Chapter Twenty-Four
“Dad!”
The front door slammed and Tessa’s voice rang out through the small house. Ethan rolled away from Hannah in bed, tilting his alarm clock towards him. It was eight o’clock in the morning. What in the world could possibly be so important at eight o’clock in the morning on a Sunday?
“Dad!”
He sat bolt upright and climbed out of bed, fumbling for his boxer briefs. “Just a minute!”
he called back as he searched for the jeans Hannah had peeled off of him the night before when they’d gotten back to Aster Bay.
“What’s going on?”
Hannah asked sleepily.
“I don’t know yet.”
He tugged on his jeans and pulled a t-shirt over his head as he slipped out of his bedroom, making sure the door closed behind him. “Tessa?”
he called back. She appeared around the corner to the kitchen. “What’s wrong? Is Julie alright?”
“Julie’s fine,”
she said, shaking off the question. “Are you alright?”
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Where’s Hannah?”
Tessa peered around him towards the closed bedroom door.
“She’s sleeping. T, what’s going on?”
“You better wake her up. I think she’s going to want to see this.”
The bedroom door opened. “I’m here.”
Hannah stood in the open door in a pair of his sweatpants and one of his old Nuthatch t-shirts, her hair a mess of tangles. If Tessa wasn’t making him so nervous, he’d have paused to appreciate the sight of Hannah in his clothing, or at least, he’d have paused longer.
Tessa led them into the living room, typing on her phone, then thrust the device at him. “It’s all over the internet.”
“What is?”
Hannah asked, coming up beside Ethan.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they read together, headline after headline.
Hannah’s new man not so new after all.
Who cheated on who? What we know about the Jackson Hayes / Hannah Matthews timeline.
Infidelity and secret identities.
“The first story came out around midnight on Encores.com.”
Tessa crossed her arms over her chest and watched as Ethan and Hannah continued scrolling.
“Johnny Blue,”
Hannah said, wincing. “He was probably pissed he didn’t get his eating disorder story so he dug something else up.”
“What is there to dig up?”
Ethan asked. “What does this mean?”
“Daemon called this morning. He said Liv and Micah have been trying to call Hannah. You weren’t answering your phone,”
Tessa said.
“I left my phone out here on the charger last night,”
Hannah said, lurching towards the device on the side table. As she reached it, it lit up with another incoming call, which she immediately declined. “I don’t understand.”
“They have photos of you two. From six months ago,”
Tessa said, taking the phone back from Ethan and scrolling to the image. “They’re saying you’ve been together this whole time. That Jackson’s not the one who cheated—Hannah is.”
The photos were poorly lit and grainy, like someone had zoomed in on a low-quality cell phone in the dim bar lighting, but it was undeniably the hotel bar in Boston where Hannah and Ethan had so often met. The first photo showed Ethan and Angie in their usual booth, a stack of Her Lady’s Knights on the table between them, Ethan signing his name inside the front cover. He remembered that day, how he’d signed a dozen copies of the book as a favor for Angie for her to give away to her newsletter subscribers who pre-ordered the next book in the series. The next was of Ethan and Hannah side by side waiting for the elevator, Hannah’s hair swept up in a ponytail pulled through the back of a baseball cap, Ethan’s hand resting on her lower back. The final photo was just a sliver caught through the elevator door of them kissing.
He wanted to love that photo, this stolen moment between them captured on film when none of their moments before this weekend had been, but how could he love it now? The happiness on her face, the adoration in his eyes had been immortalized on film and turned against them.
“How did they get these?”
Ethan asked no one in particular.
“The girl who took the photos recognized the author in the first photo. That’s why she started taking pictures, and she followed you, Dad, because she says you’re the narrator of the audiobook.”
Ethan’s anger and frustration at the media intrusion paled in comparison to the alarm he felt at those words coming from his daughter. It felt like when he was kid and his mother found out he and Gavin had been skipping Sunday School in favor of playing on the playground on the Town Common across the street from the church. Like being trapped with his shame while someone he loved recalibrated their opinion of him.
