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vivianna
“We did good,” Griff says, pulling on his white tank. He’s got the bathroom door wide open, and I’m polite enough to block my view of him with one of the trashy magazines that have been sitting in our room since we got to the Villa.
“We make a decent team.” I look up, and Griff is already emerging, tank, as usual, clinging to every part of him, and the waistband of his shorts just hanging onto his hips.
“We make a damn good team.” I feel the bed dip and glance up to see Griff crawling in next to me. I hold my breath. You would think I’d be used to sharing a bed with him, given that we’ve been doing so for several days, and in some ways I am. The pillow boundary is constantly present, and we’ve managed to lay the bed each morning without disrupting it, and it’s now become familiar for me to feel his presence before I even see it. His weight pushing down the mattress, his soft snores, his toned back whenever he’s facing away.
And yet.
I can’t ignore his presence. I find myself paying too much attention to him; to the way his hair presses against the pillow, to the fact that he’s so close, that I could reach out and touch him, even though I keep my hands to myself and look away and avoid all of those dangerous, dangerous thoughts.
What’s more is that it’s only getting worse, largely due to my not-so-little revelation the other day that I want to kiss Griffin Andrews. Because, let’s face it, I’m not blind and he’s beautiful, irritatingly so, with full lips and tattoos and those hazel eyes and that stupid dimple. And then there’s the things he does, like matching my energy with his own comebacks, or wiping pizza sauce from my mouth and licking it off his thumb, or his ridiculous eye contact, or the way he listens to every miscellaneous thing I have to say about my job, or our pizza “trysts” at the hotel or the way he looked at me in that hot-tub.
But what I should remember—above all of this—is the way he pulled back that day when we came runner-up in body painting. The way he gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek instead, then dipped for the whole day, like something about me terrified him.
Griffin, the guy who proposed the two of us fake-dating to win this competition, who’s been focused on selling our relationship to our audience throughout, who seemed to be willing to do anything to prove the validity of our relationship—he backed off, then ditched me for most of that day.
Of course I fell for him. Because I’m a stupid cliche and I don’t know what’s good for myself. And you think I would know better, given that no guy has ever loved me in the way I wanted them to; completely, consistently, passionately. Given that the last guy I ever dated dumped me unceremoniously because he didn’t want me anymore. Given that I couldn’t even find a real lover in a show called Lovebound.
But then Griffin stumbled into my life, first on a plane, then at that very first Contestant’s Dinner, and later, in my hotel room at the dead of night, carrying a show-stopping grin and pizza. And I should’ve known then and there that I was screwed. I should’ve known better. Oh, Vivianna, this is how it starts.
“You good?”
The man in question pulls me out of my thoughts. He’s raising both eyebrows. My magazine has fallen to my lap.
“I’m fine.”
He’s still staring at me. “No you’re not.”
I want to cuss Griff out, have him back off, like he did unprompted that other day, but I don’t.
“You’re tense,” he says. I can’t look at him while he’s looking at me, while those hazel eyes are burning with intensity.
I don’t say a word. Griffin reaches out, his thumb close to my lips, then he’s pulling my bottom lip out from underneath my teeth. My gasp in response is quiet. But not quietly enough, because Griffin’s eyes go dark.
And I hope he can’t see it, all the open wanting in my face. I refuse to glance at him.
But he notices.
“Look at me.”
I can’t. He has to know that I can’t. I want to kiss him, I know that. I don’t need to make this any harder for myself.
“Look at me,” he says again, and heat pools in my stomach at his request. He doesn’t have that ever-present tease to his voice anymore.
Then he’s straightening up, glancing down at me. He shifts a bit closer, until his arm is brushing mine.
Immediately, at that contact, I look up.
And I instantly regret it.
One thing I’ve learned about Griffin Andrews is that he’s a man who focuses on his mission — while he’s completing it, everything else becomes a distractor. He doesn’t give anything else the time of day, except the current object of his attention.
And very suddenly, that has become me.
We’re so close. I have to tilt my chin up to make eye contact and if he just dipped his head a little more or if I just raised my chin further up, our lips could meet. But he doesn’t want that. He made that very clear that day at the beach.
I want to make a witty comment, make light of this somehow, but I’m trapped underneath his gaze like I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to. I think I might whimper.
“There she is.” Griffin’s not quite smiling as he says this, and I don’t either.
“You have pretty eyes,” I admit. Why is this so embarrassing? I don’t take it back. I’ve realized, at this point, there’s no reason to. I mean it, unfortunately.
“You’ve got a pretty face,” he finally replies, tilting his head to the side, really taking me in.
And I’m at a loss for words. Griffin’s called me pretty before, like when he first asked for my phone number in my hotel room. “Well, I’m humble enough to ask a pretty girl for her number.”
But I’d just brushed it aside as teasing, because I supposed what Griffin had was just a flirty personality, like so many other guys I’ve met. But then, he’s said it in other ways, like when we were talking about exes and how Zander never saw me as “That Girl”.
