Eventually, Forty shuts them all up with a loud slam of the microwave door, and, once he has their attention, says, “I believe I am up next for picking.”
Mikey opens his mouth to argue, but Pierce shoots him a glare. “Shut up and let him pick. If we don’t, it’ll be midnight before we even start a damn movie.” He turns to Forty and points at him. “You have one minute, or your turn is forfeited.”
Forty rolls his eyes, reaches into the microwave for the steaming bag, and dumps a pile of popcorn into one of the many bowls that are strewn about the kitchen counter. He purses his lips, thinking, and then smiles—wide and wry. “I quite liked Tweedledum and Tweedledee having to hold on to each other through the entirety ofThe Babadook,” he muses with a mischievous glance in Mikey and Caleb’s direction. “So, let’s keep with that theme and go scary. What about…” He taps his chin, then snaps, a light bulb clearly going off. “Wasn’t there a movie a few years back about a gal who watched a tape and then weird stuff started happening? Ghosts crawling out of the television and such?”
“The Ring,” Raymond supplies flatly. “He’s talking aboutThe Ring.”
Forty snaps again, pointing victoriously at Raymond. “That’s the one.”
Grace watches with endless amusement as Mikey and Caleb share a brief, concerned look, and then do their best to swallowtheir collective concern. “Sure,” Caleb says, a little too chipper. “Great. Fantastic.The Ring.An early-2000s classic.” He clicks around on his laptop for a few minutes before seeming to find what he’s looking for, and then everyone starts to make their way to the center of the room to find their place. Grace looks around, knowing she won’t find Crew among them but missing him all the same. He’d gone into town to grab a few things but encouraged her to come up after the movie was over and spend the night with him. It takes a surprising amount of willpower not to just gonow, to drag him into bed and have her way with him without the looming dread of a 4a.m.alarm. But this little gathering is a special, sacred thing—that much is extremely evident—and she doesn’t want to miss it.
Grace drags her mattress toward the back of the room and lies down on top of her comforter, happily taking a small bowl of popcorn when Forty offers it. Once everyone’s settled, they flip the lights off and start the movie, and Grace learnsveryquickly that she, too, is perhaps not a scary movie kind of person. But she doesn’t have a Caleb to her Mikey to grab on to, so she grimaces and covers her eyes, trying her best to not look up when anything too creepy is happening. It’s a difficult feat—The Ringis pretty creepy all around.
About a quarter of the way through, she nearly launches fully off the mattress in shock when someone crouches down next to her and invades her space. Scared and tense as she is, she’d been engrossed and hadn’t heard the bunkhouse door open or noticed the hulking figure lumbering over until he was right next to her. Grace gasps, then swings her head abruptly to look at the offender, only to find Crew staring at her with a cheeky little smirk on his lips.
“Rude,” she whispers.
“Sorry,” he whispers back, but he doesn’t look very sorry at all.
Grace decides to forgive him, mostly because she’s so pleasantly surprised that he’s here. “Couldn’t stay away?” she teases.
He shakes his head, then gives her an earnest look. “I missed you.”
Something warm blooms in her belly, and she bites her lip to resist the need to kiss him. He nods toward where she sits, and Grace understands instantly, scooting over on her mattress and making room for him beside her. Crew moves in, wrapping a long arm around her shoulder. He reaches into his shirt pocket with his other hand and pulls out a little yellow bag ofsomethingthat has Grace’s full attention—cursed video tapes and creepy ghost children be damned. He holds the bag flat on his palm and offers it to her, and she’s pleased as punch to find it’s peanut M&M’s, a king-size bag of them. “Salty-sweet is the best combo,” he says, gesturing with his eyes toward the bowl of popcorn in her lap. “Try it.”
She does, and it’s delicious—so much so that she lets out something like amoanupon popping the kernels and candy into her mouth.
Out of nowhere, popcorn begins to rain down on them, one piece hitting Crew directly in the center of his forehead, another bouncing off Grace’s cheek. They look up to see Pierce glaring at them, his hand in his popcorn bowl, ready to launch more their way. He shushes them aggressively with a finger pressed to his lips, then turns back to the movie.
They manage to stay quiet after that, but it’s not easy. Crew runs his fingers through Grace’s hair, chuckling every time shehides in his bicep during the scary parts. Soon enough, Grace finds herself happily blocking out the movie entirely, tucked into Crew’s side with her nose pressed into his neck. It’s possible her body has been rewired to actually, biologically need Crew’s scent—his cologne, the clean soap smell of his laundry detergent, and that man smell, which is his and his alone. It’s intoxicating, and far more alluring than the movie, and when Grace presses her lips to his throat, it feels like an instinct, a choice her body made independently of her brain.
Crew’s arm tightens around her. The tendons in his neck bulge slightly, and Grace looks up to find him staring at her. Fire is catching in his eyes as they drift down to her lips, and for a brief moment, they aren’t in the bunkhouse surrounded by people, and there isn’t a weird, sort of depressing scary movie playing at an ear-shattering volume. For the space of a heartbeat, it’s just them, standing on the precipice of something, each waiting for the other to move. His eyes dance between hers—wanting, desperate, questioning.
They speak at the same time, softer than a whisper.
“Not here—”
“Let’s go.”
Grace’s cheeks are warm. She rubs her legs together without thinking about it, exhaling a heavy breath through her nose at the friction. Crew’s eyes trace down to her legs, and he watches with a tense jaw as she does it again. With his teeth gritted, he pulls her closer into his body, his hand finding new purchase on her hip. If he wanted to, he could pull her leg up and over his—he could give her something to rock into.
Something happens in the movie—Grace couldn’t have a single guess—that has the hands audibly reacting with screamsand shouts of varying pitches. The roar pulls Grace back to reality, reminding her exactly where they are. Crew seems less affected; his eyes are still lingering on her mouth, and his hand is hovering right at the hinge of her thigh like he’s two seconds away from pulling her on top of him.
“They’ll see us leave,” Grace whispers.
Crew blinks, finally breaking free of the haze for a moment to scan the room. “They won’t,” he says, then looks back to the door behind them. “They won’t even know we’re gone. Follow me in two minutes.”
The truck is parked a few blessed paces from the front door—far enough that someone would have to walk right up to it to see anything happening inside. The windows are tinted, too, which is good—because Grace is completely naked and writhing in Crew’s lap about ten seconds after they pile into the cab.
Crew’s grip on her hips is unyielding, but it’s the only part of him that seems to be maintaining control. The rest of him is wild. His eyes blaze when they connect with hers, fiery even in the dark, and his mouth is a needy, restless thing. He presses it to every inch of her he can reach, coaxing breathy sighs out of her when he pays special attention to each of her breasts. He licks a thick heavy stripe over one of her nipples, then takes it between his lips and sucks. Grace moans, her head falling back at the sensation. She buries her hands in his hair and tugs, just enough for him to feel it. His hips buck in response, and he releases her nipple to let out a grunt, panting hotly against her skin.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” he rasps, and only takes a brief moment to recover before returning to his task, this time with her other breast.
In such a short period of time, he’s figured out exactly how to make her keen, how to make her body move on instinct alone. He draws out a primal, unselfconscious side to her, strange and unfamiliar but far from unpleasant. In his arms, in his grip, she can let herself simply feel, giving way to sensation alone.
“Grace,” Crew breathes against her neck. “I need to be inside you.”
Grace nods, a lolling movement that she repeats, over and over.