Tessa continued, seemingly unaware of her father’s internal crisis. “She didn’t know what she’d gotten until you showed up on the red carpet together two nights ago.”
Hannah, who had been scrolling through her unread messages, gasped. “They’re saying I used Jackson to get ahead, that you and I were sneaking around behind his back for months. They’re saying—”
“Stop reading it.”
Ethan stormed across the room and put his hand over hers, lowering the phone. “Don’t read their lies.”
“I have to call Micah. I have to call Jackson.”
Hannah pushed past him, disappearing back into the bedroom, the phone already pressed to her ear.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
Tessa asked.
She looked so young, standing there with her arms crossed, confusion written all over her face.
“Hannah didn’t cheat on anyone,” he said.
“I know that.”
Tessa waved away the comment. “Anyone who’s spent two minutes with her knows that. Were they ever even together?”
Ethan’s jaw clenched. This wasn’t his story to tell, and yet…wasn’t it? Now that the media was hellbent on making him a villain in this story, on making Hannah a villain, wasn’t it his right to set the record straight, at least with his own family?
“No. It was all a show for the press. Something about cleaning up his image.”
“That makes sense.”
Tessa paused, frowning. “You’re an audiobook narrator?”
Heat crawled up his throat, his ears blazing with it. But he wouldn’t lie to his daughter. Not anymore than he already had, anyway.
“I am.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I narrate under a pseudonym. It’s not something I tell people.”
“I’m not people. I’m your daughter.”
He hated the hurt laced in her voice, the betrayal in her eyes. “Does Jamie know?”
Ethan shook his head. “Only Baz, because he does my taxes. And Hannah.”
Tessa nodded, but hurt still slashed across her face. “I don’t do it all the time. I only narrate for Angie—AK Wild,”
he corrected himself. “These books…they’re not family friendly.”
Tessa snorted. “No shit. Mrs. White and her friends wouldn’t be reading them at book club if they were. Wait, is that why you didn’t tell me?”
Ethan cuffed the back of his neck and looked away. “For fuck’s sake, Dad, I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m married to your best friend. I have a child. I think we’re past the point of pretending I don’t know about sex.”
“I didn’t want it to blow back on you, kid,”
Ethan said with a sigh. “You’ve already been put through enough because of my choices.”
“I thought you said it didn’t bother you that some people still judge you for being a teenage parent—which says more about them than it does about you, by the way.”
“I don’t give a shit what people judge me for. I don’t want them to judge you! Or Julie! I don’t want my choices to tarnish the legacy our family has built here any more than they already have.”
“Are you ashamed of these books, Dad?”
He straightened his spine, meeting her eyes directly so she would know he meant it when he said, “I’m not.”
“Then why would you think I would be? Why would you think any of us would be ashamed of your success?”
He didn’t know what to say. She was right, and yet he still couldn’t shake the feeling he should have protected her from the inevitable fall out. “People might say some nasty things,” he said.
Tessa rolled her eyes. “Fuck them. People have said nasty things about our family for years.”
She wrapped him in a hug and he felt a lump rise in his throat as he wound his arms around her, accepting the absolution he hadn’t realized he’d been so desperate for. “Now no more secrets.”
∞∞∞
“Why do all my clients end up with pictures of their trysts in Johnny Blue’s column?”
Micah sighed on the other end of the phone.
“I’m so sorry, Micah. I thought we were careful. I thought—”
“You don’t need to apologize. But we do need a new strategy. Hiding out isn’t going to work this time.”
Hannah went cold, ice sluicing down her spine. “Why not?”
“For one, they know Ethan’s name—both of them. He announced to the press that you’ve been staying with him. How long do you think it’ll take them to figure out where his vineyard is?”
“They can’t really care enough to come to Rhode Island,”
Hannah protested. “I’m not famous enough for that.”
“No, you’re not, but Jackson Hayes is, and he’s left the country again. Like it or not, you and Ethan are very much people of interest to the celebrity news media right now.”
“Then we’ll tell them the truth—all of it.”
