Spring Break Fling

Chapter 23

23

HANNAH

I felt like my body had been through the best massage ever. Every muscle was relaxed and loose.

I could still feel the phantom touches of his fingers tracing over my skin, sending shivers down my spine. Lying beside him, wrapped in a post-coital haze, I felt a connection that went beyond the physical—a connection I hadn’t expected to find tonight.

Was it always like this with him, I wondered. Or was there something unique about us, about the way our bodies communicated without words?

Did every woman feel like this when they had sex with him? If so, I imagined he was a very popular man.

I turned to look at him, his eyes closed in contentment. The rise and fall of his chest matched my own breathing—slow, deep, almost meditative. I couldn’t help but reflect on how different this was from any other experience I’d had.

I was afraid to break the silence, to shatter this perfect moment with words that might ruin the moment. Instead, I shifted closer, pressing my body against his warmth. His arm instinctively wrapped around me, pulling me in tighter .

The faint smell of sweat and sex lingered between us, mingled with the musky hint of his cologne.

“Hungry?” he asked.

I laughed softly. “A little.”

“I’m starving. You worked me hard.”

“Me!” I giggled. “That was your choice.”

“Yes, it was and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. But I feel like I owe you a meal.”

I grimaced. “I don’t know if I want to get out of bed.”

“This place has room service,” he said. “And a minibar.”

“I vote room service because, frankly, I’m not paying twelve bucks for a tiny bag of peanuts.”

“Company doesn’t cover the cost of your trip?”

“I get fifty dollars a day per diem. We might get a couple bags of peanuts and a candy bar to split on that.”

“Got a menu?” he asked.

I gestured to the small desk that was covered with my paperwork. “Somewhere over there.”

He raised his head and then looked at me. “Yeah, how about we keep it simple. Burgers. Everyone serves burgers.”

He slipped out of bed, padding across the room in all his naked glory to retrieve the room service menu. I couldn’t help but admire him, the way his muscles moved with such a fluid, graceful strength.

Rummaging through my papers, he finally found the glossy menu and brought it back to bed, flopping down beside me with a victorious grin. “Burgers it is,” he affirmed as he flipped through the pages. He had that boyish charm about him now, a stark contrast to the intense lover of just moments ago.

The somberness he had when he showed up at my door was gone as well. That made me feel good to know I was the person he came to when he needed to… well, he didn’t exactly do a lot of talking but whatever.

“I’ll have the double cheeseburger with everything on it, and you?” he asked, glancing over at me with those piercing eyes that seemed to see right into me .

“Same,” I replied, feeling a bizarre blend of comfort and excitement being here with him like this. It was unusual for me to let my guard down so quickly, to feel so spontaneously connected to someone.

He dialed room service and ordered our burgers and a bottle of red wine.

“Twenty minutes,” he said.

I sat up and started to get dressed. While he certainly made me feel pretty, it felt strange to be sitting around in the nude. Especially since we were going to be eating soon. I didn’t want burger grease on my boob or other places, although I had a feeling he would be more than happy to help me clean it up.

Nikko pulled on his briefs and jeans but left his shirt off. He walked out to the balcony, standing with his hands on the railing. My room had an amazing view. He looked far more at peace than he had when he first showed up at my door. It felt like the storm cloud over him had finally started to clear.

While we waited, I tidied up the room a little, trying to organize the mess we had made in our haste to clear the bed.

When the food arrived, I carried the tray out to join him on the balcony. He grinned as I set it down on the small table between us.

“Classy,” he teased, picking up the wine with a smirk. “Red wine and cheeseburgers. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to treat a woman to a fine dinner.”

“I think this is the full five-star hotel experience,” I said.

He poured the wine into our plastic cups. We dug into our burgers with the ocean breeze washing over us. The man was tearing into his burger with gusto. He was eating like a man starving. I assumed part of that was because of the workout we just had.

“Feeling better?” I asked after he’d polished off half his burger in record time.

He nodded, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Yeah. I guess I just needed to let it out, you know?”

I smiled softly. “I’m glad you did.”

He looked at me and I caught a hint of that vulnerability I had seen earlier. He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his messy hair.

“Marcus saved me,” he said abruptly, like the words had been sitting there, waiting for the right moment to come out.

“Saved you?” I asked, my burger paused halfway to my mouth.

“Yeah.” He looked out over the balcony, his jaw tightening. “When I was a teenager, I was heading nowhere fast. My dad—he didn’t give a shit about me. Beer and blow were the only things he cared about. And my mom? She bailed when I was too young to remember her.”

I swallowed hard, my heart squeezing for him. “That sucks.”

He shrugged, but there was no casualness in it. “It is what it is. Marcus found me when I was about sixteen. He saw me doodling in the back of a diner and asked if I’d ever thought about tattoos. Taught me everything I know. Without him…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to think about where I’d be.”

“You probably would’ve figured it out on your own,” I said softly.

