Only in Your Dreams (The Mountains are Calling #2)

16. Finley

Grey is nervous. I can feel it rolling off him in waves. Tension settles heavily in the space between his stiff shoulders and in the line of his tight jaw. I knew he wouldn’t love the idea of coming to his parents’ house—of bringing me to his parents’ house—but I didn’t think it would be this bad. Without thinking too much about it, I reach for his hand, tugging him to a stop before we climb the porch steps.

He stops, looking down at me with pale blue eyes that don’t seem fully present. Concern laces his features as he searches my face. “Do you want to leave?”

I shake my head, my heart feeling heavy and full at the same time. “Do you want to leave?”

“Absolutely,” he answers without hesitation, and despite the circumstances, it makes my lips twitch in a smile.

“Really?”

His sigh is heavy, and he palms the back of his neck. “No.”

I nod, expecting this answer. “I just wanted to say that I’m here. You’re not walking in there alone.”

I don’t know the details of Grey’s relationship with his family; I just know it’s strained. That he doesn’t talk about them much and seems to spend as little time here as is decently possible. I don’t think his childhood was bad , but it wasn’t good. Our house was a soft place for him to land, and before that, his Aunt Melissa’s was.

I’ve often wondered what lingers behind the front door of his parents’ cookie-cutter home. What could be bad enough to make someone like Grey look small? Though seeing the way he shrinks in on himself now, I don’t know that I really want to know. I want to take him away, abscond to my mom’s house and make him all his favorite foods, bring him flowers that make his eyes dance again. Make him smile and tease me and drive me absolutely crazy.

Maybe it’s because he looks so unlike himself that I do it. Maybe it’s because I want to. Either way, I step up on my tiptoes, gripping his arm to keep myself steady, and press a soft kiss to his lips.

I mean for it to be chaste, quick, but when his hand comes around my waist, holding me in place for long enough for the kiss to turn into something more desperate, I feel weak behind my knees, and my pulse hammers in all the places I want him to touch me.

When he ends the kiss, he rests his forehead against mine, like he can’t bring himself to stop touching me quite yet. His hand hasn’t left my side, his fingers still tight on my hip, bunching the fabric of my dress.

“Thank you,” he says into the breath of space between us. I’m sure he can feel my smile against his lips.

“You’re welcome.”

We were supposed to take this slow, make sure this is what we both wanted, but I already feel myself free-falling, hoping he will catch me. I want to kiss him again. I want to be wrapped up in him until I can’t tell where he stops and I begin. I want to make the divot between his brows disappear, make the tension in his shoulder release. I want to feel him grinning into my skin. I want whatever this version of Grey is to evaporate into the one I know. The one that’s quickly taking over my thoughts.

“You ready?” I ask.

He arches a suggestive brow, one corner of his mouth tugging up with the movement. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s leave.”

This pulls a laugh from me. “Come on. It can’t be that bad.”

He gives me a serious look. “Remember you said that.”

The first thing I notice about Grey’s parents’ house is how quiet it is. There’s no music, no audiobooks, no podcasts, although I think I might hear the soft din of a commercial playing on a TV somewhere down the hall. The inside of the house matches the outside. Shades of beige and decor that was never really in style. Like the inside of a dated hotel.

I expect to see family photos on the wall, middle school pictures of Grey with shaggy hair and braces, but there’s nothing lining the hall to the kitchen where we find Mrs. Sutton sprinkling shredded cheese from a plastic bag onto what looks to be a casserole or pie.

“Hey, Ma,” Grey says.

Mrs. Sutton turns around, looking surprised. I’m shocked she didn’t hear us walking down the hall in the deafening silence, but she seemed lost in her own head.

“Grey,” she says, a tired smile lighting her face. The overly bright yellow lights of the kitchen only seem to highlight the differences between Grey’s mother and mine. Mrs. Sutton is graying, where my mom has seemed to defy age in that way. They both have lines on their faces, but in different places. Mom has them beside her eyes from smiling and squinting outside in the sun beneath her gardening hat. Mrs. Sutton has deep grooves from the corners of her mouth all the way down to her chin, making her appear to be permanently frowning. She doesn’t look rude or hateful, just…unhappy. And I can immediately see why he doesn’t love to spend more time here than necessary. I feel it already, the unhappiness that’s seeped into these walls crawling out and wrapping around my ankles, threatening to pull me down. There’s a heaviness here that contrasts the bright, sunshiny day we left outside.