She paced the length of Ethan’s bedroom, her bare feet leaving indents in the plush carpet. “We’ll tell them Jackson and I were never really together. We’ll tell them we lied.”
“Jackson’s people will never agree to that. It would be your word against his,”
Micah said.
“Jackson will tell the truth if I ask him to.”
“Will he?”
Her stomach sank. She wanted to believe their friendship was important enough to him that he’d defend her, especially when it was as simple as telling the truth, but when the truth meant admitting to months of lying and baiting the press…
“Midnight Storm is announcing a new nationwide tour next week. Even if you could get him on the phone from whatever island he’s partying on now, you’ll never get his publicist to sign off on a statement that alienates the press and his fans. Not right now.”
Hannah sank down on the edge of the bed. She knew Micah was right. She’d tried calling Jackson first, but the line rang and rang before clicking over to a voicemail too full to accept new messages, and her texts were still marked as unread. Jackson wasn’t going to be able to save her from this.
“What do we do?”
Hannah asked.
“We’ll issue a short statement. Focus on our disappointment that they’ve doxed Ethan by connecting his photo and legal name to his pseudonym. We won’t deny the pictures—there’s no point. We’ll say you’ve known Ethan for a long time and your relationships with both him and Jackson are built on trust and mutual respect.”
“Will it work?”
“No.”
She closed her eyes as her stomach roiled, bile rising in her throat. “But we do it anyway. And if anyone asks about this, anyone at all—reporters or baristas or the little old lady who walks her dog down the street—you have only two words for them.”
“No comment,”
she whispered.
“Let’s hope someone else does something salacious soon so everyone moves on.”
Salacious.
Ethan had worked so hard to keep his audiobook work separate from his life in Aster Bay, to insulate his real life from the salaciousness of it, and now there would be no keeping the two parts of himself from bleeding into each other. More than that, the whole world thought he was a liar at best, and an accomplice in infidelity at worst. And it was all her fault.
“I’ll send over a draft of the statement when it’s ready for you to review. By the time Midnight Storm announces the tour, this will all be in the past. We can’t let this overshadow the momentum you have coming off of the premiere. I’ll line up some auditions for you for the following week. Hang in there, Hannah. This too shall pass.”
She let the phone drop from her hand onto the comforter, still rumpled from the night before, and stared at her hands. Everything was a mess and there was nothing she could do to fix it.
“Are you alright?”
She lifted her head to see Ethan leaning in the doorway, his hands tucked in his jeans pocket. Tears stung her nose and eyes. “Are you?”
“It’s not the way I would have wanted Tessa to find out about my audiobook work, but we’re okay. I’m more worried about you right now, sweetheart.”
“I don’t know why,”
she sobbed, hiding her face in her hands. He was across the room and kneeling at her feet before her fingers even touched her face. He gathered her against himself, murmuring words of comfort, soft, low barely intelligible sounds deep in his chest that were soothing all the same. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“If it weren’t for me, no one would know you’re Slade Hardcastle.”
He pushed her hair behind her ear, tutting. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. If that girl hadn’t wanted photos of me, she never would have gotten ones of you.”
“But If I hadn’t—”
“We could go back and forth all day. I’m not letting you beat yourself up over this, Han.”
His tone brooked no argument.
“Micah thinks some reporters might come here.”
She thought of the photo taken from her fire escape, the feeling that nowhere was safe or private anymore. She hated imagining the vineyard swarmed by paparazzi, yet another safe place turned upside down because she’d gotten herself in over her head. Why had she thought she could lie to the press in the first place? Why had she thought any of this was a good idea?
“Then we’ll deal with them together,” he said.
“If I left, they’d leave you alone.”
His eyes hardened, his features turning harsh. “Do you want to leave?”
“No, but I—”
“I’m not letting some assholes with nothing better to do than spread gossip all day take you away from me. We’ll figure it out.”
She swallowed back a sob. “How?”
“I don’t know, but we will. I’ll fix it.”
“Ethan—”
“I’m sure I can find a way to fix it.”
“Ethan, stop.”
