39. Mallory
Chapter 39
Mallory
I'm sore in places I forgot existed. It's a good kind of sore, the delicious ache that comes with even better memories. Sex served every way I like it. Tender, sweet, rough, intense. Hugo feels like a piece of my life that's been missing. A piece I'd always known was vacant, but never believed I could fill. Without realizing it, I'd resigned myself to a life where I'd forever feel a little bit broken. It hadn't occurred to me someone could come along and fill in those cracks.
I never saw myself in a place this beautiful, with a man so incredible, but now that I've experienced it, I don't see myself being able to let it go.
Cecily has emailed me her unbelievably detailed and incredibly organized social media content plan. She's going to spend the next two weeks listening to previous Case Files episodes, and create content around those. My marching orders are to go through all those episodes and supply her with my favorite parts, anecdotes, and details. All future episodes will follow the same format.
I haven't given up on the original reason I came to Olive Township, but for a moment, I'm slowing down. If Jolene was serious enough to bring on a marketing company, I want to give it my best effort.
Hugo and I fall into a rhythm that involves great conversation, meals prepared together, laughter, and incredible sex. He learned exercises safe for pregnant women, and we've incorporated time in the home gym into our routine.
The domesticity of it is great, but it's so much more than that. It's healing. Filling me up, sliding into my crevices. We haven't talked about the future, but a conversation is inevitable. There's a time bomb in the form of a human living in my body.
But maybe we can live in this bliss a little longer. Linger here, in this fairy tale of a situation. I'll close my eyes, willfully blind, and let all those sweet words he murmurs in my ear when he's inside me be my sustenance. For now, they are all I need.
Three weeks of living in our perfect little bubble on Summerhill, interrupted by a knock on Hugo's front door.
I look up from my spot on the couch, a book about child brain development open on my lap. Hugo looks at me on his way to the door, winking and saying, "It's probably my mom asking for her picnic basket. She's watching Everly and Knox today."
Hugo pulls open the door, and I hear him say, "Detective Towles? Is everything alright?"
The answering voice is quiet, and I can't make it out. Hugo widens the door, steps aside, and the detective walks in.
I wave from my place on the couch, placing a bookmark between the pages and sliding the book on the coffee table. I'm wearing loose, comfortable pants and a cotton tank top that shows my belly. A few days ago, at my twenty-four week appointment, the doctor said, "Looks like you have a little basketball in there."
I stand up and round the couch. Hugo comes to stand beside me, and I say, "Hello, Detective."
"Miss Hawkins," he replies. "I thought, given the nature of your request, that I would hand deliver this."
He holds out a bulging folder. In an instant, I know what it is, and I'm already searching Hugo's face. He's nodding slowly, tugging on his earlobe in a way I've never seen him do.
I reach for him, tightening my grip on his arm. "You can still change your mind."
"You know," Detective Towles interrupts, voice gruff, "Just because I'm giving you this to look through doesn't mean something big is going to happen. You don't have to get worked up. The boys and I gave this case everything we had. "
"Understood," Hugo says woodenly. He takes the file.
"Thank you for coming all the way out here," I say, because Hugo seems to be at a loss for words.
"I'm not that nice," the detective admits, scratching at his brow. "I wanted to make sure you're staying out here like you said."
I smile. "I know."
He gestures at my midsection. "Congratulations, Miss Hawkins. Hugo."
I keep waiting for the moment Hugo will correct somebody's assumption, but even now in his distressed state, he does not deviate. "Thank you," he says, voice rough.
We walk the detective to the door. He steps through, pausing to look back and say, "I'm going to need that returned to me."
"Yes. Thank you."
Hugo and I stand on the front porch, watching him drive away in an unmarked police car.
The trail of dust plumes, and then his car disappears over the slope.
"How are you?" I ask, turning into Hugo, wrapping my arms around his waist. In one hand, he still holds the folder. The other comes up, cups my cheek.
"I'm ok," he rasps. "Like Towles said, he and his guys pored over everything. There's probably nothing new in here."
"Yep," I agree readily, knowing where Hugo's coming from, because it's the same way I feel.
Ultimately, we want to know what happened to our loved ones. But alongside that desire is fear of finding out. Even the possibility of knowing sparks a shred of apprehension. A person can want something desperately, but also fear having it.
