Making Their Vows

“Hey, beauty.”

His voice wraps around me like the warm hug I’m craving. “Took you long enough.”

He laughs. “I’ve been pacing with my phone in my hand for hours. Been wanting to call you since last night, but I…shit, Grace, I don’t want to come across too eager and scare you.”

“You couldn’t. You won’t.”

North blows out a long, unsteady breath. “What are you doing?”

“Working on an application,” I say, wrinkling my nose at the offending laptop. “It’s not how I wanted to spend my Saturday, but my father didn’t give me a choice.”

“How would you normally spend it?”

“There’s a shelter for animals where I volunteer sometimes.” A smile curves my lips. “I get to play with puppies. Sometimes I read or go swimming at the club or see friends.”

A beat passes. “You’re not seeing any friends today?”

There’s a hard note in his tone and it takes me a second to read between the lines. “I’m not seeing Collier, if that’s what you’re asking, North. I told you, he’s not my boyfriend and he never will be. I can barely stand him.”

North’s breath caresses my ear. “You don’t…God, Gracie, I shouldn’t be demanding explanations from you like that.”

My hand tightens around the phone. “But you can’t help it?”

“No,” he says, hoarsely. “I can’t.”

Slowly, I lie back on my bed, looking up the ceiling but seeing only his face. His golden eyes. “What if you could demand explanations from me? What if you…”

“What if I was your boyfriend?” He half-laughs, half-groans. “You should probably know this whole conversation is making me hard as a motherfucker.”

“Oh,” I breathe, my toes curling into my comforter. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you sound real sorry,” he teases, releasing a long exhale. “You really want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

His exhale bathes my ear. A few seconds tick by in silence. Then, “If I was your boyfriend, you’d walk around looking so dazed and satisfied from being fucked, no other guy would bother trying to run game on you. They’d know I have it locked down tight. They’d smell me all over you. They’d see the suck marks on your neck and your swollen-ass lips—and they’d know it’s no use trying to compete.”

Lord. Tingles cascade from my head down to my toes. I have to roll onto my stomach momentarily to whimper into my comforter, before bringing the phone back to my mouth. “You don’t talk like an eighteen-year-old boy.”

“I had to become a man a lot faster than most.”

“Why, North?”

He clears his throat. “That’s a conversation for another day. I called to talk about you. All these applications you’re filling out for college…you know exactly what you want to be someday?”

My lips twist. “Well, it’s a little complicated. My father already has an internship lined up for me at one of his friends’ funds. I’m expected to go into finance.” Curling up on my side, I lower my voice. “But secretly, I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. For little kids. I was super shy as a kid—and awkward. With these glasses that made my eyes look magnified and a substantial lisp. But I had this great kindergarten teacher named Miss Griffin and she made me love school. She had glasses, too, and she called me her twin.” My smile blooms at the memory. “I want to make the different kids feel less alone. Like Miss Griffin.”

“I can see you doing that. Easy. You know…” He hesitates before continuing. “We talk a big game in the Hellmouth. Especially me. I might not seem intimidated on the surface when a bunch of rich guys show up throwing around more money than I’ve seen in a year, but it stings. And you picked me. Right in front of them. I still can’t believe it. You’re already like Miss Griffin in a way, Gracie. You’d make a great teacher.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, touched. Shaken. North pays attention. He feels a lot. He says what he’s thinking without worrying about being too honest. Too real. And it makes me want to do the same. Makes me need to share that kind of intimacy with him on a constant basis. “I wish you were here. So I could kiss you for saying that. And so I could tell you that I don’t care how much money you have. I don’t care.”

“That’s easy to say when you’re used to having it. When it’s never been an issue.” I hear him swallow hard. “But it would be an issue for us. It just would.”

“If we were together?”

“Yeah. If we were together, beauty.”

“I already feel like we are,” I whisper. “Don’t you?”

“Yes,” he rasps. “God. You already feel like mine. Felt like mine the second I saw you.” We’re both panting and my free hand is roaming up and down my hip, playing with the side band of my panties, goosebumps shivering hotly on my skin. If he was here, I would give myself to him, no question. I would surrender everything. Just let him take and take and take his fill. “Gracie…if it means anything to you, I’m trying to go legit. There are ways I can make money fighting. Maybe even a lot more than I am now. There’s a manager that has been sniffing around, trying to sign me for a while. I called him last night when I got home. I don’t know if it could lead to anything. I’ve always just fought because it’s all I know how to do and it puts cash in my pocket, but I do love it. I love it…and now? I’ve got a reason to try and make something happen.”