His eyes darted between hers, worry making them sharp and bright. “I’m scared.”
His breath gusted out of him, his eyes narrowing. “Of me?”
“No. Well, maybe a little.”
He looked stunned and she hastened to add, “Of losing you. This is a lot for anyone to deal with and… You could break me, Ethan. You could devastate me in ways nobody ever has before.”
“You think I’d hurt you?”
he asked, his voice lanced with pain.
“Not intentionally... I’m not afraid of the press, even though they keep finding new ways to blow up my life. But I am terrified of losing you.”
He kissed her, his lips slanting over hers with such urgency it nearly knocked her back, but she clung to him as she opened for him, kissing him back. She’d never tire of this, of his fingers tangling in her hair and his tongue sliding against hers, of the hum low in his throat when she pressed her hips against him and the feeling that, if she could keep kissing him, keep holding him, everything else would work itself out.
They parted on a gasp and he pressed his forehead to hers. “You’ll never lose me, Han.”
“I hope not,”
she whispered.
“All I want is to make you happy, sweetheart,”
he said in between kisses.
“We’ll make each other happy.”
He caught her behind the thighs and tumbled her backwards onto the bed where they landed with a startled laugh. “I’m gonna marry you, city girl. One day, when we’re both ready, I’m gonna put a ring on your finger.”
He drew the finger in question between his lips, dragging his tongue over the digit.
“I’ve always wanted to be Mrs. Slade Hardcastle,”
she teased, already feeling lighter.
Ethan threw his head back and laughed, the sparkle of his joy mixed with relief. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her sweatpants and tugged, shimmying them over her hips and down her legs. “You can call yourself whatever you want, as long as you’re mine.”
She didn’t have time to respond before his tongue hit her core, sliding between her lower lips. She dug a hand into his hair, lifting her hips towards his mouth and he hooked his hands around her thighs, holding her open as he lapped at her clit.
“Ethan,”
she groaned, giving herself over to the heat gathering low in her belly.
“Christ, you taste so good,”
he rumbled before diving back in, teeth and tongue and fingers driving her closer and closer to orgasm. “Tell me you love me, Han,”
he demanded.
“I love you.”
He sucked her clit into his mouth, working her in long pulls that made her cry out with the intensity of it.
Her thighs shook, her stomach contracting as her climax gathered, and she wasn’t sure if her hand in his hair was tugging him closer or pulling him away when the first wave of her orgasm broke over her, like drowning in sensation. Ethan only gripped her thighs tighter, holding her against his face as he worked her with single-minded focus. One orgasm morphed into another under his relentless attention and she squirmed in his hold, chanting his name in a mindless refrain with each new crest of pleasure.
When, at last, he pulled away, his beard glistening with her release, and tore at his zipper, shoving his jeans down his hips, she watched with lust-drunk eyes as he notched himself at her opening.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he said.
“I’m yours.”
He slid inside in one brutal stroke, filling her so completely it knocked the air from her lungs and sent heat zinging down her spine.
“You want to be my wife, Hannah?”
he asked with a cocky grin as he fucked her slow and deep.
“You asking me to be?”
she replied, smiling.
“Not yet. But someday.”
“Someday,”
she agreed, rocking against him, her inner muscles clenching around the thick intrusion of his cock.
He grunted. “Gonna make you mine, so I can spend all day every day playing with this perfect pussy.”
She laughed, the sound breaking off on a moan when he dropped his thumb to strum at her over-sensitive clit. “And what am I supposed to do all day?”
“Lay back and take it,”
he said, his eyes crinkling with his smile before her inner muscles fluttered around him again and they both groaned. “Christ, sweetheart. I’m gonna marry you and then I’m gonna put a baby in your belly.”
“Oh, God!”
“You like that, Han? You want me to get you pregnant?”
“Someday.”
He grinned. “Someday. Gonna pump you full of my cum day after day until I do. Keep you so full it drips down your thighs when you walk.”
“Ethan,”
she whimpered, bracing her hands on the wall behind herself as she met his thrusts, “I need more.”