Grey leaves me to give her a hug, and her eyes connect with mine over his shoulder, the tired smile never leaving her face.

“Hi, Felicity. Thanks for coming.”

I see him tense against her, pulling back from her embrace. “Finley,” he says softly, as if he’s trying not to let me hear, to save her from the embarrassment.

Pink splotches over her cheeks anyway. “Right, I knew that.”

“Easy mix-up,” I say, hurrying to brush past it. Grey, though, seems off-kilter. There are matching patches of pink of his cheeks as well, and the sight of it makes me reach for his hand, giving it what I hope is a comforting squeeze.

When he doesn’t let go, gripping my hand tighter, I know it’s worked.

“What can I do to help, Mrs. Sutton?”

She still seems embarrassed, but also thankful to move on. “Nothing at all. Grey, why don’t you go say hello to your father? Dinner should be ready in another fifteen minutes or so.”

Grey seems to bristle at the dismissal, but when his shoulders slump with resignation, I know this isn’t abnormal. That it has nothing to do with me and is instead par for the course. It makes my chest ache, and I squeeze my hand a little tighter around his.

Without another word, he leads me up a half set of stairs and down the hall. The TV grows louder with each step. It’s the only noise in the house, and it makes it seem slightly eerie. Even the air in here smells stale, although it’s disguised with cleaner and the scent of waxy apple candles. The house feels lifeless. I want to tug him out of here, back into the sunshine, where his skin glows and his eyes look happy.

He stops at the wide, doorless entrance to what looks to be a bonus room, but he doesn’t move inside. “Hey, Dad. Finley and I are here.”

His father looks away from his TV, gaze focusing on Grey, and smiles at us. “Hey, kids.” His voice is rough and gruff, although he doesn’t look unhappy. He checks the watch on his wrist. “’Bout time for dinner.”

Grey nods, and when I can tell he’s not going to respond, I say, “Thank you for having me.”

Mr. Sutton looks from his son to me, smiling wider. He looks so much like Grey, it’s uncanny. Except for his eyes, which are a dark brown, he’s the spitting image of what I’d guess Grey will look like in thirty years. “It’s nice of Grey to finally bring someone home to meet us.”

I don’t point out that we’ve met before, lots of times, although it’s obvious neither of his parents remembers me all that well. I’m not offended, but I can tell it upsets Grey, which breaks my heart a little for him.

“Glad to be the first,” I say, giving him a sweet smile.

“I’m going to show Finley around,” Grey says, not waiting for his father to invite us into the den. I don’t know whether it’s because he doesn’t want to spend time with his dad, or because he knows his dad isn’t going to offer, and he wants to end the conversation before we hit an awkward pause. Either way, I follow beside him as he gently pulls me away from the den and back down the hall we just walked through.

All the doors are shut, making it feel even more closed-off. He stops in front of the one closest to the stairs and pushes the door open with the twist of the gold knob. “This was my room.”

I don’t know what I expected his childhood bedroom to look like, but this isn’t it. Maybe I thought it would be a time capsule, a shrine to his teenage self, with pictures shoved into the seams of the dresser mirror and cheap plastic trophies gathering dust on a bookshelf, like my old bedroom at my mom’s is. But there’s none of that. This could easily be a guest room with how bare and devoid of any personality it is.

I move slowly into the room, and I hear the door click softly behind Grey, dampening the noise of the TV in the den. “Did they convert it into a guest room?”

When I turn around, he’s leaning back against the door, watching me take in everything. He shakes his head. “No, this is exactly how it looked when I lived here.”

My eyes widen involuntarily, and I spin around to examine the room once more. I guess I missed a few things. An old gaming console sitting beneath the TV, the black cords wrapped tidily around the gray machine. A single picture frame on the dresser, containing a photo of Grey and Holden with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. I’m not sure when it was taken, but it must have been one summer at the lake, since they’re both golden brown and dressed in swim trunks, their hair damp. I trace my finger over it, smiling to myself. This had to have been at the height of my crush on Grey. If only the me of back then could see present-day me now.

“Why is it so…?” I struggle to find a word that doesn’t feel judgmental.

“Bland?” he fills in, his lips twitching with amusement.

I nod, and he shrugs, one shoulder lifting.

“I didn’t spend much time here,” he says. “I mean, when I was home, I spent almost all my time in here, but I was rarely home.”

