Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
COLE
I f I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget today.
Every other memory might leave my head, including the knowledge of my own name, but I will always remember what Hannah Grace felt like with nothing between us. What she tasted like. What a vision she made against the hood of the car in the late fall sunshine.
The breeze kicks against my bare ass and causes me to shiver. Since I’m still inside her, she moans and my dick immediately starts to harden.
Take a break, dude. Next time needs to be on a bed…or a couch…or even just inside.
In my defense, I hadn’t planned on this happening—hence the lack of condom.
A harder breeze rushes across my ass and I groan.
“Fuck, that’s getting colder. We should probably get dressed.”
I lean back, keeping a steadying hand on her hip as I separate us. She sits up, her breasts swaying, and my mouth waters for another sample. Instead, I dip my head and press another kiss to her lips and pull my jeans and boxers back up my legs.
By the time I’ve reached down and snagged my shirt and her leggings and panties, she’s put her bra and sweatshirt back on.
“I didn’t plan this,” I tell her as I hand her the leggings and panties.
“I know. Neither did I.” She separates her leggings and panties, flipping the leggings right-side out and sliding them over her feet.
Wobbling as she stands, she uses her panties to clean up, wiping the combination of us off her thighs in moves I can only describe as mesmerizing.
Why else do I stop what I’m doing?
“I’ll tell you something else,” she says, focused on her task and not on my lack of movement. “I don’t regret it either.”
With that statement she looks up. The relief her words bring is something I didn’t realize I needed until she said them. With so much history between us, she very well could have.
“What?” She tugs her leggings into place, balling her underwear up in her hand.
Closing the small bit of distance between us, I reach for her panties and tuck them into my pocket.
“You’re so goddamn sexy.” I growl the words, resting my hand against her hip before moving it backward to squeeze her ass.
I now have firsthand knowledge that she is bare underneath her leggings.
Fuck, the car ride home just got longer.
“I’m a bad influence,” she teases and throws me an exaggerated wink, moaning as my hand clenches against her ass.
“You’re the best kind of influence, Honey Girl. One I don’t regret either,” I tell her.
Her smile morphs from a teasing one to genuine happiness, stretching her cheeks as it reaches her eyes.
She needed those words too .
“In fact, I wouldn’t mind a round two.” I pull her against me, evidence of how much I’m ready for round two hardening in my jeans.
Her expressive eyes widen, her mouth forming an O.
“But I wasn’t kidding when I said I had plans to take it slow. Which requires a bed…or at least being inside out of this wind.”
She giggles and leans her head against my chest.
“Agreed.” She squeezes her arms around my waist. “We’re going home, right? I’m not dressed to go wandering around Mistletoe Creek right now.”
I swear I can feel the heat of her panties in my pocket. No, I’d rather not wander through our hometown answering a myriad of questions from friends and neighbors while carrying my girlfriend’s panties in my pocket as she goes commando.
Is she your girlfriend?
It’s a question we need to figure out before we run into anyone we know. Especially Flora, Fawn, and Merry. Those blue-haired ladies are like three of the Golden Girls mixed with the good fairies from Sleeping Beauty . And despite being elderly, they are sharp-eyed matchmakers on the hunt for their next happily ever after.
“Yeah.”
We finish straightening ourselves up and I open her door for her, lingering in the open door as she settles into her seat.
“You’re staring,” she grumbles and runs her hands through her hair self-consciously.
“Can you blame me? You’re beautiful.”
“Crazy. I wish I had a brush.” She winces as her fingers catch a snarl.
I squat next to her, brushing a kiss on her cheek.
“Your beauty has nothing to do with what’s on the outside, Honey Girl. It never has been.”
I unfold and shut the door softly before moving around the hood, only now noticing the prints all over the side where we were.
“The car is going to need a wash.” I nod toward the hood as I sit in the driver’s seat.
“We should probably be glad that’s all it needs.”
Barking out a laugh, I focus on turning around in the opening, heading back down the path while navigating the divots.
“Remind me next time we come back I need to switch the car for an SUV. Or a truck.” The words are out of my mouth before I can think about them.
Yeah, way to make assumptions that there will be a next time .
I tighten my fingers around the steering wheel and prepare for Hannah Grace’s response.
“A truck,” she says and reaches for my hand now that we’re back on the main road. “I’ve always been partial to pickups.”