“Let me take my time, city girl.”
He slid his hands under her shirt and tugged it over her head, casting it aside, covering her bare breasts with his hands. He squeezed gently, and she gasped, locking her heels behind his back.
Ethan pinched her nipples, rolling the hard peaks between his fingers, his eyes glued to her face as though he were memorizing her reactions. “More?”
“More.”
Goosebumps rose on her skin as he trailed his hands down her sides, over the soft swell of her belly with its pale pattern of stretch marks, around her hips, until he cupped her ass and squeezed, pulling her closer. He somehow slid deeper, his cock pressing against the most hidden parts of her, and they both hissed at the new sensation.
“More?”
She nodded, her fingernails digging into one corded forearm. “More.”
His finger ghosted over her back entrance and she gasped, her body going taut with need. “Can I touch you here, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Yes. Please, Ethan,”
she begged.
He growled, sliding his finger up around the place where they were joined to coat himself in her wetness, before moving back down to play at her pleated rim. “Fuck, I like when you say please.”
“Please,”
she repeated, canting her hips towards him.
He worked his finger inside her little by little, a slow pressure that made his cock feel impossibly larger, her body clamping down around him. “Jesus, sweetheart, you’re so tight here,”
he said as he fucked her with his finger. The sound of their coupling was obscene, the wet press of flesh and her breathy moans. “Look at how wet you are, city girl. Look at how much your pussy likes it when I play with your ass.”
Electricity shot down her spine, burning the soles of her feet, dragging her closer and closer to the abyss of another orgasm.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful, sweetheart. I wish you could see how beautiful you are like this.”
He thrust harder, faster, his eyes hazy with lust, and she lifted her hips to meet each movement. “Atta girl. So gorgeous. And you’re even prettier when you come.”
She groaned, shivered, her orgasm right there… “Come for me, Hannah. Come with me. Want to feel this pussy strangle my cock.”
She broke apart with a sharp cry punched from her chest as he buried himself inside her once, twice, three more times, before he came with a roar, his cock pulsing within her. He collapsed forward against her, covering her chest, her throat with kisses.
When at last their breathing had evened out, he pressed his forehead to hers, his softening cock still inside her, holding her as close as two people could be.
“You’re mine,”
he said, the words like a prayer.
She smiled, pushing the hair back from his eyes. “I’m yours.”
From The Lady’s Knights by A K Wild, narrated by Slade Hardcastle
The sun had not yet risen and Lady Windtorn had already stolen from Sir Llewellyn’s bed. He heard the rustling of her robes as she hurriedly dressed by the still-glowing embers in the fireplace. The sound ushered in a melancholy that visited him more frequently in recent days, a discontent he feared would break them.
The bedclothes fell to his waist as he sat up in bed. “You leave so soon.”
She did not pause in her hunt for something amongst the pile of their discarded clothing. “The maids will be in to light the fire. I must return to my chambers before they mark my absence.”
“Surely the maids already know the truth of your marriage.”
He spat the last word, hating the feel of it in his mouth.
She turned a look of horror his way. “Pray they do not. For if the maids know, then the whole kingdom will know, and none of us are safe.”
He threw back the sheets and climbed from his bed, stalking towards her heedless of his nakedness. She held her ground—yet another thing he loved about her—merely tilting her face up to his when he stood beside her, toe to toe.
“Let them know.”
“Bold words spoken under cover of darkness, Sir. And if my lord were to peel back the curtain on this fa?ade, we would all be damned.”
She spoke the truth and he knew it, but he hated it all the more. Since returning from the woods, since Lord Havenbrook had returned home, their meetings were hurried. There was never enough time when half of it was spent dreading its end.
Lady Windtorn slid her hands over his bare chest, her nails scratching lightly through the hair there, and gentled her tone. “You are a bird, Sir, and I am a fish. Neither can stay in the other’s world for long.”
He captured her hand, holding it tight against his breast that she might feel the pounding of his heart. “I would. For you, my lady, there is nothing I would not do.”
“And yet, you are still a bird, and I am still a fish.”