm at her hips.
She goes willingly, a soft gasp leaving her lips as she sinks down onto the edge, looking up at me with dark eyes and no trace of hesitation.I follow her down onto the bed, my weight careful but undeniable, my thumb tracing a line along her jaw and down the column of her throat.