Page 108 of My Grape Crush
She landed late last night. As soon as she fell into my arms, not even the fragrance of eighteen hours of travel wafting off her could dampen the thrill. We threw ourselves into each other, making up for three days of lost time. Full-blown, unfiltered, soulmate-perfect mayhem.
Sheets stained with desire.
I swing in my hammock, strung between two gnarled olive trees, and a quiet buzz of happiness thrums through me. I listen to the birdsongs and the tide slapping at the rocks far below on the sugar sand beach. Breathing in the scents of sea and earth, the thyme and rosemary growing wild, I can’t help but smile and think of her. Dani lives in my brain, in my soul, somewhere beyond sense and reason, and I’m trying to reconcile the depth of my longing for her with the reality that she also needs to sleep.
I kept her awake until the first light of dawn, poor thing.
I’ll give her at least another hour.
That gives me ample time to process my new glittering, hopeful world. Since ditching the insanity of influencer life, I’ve filled up my days with one mission in mind. Well, two. The launch of our agency and pulling off the biggest job of my life: Dani’s partner.
So far, so good.
We left Osoyoos at the end of September and moved (with the damn bed) into the house I bought in Vancouver. Thanksgiving and Christmas had us shuttling between her parents’ place and mine. Gordon and Deb Rialto welcomed me as their own son, and not once did they bring up what Dani had quietly informed them of when they returned from South America.
The two nicest people I’ll ever meet. I appreciate how chill they are.
Unlike Mom.
She has fixated on us like one of her renovation projects and manages the upgrade of Rhys to serious coupledom with a vigor that borders on extreme. Emails clutter my inbox with decor suggestions for the house in Vancouver or cooking classes for couples. Honeymoon-approved vacay destinations.
Just in case you need some help, darling!
And I’m like, Mom, settle down.
I have survived for sixteen years on my own.
If I can call the endless meandering of my hazy hot mess years surviving.
Now I have an actual purpose, and I become lost deeper in the fantasy of us by the second. Living our dream life in Corfu and Vancouver, cuddled in each other's arms, drunk on love and possibilities.
I can hardly fucking wait for it all.
“Hey you,” Dani says.
I startle, an unbalanced mess of arms and legs trying to sit up too fast in the hammock. And there she is. Bundled into one of my hoodies, barefoot with bedhead, and hands down the sexiest woman alive.
“Morning. I didn’t expect you to surface for hours.”
She pads over with a delighted laugh. “I couldn’t sleep. I’m too excited.”
Palming my cheek, she brushes her mouth over mine with a soft, sleepy kiss. I can smell the tangy musk of us on her breath when she says, “And I missed your warmth.”
“We can fix that.”
I spread my legs to accommodate her. And she does an okay job for a hammock rookie, laughing as she clambers in, utterly graceless. She burrows against my chest, snuggling into the fleece blanket to ward off the chill as a giant sigh escapes her mouth. The sun is a golden ball of fire, slowly rising out of the clear blue water, and I can taste salt at the back of my throat, cut with the faint scent of chlorine from the infinity pool.
“It’s so pretty,” Dani murmurs. “The palm trees and all the flowers. Your garden and pool. Exactly what it looked like in your videos.”
When the chatty real estate agent toured me through the palazzo a decade ago, I snapped it up, no questions asked. All the security measures I craved came pre-baked into the design: at the end of the road, high on a cliff, and fortified like a bunker. And now it finally feels less like a jail and more like a home with Dani here. I band my arms around her, nuzzling into that secret pocket of her neck where she goes wild when I nibble the delicate skin. I never want to stop touching her.
“Speaking of videos…” I fix on a spot on the horizon, readying myself. “I wanted to bounce an idea off you.”
“Go for it,” she says.
A quick recap of what’s happened since August. I haven’t posted at all. Bowed out of pre-existing commitments and turned down new ones. With radio silence on my feed, the comments on my last reel have tipped the ten thousand mark. Variations of the following:
OMG. Is this the end of Rhys?
