AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So much for her dropping that idea.
So, if she wouldn’t ease off voluntarily, I would help her. It was a distraction from my own tangled business at the very least. And if I had ideas for her to scale up while economizing her efforts, well, she could take it as free advice. I tugged on my suit jacket and reached for my overcoat with a grin. Or set the kitchen on fire, which was just as likely when it came to Hannah Jacobs.
On my way out the door, my phone buzzed with Vincent’s ringtone. I didn’t pick it up.
Bitter? Nah. I was an expert at compartmentalism. I didn’t know how I wanted to deal with him yet, so I wasn’t.
What I wasn’t doing was letting him go. The more I turned the situation around in my mind, pulling at corners and shoving them back into the puzzle, the more I wondered if the one who needed to go was me.
I just didn’t know what that meant yet. What that would look like. And if I’d still be the man I thought I was on the other side.
Blasting music on the drive home evened me out even more. I roared into my driveway with “Lola” by the Kinks screaming out the windows. I was singing along—badly—but I was enjoying it just the same.
“Fuck.” I stopped the car, remembering that Lily was inside, possibly sleeping. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d played music that loudly, so it normally wasn’t a factor.
I’d just stepped out of the car when Hannah burst out on the porch, her hair in a messy pile on her head. “What’s going on?”
I looked around. I’d parked the car in my usual spot, and nothing appeared amiss in the glow from the motion sensor lights over the garage. At a loss, I checked my watch. It was past six-thirty, which wasn’t bad for me lately. I usually stayed at work far later than that.
“I don’t know?”
“You were playing music?” She rushed down the steps. “I heard it all the way up the block. Your windows were down in this weather?”
Again, I glanced around. It was a clear, cool night with a scattering of stars just beginning to pop. The days were getting longer, but the nights still begun early around here. “It’s nice out.”
“Nice? It can’t be more than forty.”
I shrugged. I’d shed my overcoat in the car and was just in my suit jacket. “Feels nice to me. What are you doing?” She was crossing the driveway to me, her forehead pinched with worry.
She didn’t reply, just leaned in close to sniff at my clothes. Then she pressed a cool hand to my suddenly warm forehead. It wasn’t only my face that was hot. All of me was on fire, just from her touch.
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you feverish?”
She didn’t follow it up with another question, but I heard it just the same. “Am I drunk?”
She didn’t deny it, merely stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine, if you want to put it out there. Are you?”
“No. I haven’t had a drop. I’m not your father, Hannah.”
The shutters came down over her eyes and I instantly regretted what I’d said. But what did she expect? I’d been drunk once in our acquaintance. So, just because I was singing and happy for one moment, she assumed the worst?
She’s obviously dealt with plenty of worst in her life.
She started to turn away until my fingers gently closed around her forearm. I drew her back against me, sliding my hand down to bracelet her wrist so I could feel the wild thud of her pulse. I brushed my mouth over her hair as I spoke, wanting the words to reach her where she’d already retreated. “I shouldn’t have said that. But you shouldn’t assume I was drinking because I did it once. One time, Hannah. I hadn’t had any alcohol in the better part of a year. Not even when Billy—”
She shifted to gaze up at me, her eyes heavy and troubled in the thin shaft of light from the garage. “You were singing. Blaring music. What was I supposed to think?”
“That maybe, just maybe, I was happy.”
Her expression of puzzlement tore a laugh from my chest. I understood that look in my soul. “I don’t fully understand it either. A hell of a lot is messed up or in flux right now. But I left work today and I was in a good goddamn mood, even so.” I touched my thumb to the corner of her mouth. “I have to think that’s because of you.”
Panic flared in her eyes before she glanced over her shoulder. “I have something on the stove. And Lily is—”
I cupped her cheek and turned her face back to mine. “This will just take a second.”
Slowly, so slowly, I drew her up on her tiptoes as my mouth touched hers. As gently as the wind ruffling the still bare branches of the trees, as carefully as I might’ve coaxed out a skittish deer. Pouring everything into the easy slide of my mouth over hers.
Waiting forever to see if she’d respond in kind or shove me away.