I lace my fingers with hers.
“I can check with Jared. He may still have my old pickup. I left it with him when I moved to LA.”
“I have good memories of that truck,” she tells me, smiling softly.
“So do I, Honey Girl. So do I.”
Silence engulfs the car once more, and the drive is interspersed with music from the stations when they come in and random comments from one of us on our surroundings. But we don’t talk about what just happened. It’s not awkward, but companionable. It’s what happens when two people are comfortable with each other.
The attraction still simmers between us, a tangible third passenger in the car, but I never doubted that was going anywhere. I’m painfully aware of every shift of Hannah Grace’s hips against the seat, every deep breath that lifts her breasts, every facial expression.
We’re just inside Nashville city limits when she turns in her seat, facing me as best she can. The move dislodges our hands from each other and my fingers immediately miss hers.
“This wasn’t just a one-time thing,” she says.
It’s more a statement than a question.
“Not for me.” I glance over, meeting her gaze briefly before turning my attention back on the road.
“Me neither.” She sucks her lip between her teeth, nibbling on the lower one.
“What’s on your mind, Honey Girl?” I ask.
“I…I don’t have a plan for what happens next. I don’t want to put any labels on this yet. A part of me thinks all of this—you being here, today, all of it—isn’t real. That I’m having this crazy dream that is equal parts scary and amazing.”
I exit the highway and stop at the light on the off-ramp. Reaching over, I snag one of her hands that is currently wrapped around the other.
“It is real. I am here. And I’m going to figure out who’s scaring you. But then I’m not going anywhere.”
“You live in LA.”
“We’ll figure it out. As for labels, I think I’ve made it clear what I want. I want to give this another go between us. But I can understand your hesitation. You can set the pace. Whatever you want to do, I’m here. I’m in it.”
“What if I said I didn’t want to pursue anything?”
Fuck.
“It would be hard. I’m not going to lie; I would try and convince you otherwise, but I will always respect whatever boundaries you set.”
She falls silent again, wheels turning as she processes through what we’ve just said while I navigate the streets of Nashville to get us home.
“It’s not that I don’t want to pursue whatever this is,” she says after several songs and a traffic report on the radio. “I do. But you can’t keep shit from me anymore, Cole. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this as equals. I don’t want you to hide stuff from me because you want to protect me. If you want this—if you want us —then I’m your equal partner. Capable of making my own decisions. Of handling whatever life throws at us.”
We pull onto her street and I wait until I’ve parked my car in her driveway to turn toward her. I need her to see exactly how much I want this. How willing I am to meet her condition.
“I swear to you, Hannah Grace. I won’t hide anything else from you. Never again. I’ve wasted too many years because I made that mistake once. I’m not doing it again.”
The lights above her garage catch the moisture in her eyes, making them sparkle like sapphires in the near dark around us. I lift a hand to her cheek, and she closes her eyes and leans against my palm. A tear slips out, tangling in the meeting of our skin.
“I promise,” I repeat and wipe the bit of moisture away.
She leans forward, almost meeting my lips, but stopping just before.
“Don’t break my heart, Cole.”
“So long as you don’t break mine.”
Her eyes flutter open and she studies me.
“Honey Girl, you have no idea the amount of power you have over me. Do you?”
She shakes her head.
“It’s always been you. Even when I thought what I was doing was right, it never stopped being you. I-I love you, Hannah Grace. From now until forever.”
Her mouth finds mine, our tongues tangling as her fingers comb through my hair to hold me to her.
Like I’m going any-fucking-where.
Wrong . You’re going inside so you can worship her properly . All night long .
“We should go inside,” I murmur, breaking the kiss enough to say the words, my lips teasing hers.
“Let’s go.”
We both exit the car at the same time and I move fast to her side so I can reach for her hand again. I’ve gone years without her touch. Now that I have it again, I’m not giving it up anytime soon.
Our steps are slower than I would expect given how badly I want her. It’s the knowledge that we have all night that allows me to keep our movements unhurried. But too many years keeping my head on a swivel mean that it’s ingrained that I check out our surroundings as we move from the driveway to the front door.
“Wait.” I stop at the bottom step to the front porch, tucking Hannah Grace behind me.
Metal pieces are strewn across the porch, the porch light glinting off the electronics carnage that stops our progression.
“What is it? What happened?”