My eyes flit around the room, searching for signs of life, personality. “There has to be something in here.”

“If you open the closet, there’s a poster that I found at a thrift store of Pamela Anderson in her Baywatch swimsuit on the inside of the door.”

This makes a laugh rocket out of me, and the heaviness in my chest that’s been growing since we walked through the door eases.

His eyes crinkle at the sides as he smiles, and he appears lighter than he did when we walked in here.

“Pamela Anderson, huh?”

He shrugs again, shoulder rising against the back of the door. “I’ve always had a thing for blondes.”

My face heats in increments, and Grey’s gaze heats right along with it. He pushes off the door, moving closer to where I’m standing beside the dresser. His hands find my hips, landing heavily on them, and before I know what’s happening, I’m being lifted, settled on top of the dresser. He moves into the space between my thighs, his palms never leaving their spots at my sides.

“Blondes, huh?” I ask, pleased that my voice doesn’t sound as breathless as I feel. “I’ve never known you to discriminate.”

“I don’t,” Grey says, his face falling into the crook of my neck, breath hot on my throat as he speaks. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have favorites.”

“And blond is your favorite?”

He nods, his lips sliding against the sensitive skin of my neck, making goose bumps prick along my skin.

“And if I were a brunette?”

“Then brunette would be my favorite.”

He says it so easily that it almost feels like a line. But I don’t think it is. I think he’s telling the truth, and it makes me feel heady. I pull back to look at him, my eyes searching his face. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I just know that I want to look. That I want to memorize this moment so I can examine it when I’m alone and my mind doesn’t feel so fuzzy. When my body doesn’t feel like it’s thrumming, pulsing with want and need and desire.

He doesn’t allow me any time to look, however, because his lips find mine. The kiss is slow, electric. The kind that feels like savoring. The first bite of decadent chocolate cake or the last few minutes of sleep before the snooze is up on your alarm clock.

His lips part mine, his tongue slipping into my mouth, and my mind goes hazy. My hands leave the spots they found on his shoulders, sliding up into his hair and tugging. I feel his groan against my lips, and it makes my head spin.

Want settles in all the places we’re touching, all the places we’re not. I want to consume him. I want him to feel loved and wanted for the first time in this house. I want him to feel like he matters to someone. I want him to feel how I feel right now—cherished, important, necessary, desired.

His hands slide beneath the hem of my sundress, palms hot on my thighs. They squeeze hard enough to leave faint bruises. I know I’ll hike up this dress later and examine my skin for evidence that this really happened, that this wasn’t all in my head. That Grey Sutton was as desperate for me as I was for him.

He’s whispering words into my skin, too quiet and muffled for me to understand, but I know he’s saying my name. I hear the words beautiful, perfect, everything, you. You , he says over and over again. Finley , he whispers, and it’s enough to undo me, to make me want to say screw taking it slow, that I’m ready for all of him, everything he can give me.

“Grey, dinner’s ready.” Mrs. Sutton’s voice pierces the moment, and he pulls back from me, eyes wide. He looks like he forgot that we’re in his childhood bedroom, in his parents’ home. On earth, if I’m being honest. He looks like he’s disappeared into his own mind, dragging me with him into a place no one else has ever been before.

I swallow at the intensity of that gaze, around the lump that’s formed in my throat, making it too thick to speak. With what looks like tremendous effort, he slips his hands from beneath my dress, palms sliding down the length of my thighs, leaving goose bumps trailing in their wake.

He looks disheveled, mussed, thoroughly kissed, and I must too, because he smooths his hands over my dress, tugs up the neckline that must have slid around when his mouth was on my neck. I run my fingers through the hair at his nape, and he shudders at the contact. I’ve never felt so powerful in my life. I think if I asked, he’d lock this door and make his parents wait. Climb out the second-story window and carry me home.

He looks as if he’s read my mind, his expression becoming more and more reluctant with each swipe of his hands over my skin. He hasn’t stopped touching me, and I like it. I like that I feel necessary to him.

“We could always leave,” he says hopefully.

It makes a smile twist my lips. “We better stay.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want to miss Mom’s ham pot pie.” He says this with feigned seriousness.

“Ham pot pie,” I repeat.

Grey nods solemnly. “If you clean your plate, I’ll get you dessert after this.”

My smile stretches wider. “Deal.”