Page 85 of Glitz & Goals

“I just bought what interested me. Like I said, there’s room to add more. Anything for my future wife.”

Viv kisses the inside of my wrist. “We should get cleaned up before we go to bed.”

“In a minute,” I tell her. “I’m still recovering from my petit mort.”

She laughs and bends forward to kiss me, soft and sweet, the complete opposite of earlier.

I love this about her: Vivian is so many things. Not just in the bedroom, although, God, if tonight is anything to go by, I have a lot to learn about her proclivities. In everything, though,she’s complex. Nuanced. Layered. She’s never one thing, won’t pigeonhole herself, or let other people tell her who she is.

I can’t wait to learn more.

To spend the rest of my life learning more.

Peeling back every single layer.

“I love you,” I whisper when she pulls away.

Vivian smiles. “I love you more,” she says.

As if such a thing is even possible.

Epilogue

Vivian

The morning of the wedding, I wake up in Grady’s arms. He’s already awake, with his hair rumpled and pillowcase creases impressed on his cheek.

“Good morning, beautiful.” He brushes the hair out of my face. “I know it’s supposed to be bad luck to see you before the wedding, but I’m glad you stayed the night.”

I hadn’t initially planned to wake up next to him today, but I’ve been so stressed with wedding planning that Grady offered to give me a backrub last night, and one thing led to another.

More accurately, the backrub led to me coming once from his fingers and again from his tongue, and then immediately passing out face-down on his mattress, and well… here we are.

I roll into my soon-to-be husband and sit back, straddling his hips. What with the whole falling-asleep-so-hard-I-drooled-on-the-pillow thing, I never got a chance to tell him the real reason I came over last night. I thought about saving it until after the wedding, but changed my mind at the last minute. Especially since Mom and Vanessa already know. I didn’t feel right about exchanging vows with a secret between us.

“Do you want your present now?” I ask.

Grady’s face is flushed, and he’s already half-hard against me. “Sure.” He reaches up to touch my face, but I roll away from him.

“Great,” I say. “I’ll tell you over breakfast. We need to keep things moving, or we’ll throw off my whole schedule. The wedding planner gave me an itinerary. And he scares me enough not to test the timeline.”

Grady follows me downstairs, where the wrapped present awaits. I left it on the kitchen island last night. Grady lets Blade out into the yard, then circles back to me.

“Ah,” he says, studying the wrapped package. “A photo, huh?”

“Yup.” I nudge it closer. “You should see what it is.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to make coffee first?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Quit stalling and open the package.”

Grady makes a big fuss about peeling off the tape, looking up every now and then to see if I’ve reached my breaking point. Just when I’m about to snatch it from his hands and tear the paper off myself, he relents with a laugh, though even when he peels the paper away, he holds the frame face-down.

“So impatient,” he teases. “I’m just trying to guess which photo it might be. The one Vanessa took the night we got engaged in the old Gnome Gloam? The one of you thrashing me in the bumper cars? That portrait of us from Christmas when we took Blade to meet Santa?”

I shudder at the memory. “We are so lucky that mall Santa decided not to press charges.”

“He was fine,” Grady says. “It was just his sleeve.”

---