“Whatever it means, I’m sure you’re her.”
Griffin, Griffin, Griffin.
Now, I’m brought to the present. I want to ask: “How about you kiss it, then?” Instead I say, “You don’t mean that.” But I’m not so confident. My gaze strays to somewhere behind him as I say the words, because looking into his eyes will completely demolish my composure.
“You know I’m a guy who says what I mean.” A pause. “Vivi.”
My name brings my focus back to him, back to his eyes.
“Really?” I don’t know why I’m complicating this more than I need to. “Is that why you went ghost on me the other day? Instead of just telling me that you didn’t want to kiss me?”
Griffin is stunned into silence.
Then, “I did kiss you.”
But he knows that’s not what I mean. Not where I wanted you to. “And then you avoided me, and said you got lost. But I don’t think that’s it. And I wish you’d tell me.”
Griffin is a man who owns his spaces with laughter and conversation and height and ridiculous shoulders. He’s not someone that goes quiet like this. His silence is borderline terrifying.
“Sorry,” I’m finally stepping back. “I don’t know why I said that. I know you were just—”
“—Bullshitting,” he interrupts, “I was bullshitting.”
I lean forward, let him speak, watch as he faintly tugs at the hem of his tank.
“Vivi, you scare the hell out of me.”
“Damn,” I’m trying to joke, but he won’t let me.
“Seriously, you do.” Seeing him so serious, his expression earnest and real and firm. It wakes up a whole array of stifled feelings, of unapologetic, uncontained attraction. “Because I wanted to kiss you that day. Really kiss you. And I was a coward about it. I ran away. And I’m sorry.”
My breath hitches. Griffin wanted to kiss me. The silly little observation that I’d pushed away with the sting of rejection proved true. That Griffin was going to kiss me, because maybe, this attraction isn’t as one-sided as I want to believe.
“You wanted to kiss me,” I repeat, as though I didn’t hear him the first time.
“Want to kiss you.” And Griffin Andrews dips his head lower, closer to mine. “If that’s what you want.”
If that’s what I want? Of course, at the root of everything, that’s what I want. I want the one guy who reciprocates my banter, who snuck up to my hotel room with pizza and slept on a sofa-bed for days so that I didn’t feel uncomfortable. The guy that listened to me bitch about my ex and bitched about his own and reassured me with a simple shrug and a tilted smile. The guy that chose me to be on his soccer team, regardless of how well I could play. The guy that baked with me and worked his way around me in the kitchen and tucked a flower behind my ear in a hot tub and saw me, like I’m worth being seen. A guy, who is impossibly attractive and handsome and flirty and goofy and absolutely ridiculously himself.
“Why?” I ask. Then amend, “why me?”
Griffin Andrews sighs, long and hard. “Because, Vivi, have you met yourself?” His wanting is so open, so vivid, that it takes my breath away.
And that’s all it takes for my arms to loop around Griffin’s neck like that’s where they were always meant to be, and his hands find my waist, holding me in place. And I like to be held like that. It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been held like that, so tenderly, so completely. Griffin’s thumb slides under my t-shirt, gently grazes over my skin.
“Then what’re you waiting for?” I ask, a little terrified, my eyes wide and burning into him, wondering when he’s going to back away and tell me this isn’t going to work.
But it doesn’t, instead, he gives me one last pull, so I’m on his lap, and takes me in for a painstakingly long second.
Then he’s kissing me.
Or I’m kissing him.
I don’t know who initiated it. Because I might’ve leaned forward first, or maybe he had. Either way, my legs are caging his torso and he’s falling back onto the bed and I’m falling with him, and we’re not breaking the kiss at all.
He starts sweet, pulls back, smiles lazily, then leans back in and kisses me harder. My hands finally get to explore his hair, which is soft and smells like shampoo and is fun to tug at. Because with every tug, a desperate noise is drawn deep from Griffin’s throat.
And it’s like: Oh.
I can see how people get carried away. How people meet someone and fall and confess and then, all of a sudden, this dam of stifled feelings is broken, and all the emotions and unsaid words and everything breaks out like they never could’ve been contained in the first place.
I can feel Griffin smiling against my lips, and I almost exhale a sigh of relief, because he means this, he wants this, he doesn’t seem to regret this yet. His hands, rough, calloused from his job, slide under my shirt, glide over my sensitive skin, and I’m shivering all over, and he can feel me doing so, because when you’re pressed against someone like this, you feel everything.
After the fifth kiss or the tenth, Griffin finally pulls back, lips swollen and parted, almost in awe. His eyes are half-lidded, his hands absently stroking my skin, and my brain is short circuiting at the mere sight of him, at his impossibility, at our impossibility.
Before he can say anything, I’m pulling him back against me, to kiss until I can’t feel my lips anymore.