Her nails dig into my biceps as she looks around my arm. Her gasp reinforces the scene in front of me. I move my attention from left to right and back again, lifting my gaze sector by sector until I find where the camera used to hang, and all that remains is the black disk screwed into the side of the house.
“Oh my God.”
I hate the fear in her voice. I haven’t heard it since the day with the flowers, and I could have gone the rest of my life without it echoing through my head again.
“Goddammit.”
I spin around, moving her back to the car, all my senses on heightened alert. She doesn’t argue, moving with me until I open the car door.
“I want to check things out, but you need to stay here. Lock the car door. I’ll come back when I’m finished.”
“But—”
“Honey Girl, I want you safe. And this is the safest place for you. Please.”
She studies me for several heartbeats and I’m prepared for her to argue. Instead, she nods.
“Okay.”
She sits in the driver’s seat of the car and I pass over the keys.
“Lock the doors. If I’m not back in five minutes, I want you to drive to the nearest police station and tell them what’s happened.”
“Cole.” She clutches my hand, her body trembling.
“I’ll be okay. I’ll be right back. Lock the doors,” I remind her and lean down to find her lips with mine.
Closing the door, I wait for her to engage the locks before I move back to the porch. My feet crunch over the busted wires and innards of what was a high-end security camera. The door is still locked when I check it, and I breathe a sigh of relief and pull that key from my pocket, unlocking the door.
I regret not grabbing my gun out of the safe in the trunk of the car, but I’m already here. The light in the living room is still on from this morning and I move through each room of the house, making sure there are no signs of anything while still moving quickly enough to hit my five-minute time window with Hannah Grace. My final step is to check the camera on the back porch where I find the same as the front—a broken shell strewn across the concrete pad and some even glinting in the grass, but nothing else is disturbed.
“What the fuck?”
Jogging around the side of the house, I use the gate and approach the car from the opposite direction. Hannah Grace is facing toward the front door and jumps when I knock on the window, her scream audible through the glass.
I have to jump out of the way as she slams the door open and rushes into my arms.
“It’s okay, Honey Girl. I’m fine. It’s okay.”
It isn’t okay. Neither camera alerted with any motion.
Because you were keeping a close eye on your phone the whole time you were gone ?
It’s something I’ll check once we’re inside.
“D-d-did anyone…” Her teeth are chattering and I keep both arms wrapped around her as I lead her from the front of the car to the trunk to grab my gun out of the safe and finally back to the house.
“No one was in the house. It’s both cameras. I want to clean them up in the morning when I can check for any other signs in the light. But for now, let’s get inside.”
She balks at the steps, unsure where to step, and I lift her off her feet and carry her through the threshold, locking the front door behind us before setting her on the couch.
“I’ll be right back,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her temple.
She nods.
My next step is locking the back door since I’d gone out that way and grabbing both of us a glass of water.
“Here.” I hand her the glass and sit close to her on the couch.
She curls into me and sighs.
“Why is someone doing this?”
I fucking hate this.
“I wish I knew. Let’s check the cameras.” I pull my phone from my pocket and pull up the app.
The cameras show as offline, but no missed alerts. Nothing to indicate at what point today they were both destroyed.
“Whoever did this knew how to approach the cameras to not set them off. And there’s no sign of anything so we have no idea what time it happened today.”
“Shit.”
“Agreed.”
I’m a mix of anger for not having a backup camera more hidden and relief that Hannah Grace had been with me all day.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” I tell her, running my hand up and down her back.
It’s reassurance for her and for me.
She’s safe here. In my arms.
“You have nothing to apologize for. It’s not like you broke the cameras. How could you predict something like this?”
“It’s my job to stay one step ahead.”
One I’m failing at.
“You can’t always control what happens,” she tells me.
“I can fucking try.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” She reaches over, grabbing my hand and weaving our fingers together.
“I need you safe.”
More than I need anything else in this world, I need for her to be protected.
“I am.” She snuggles into my arms as if to prove her point.
My arm tightens around her. After several moments in silence, she squirms free and stands.
“Where are you going?”
“To bed.”
She takes a sip from her glass before disappearing into the kitchen.
“Are you coming?” she asks.
I blink, having been so lost in planning a secondary camera system and a full-on alarm system I don’t remember her coming back into the room. Her hand is outstretched, waiting on my response.
She’s safe in my arms.
What better way to assure myself that she stays that way than by holding her all night?