“Maybe,” he said, popping a fry into his mouth. “But I doubt it. He gave me direction when no one else cared enough to. I wasn’t really doing well. Yeah, Marcus was there, but when I wasn’t around him, I was up to no good. All it would have taken was one time for me to get caught. If I would have landed in jail, I wouldn’t be here today. I mean, I’d be alive, maybe, assuming I didn’t get shivved in lockup, but I wouldn’t be doing what I do. I wouldn’t have what I have.”

I sat with that for a moment, marveling at the fact that Nikko had managed to become this talented, funny, deeply complicated man despite everything stacked against him. It made my own struggles feel small by comparison.

“What about you?” he asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

“What about me?”

He smirked, grabbing another fry. “What was your childhood like?”

I shook my head. I did not want to talk about myself. I never did. I preferred to keep those chapters closed.

“Not nearly as exciting as your childhood,” I said.

“Let me guess—mom and dad made every Christmas magical, the Tooth Fairy always showed up to collect, and you hated your chores? Oh, and I bet your mom always had fresh chocolate chip cookies waiting for you after school.”

I laughed, but it was more out of discomfort than humor. “Um, not really.”

His grin faded immediately. “Oh, shit. I’m an ass. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. And it was. But as I stared down at my half-eaten burger, something in me shifted. I’d always kept my past neatly locked away, but for some reason, sitting here with Nikko, I felt like I could open that door just a crack. He opened up to me. I could tell him a little about me.

“I grew up on a farm,” I said finally. “With my mom and dad. They were free spirits, I guess you’d call them. Hippies, really. Everything was about nature, simplicity, living off the land. We got our lunch fresh from the garden. If we wanted a snack, we walked outside and picked an apple or some raspberries.”

I found myself smiling at the memories. “My mom took our stuff to the local farmer’s market. Me and my sister got in trouble for eating a bunch of strawberries before market day. But my dad said we could have done a lot worse.”

“Sounds nice,” Nikko said, but there was a question in his tone.

“It was,” I admitted. “In a messy, chaotic sort of way. My sister and I were always outside with the animals, our clothes were dirty, our hair was a mess. Looking back, I would say we were feral. We were home-schooled, so we didn’t have to answer to anyone. Except…”

“Except?” he prompted, leaning forward.

“My grandparents,” I said, my voice dropping. “My mom’s parents. They hated everything about how we lived. Every time they visited, they’d ask if we were happy, but it wasn’t because they cared. They just wanted an excuse to criticize my parents. They hated that we didn’t have a bunch of structure. We slept in if we wanted to and stayed up late, especially if it was harvest season and my parents were working hard. My grandparents always said we needed a schedule. We needed to have more discipline. It became a real issue.”

Nikko’s brows furrowed. “What did they do? ”

“They took us away,” I said, my throat tightening. “My sister and me. When I was ten. They decided they could do better, and my parents let them.”

Nikko stared at me, his burger forgotten. “They what ?”

“We spent a year living with my grandparents,” I said, my voice shaking. “They put us in school, forced us to leave our pets behind, told us everything about us was wrong. The way we talked, the way we dressed, even the way we thought. It was a nightmare.”

“Why only a year?” Nikko asked gently. “What happened?”

I hesitated, the words catching in my throat. But when I looked into his eyes, I saw nothing but patience and understanding. I couldn’t believe I was telling him all of this. I hadn’t intended to. It just spilled out. I took a deep breath. “My parents didn’t come for us. They thought my grandparents would eventually bring us back, but one month turned into two, then six, then a year. And by then, my grandparents were done trying to ‘fix’ us and sent us back. They declared we were unfixable. They were too late. I remembered wondering what they meant by that. I kept thinking, they were too late for what? I wondered if we were going to die. One of the chickens died on the farm when I was young. My mom picked it up and was so gentle with her. She said we were too late. The chicken was alive but barely. And then it died in my mom’s arms. My sister was crying and asked why we couldn’t save her with medicine. Mom said it was too late.”

“Shit. That’s fucked up.”

I nodded. “Yeah. My parents… I don’t know.”

“They just let it happen?”

I nodded, the familiar ache in my chest flaring up. “They thought they were doing the right thing. They were young and na?ve and thought they’d get us back eventually. But for that year… they were free. They traveled. They stayed on the farm. They just let us go. They didn’t care.”

I felt the tears building, and before I could stop them, they spilled over. Nikko was out of his chair in an instant, wrapping his arms around me and holding me close .

“I hate that that happened to you,” he murmured, his voice rough with emotion.

I leaned into him, the warmth of his embrace chasing away some of the cold that always lingered when I thought about that time. “I don’t talk about it, usually.”

“I get that,” he said, his hand rubbing soothing circles on my back. “I don’t like talking about my shit either.”

We sat like that for a long moment, the sound of the ocean in the background. Finally, I pulled back just enough to look up at him.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

“For what?”

“For letting me fall apart,” I said with a small, watery smile. “And for not running away.”

He cupped my cheeks, his thumbs brushing away my tears. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”