My arms run the length of Hugo's back. "What do you think about tabling the folder for a little bit? We don't have to dive into it. It's been two decades, what's a few more days?"
Hugo nods thoughtfully, stepping out of my arms. He extends the file to me, and I take it. It is thick, and heavy, smelling of dust and old paper.
"That file should be in your care. You're the professional here, not me. And I think, if you wanted to tear it open right now and spend the next seven hours inside it, I would support you." He leans in, kisses my forehead. "I'm going to finish the salsa I was making when Towles showed up. Then I'm going to make the guacamole, and we're going to sit on the porch with our virgin margaritas like we planned. You can read the book you've been reading, or"—he glances at the folder—"you can read that."
He retreats into the house. I stare down at the nondescript folder, feeling its weight in my arms. Inside, the blender starts up. I walk inside, deposit the folder on the dining room table next to all my other work. Pinching my lower lip between two fingers, I stare down at my notes. The whiteboard. And now, the case file.
The whole point of me coming to Olive Township was to gain the De la Vegas trust and receive their blessing to look into Simon's murder, and the possible connection to my sister. Now that I'm one step closer, something is holding me back. I'm not sure what it is, only that it's creating a hesitancy. I came to town with fire, a fervor. I had an end goal, but the more time I spend around Hugo, the more my fully formed and concrete end goal begins to waver. As if spending time around him, getting to know him, and sharing our grief is poking holes in my plan. Months of emailing him, hanging my hopes on his response, and now I'm here, right in the middle of where I thought I wanted to be, believed I needed to be, and I'm waffling.
I was desperate to learn the connection between the two murders, and solve the riddle. My heart needed to know there was one less evil person in the world with my baby, but am I really driven by that anymore?
Hugo announces the food is prepared, and I help him carry everything onto the porch. We sit in the warm sun, me with my book, and Hugo with his. It's almost criminal how much I enjoy living in his orbit.
When my belly is full of salsa and guacamole, and my thirst has been quenched by the citrusy nonalcoholic margarita, I put down my book and climb on the swing bed.
Lying back on the pillows, with the afternoon sun tickling my toes, I say, "There's room for one more up here."
Hugo smiles, and makes short work of the distance between us.
We settle on the swing bed together, adjusting the pillows. My head tucks into the space of his neck, my right leg thrown over his thighs. His fingertips graze my back as we watch dark clouds gather in the distance.
"I noticed you weren't poring over that folder," Hugo says after a while.
"I'm conflicted," I admit.
"Tell me more," he says.
My hand finds his chest, runs over the soft fabric covering hard planes as I assemble my jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences. "I thought coming here and investigating, getting an answer once and for all, would be what I needed. But meeting you wasn't like I thought it would be. I thought I would be healed by facts. By truth. By justice. Instead, it was so much simpler than that." My touch leaves his chest, runs up his neck. I lean back so I can look at him. His strong jaw, his expressive eyebrows. Those soulful brown eyes gazing back at me. "It was a man on an olive orchard, with a heart just as broken as mine."
Fire lights in his irises, burns hot. "You're everything, Mallory. You take me out. You take me down." His hand runs through my hair. "I never saw you coming. Had no idea you existed. And now I can't exist without you."
He smiles at a tear that streaks from my eyes, flicks it away. My mouth closes over his, our lips yielding. Tongues tasting. My hand dips lower, slides into his sweats. I want this man. Every inch of him. I need him like air. Water. Food.
"Bed," he says on a groan. "Now."
"We're on a bed," I argue, delivering a few leisurely pumps .
"I'll bring you out here when it's dark, and I will fuck you ragged. But for now, I can't have anybody seeing you like that. You're mine." He nips at my jaw. "Nobody sees you being pleasured but me."
Well. That will do.
My hand leaves his sweats. We disentangle ourselves, and he helps me from the swing. On quick feet we hurry through the house, all the way to his bed.
It's there, with rain clouds approaching and Hugo moving inside me, that he dips his lips to my ear. Whispers, "I'm in love with you, Mallory."
Words that heal. Words that energize. From Hugo's lips, and his heart. It couldn't be more perfect.
Every emotion I feel for this strong, protective, generous man comes rushing forward. An intensity that overwhelms, makes me so ready, so happy to return the words. My fingernails rake his back, my face turns to capture his mouth. "I'm in love with you, Hugo. I think I have been all along."