CHAPTER 8
HUTCH
Even though the snow has been falling for a day, my woman is a lot more relaxed today. It gives me a sense of pride that I’ve helped her to relax. I’m definitely not going to apologize for it. Not when I’ve been walking around feeling a million feet tall.
The chores around the house are done and the wood next to the fire is full. I walked the perimeter today just to check everything and didn’t find anything amiss on my land. It’s eased a little bit of my worry, though I would never allow my woman to see any of that.
As much as I want her to be comfortable here because we’re stuck, I want her to feel secure. Hearing her worried about me and being stuck here in case anything happened was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me. I can still feel the warmth from her words and her concern still.
My hand drifts down her side and over her hip. I love her being curled into my side like she is right now. It feels so right to have her right here next to me.
Even though it’s felt lazy between us, without the need to fill the silence between us just for the sake of saying something, I also want to know everything there is to know about her. The question slips from me, “Why perfume?”
Fallon makes a humming sound and snuggles deeper into my side. “My mom died when I was young,” her voice is sad, and I stiffen next to her. She pats my hand and peeks up at me. “Don’t. I won’t lie and say that I don’t miss her because I do. I was only seven when she died and there are times when I miss her so much that it hurts.” She sighs as her eyes turn glassy with unshed tears. “The worst part is that there are times when I can’t remember her. Dad was always good about keeping pictures of her. He and Bodhi always told me stories about her, but those aren’t my memories, you know?”
I kiss her forehead and take a deep breath, the scent of roses which always seems to be coming from her surrounding me. I wish I could take this pain away from her, it’s tangible as it flows from her.
“I’m sorry you lost your mom so young, Beautiful,” I murmur against her skin.
“I am too,” she whispers. She clears her throat, and it feels like she’s shaking off missing her mom. “One of the strongest memories of my mom, something I never forgot even when I couldn’t imagine her face or remember what her laugh sounded like, is the perfume she wore. She wore it every day.” She shrugs. “The scent of roses has always reminded me of Mom and taught me how powerful scent can be. That’s why I wanted to become a fragrance chemist.”
I’m stunned into silence for a moment, the intelligence of my woman slamming into me and humbling me. She’s brilliant and driven. “You’re pretty amazing.” I chuckle softly. “You smell like roses.”
She looks up at me and shoots me a shy smile. “Because one of the first things I worked on at Luxe Notes was a modern version of the perfume she used to wear.”
I can’t help but smile at how fucking adorable she is right now. “Good girl,” my voice is husky, and she preens under the praise. “What’s a memory you have of her?”
“I used to sit at her feet while she was putting her make up on. She’d style her hair and then do her make up. The last thing she’d do was spritz on some of her perfume.” Something dreamy crosses her face as if she’s right back there sitting at her mom’s feet. “Sometimes she would lean down and put some blush on my cheeks and when I asked, she’d spray some perfume and tell me walk through it.”
“That’s a sweet memory, Beautiful,” I rasp.
The depth of the emotion and love for her mom is written all over Fallon’s face. Those little moments, short as they may have been, helped to shape the woman I’ve been falling in love with since the moment she showed up on my mountain.
“Don’t get me wrong, I missed Mom, but still had a good childhood. Dad is an amazing man, and I was lucky to have him and my brother growing up. Even though there wasn’t anything to be done about feeling Mom’s loss, Dad never missed an event or an opportunity to support me.”
“Did your dad ever remarry?”
“No,” she sighs, “while I don’t know if I could have handled it when I was younger, I do wish he had someone at his side now that I’m an adult. I hate the thought of him being lonely. When I asked him about it a few years ago, he said,” she shakes his head and her voice drops into a lower octave like she’s impersonating him, “’There’s only one woman for me and I married her. A love like we had is a once in a lifetime thing. Now it’s my pleasure to go through this life with her memory while watching the pieces of her she left behind in you and Bodhi find happiness in your lives.’”
“Damn,” I grunt, “that has to be rough.”
“Yeah,” her mouth turns down in a frown. “I didn’t understand why he couldn’t open himself up to love again. I wasn’t sure if he was telling me the truth or if he just didn’t want me to feel like he was replacing Mom. I’m an adult now and would never think that.”
“I understand what he means.”
She rears back slightly, her eyes going round as her eyebrows pull together. She sounds shocked, “You do?”
I nod slowly. The thought of another woman sitting next to me right now and curled up with me makes my skin crawl. And that’s only after a few days around Fallon and falling for her. How would it be after years of being with her?
No. I can’t imagine trying to move on.
“When you’ve experienced perfection, you can’t settle. It wouldn’t be fair to someone else to try and live beside the memory of your mom,” I point out to her.
“Maybe you’re right,” she admits.
I can practically hear the wheels of her mind turning as she thinks about her parents. It doesn’t feel awkward at all and I’m more than willing to give her some time to process. I wonder if she realizes that I can only understand her dad now because I’ve met her.
If she doesn’t, she will soon enough.
My hand glides over her hip, my fingers making idle shapes on her body. The longer I touch her, the more my cock tries to escape my jeans. No, now is not the right time, not after the heavy conversation we’ve been having.
Yeah, tell that to my dick.
“Yeah,” she breathes out, “I can understand it more now. I remember one time when I was in the kitchen making cookies with Mom. I think it was around Christmas?” Her eyebrows pull together like she can’t quite get the memory right and I reach down to smooth out her brow. She shakes her head. “Whenever it was, Dad came in and walked right up to Mom, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck. Then the next thing I knew, they were dancing in the kitchen, the cookies forgotten and Mom’s laughter filling the room.”
I run my fingers through the soft strands of my woman’s hair. It hurts my heart that she lost her mom so early on her life, but I’m glad she got to see what love looks like. I wasn’t so lucky. Instead of seeing the kind of love I wanted for myself, I got to see what I never wanted in my life.
“I always told myself that I wanted the same kind of love,” her voice is thick with emotion.
“I’m glad you have that memory, Fallon.” There must be something in my voice because she looks up at me. I get lost in the blue grey of her eyes, trying to map them and understand the beauty in them, but I swear the color shifts slightly every time I look in her eyes. It all depends on her mood. “I didn’t learn from my parents about the kind of love I wanted, I got the opposite lesson.”
She winces, “Divorced?”
“Yup,” I pop the p. “Dad couldn’t keep it in his pants. I think he’s on wife number four at this point, maybe five.” I shrug one shoulder like it’s no big deal and, now, it really isn’t. “I haven’t really talked to him in years. Mom’s a good woman, she had much better luck in the love department when she met my stepfather.”
“I’m glad she found him then.”
“Me too.” I squeeze her against me tighter and then lean down to press my lips against hers.
What I intend to be a soft and sweet kiss, she comes alive when our lips meet. I pull her to straddle my lap. The gasp she lets out when she feels how hard I am for her, I growl against her lips.
“I’m always hard around you, Beautiful,” I groan as she grinds down against me.
When she arches her back, her hard nipples dig into my chest. Just as I’m about to pull her shirt off and bury my face in the valley of her breasts, her stomach growls. The way she jerks back, her eyes wide and her cheeks pinking in embarrassment, makes me grin.
She presses her hands against her belly and looks down with a scowl. “Way to embarrass me stomach,” she scolds her body.
I throw my head back and laugh, my heart feeling lighter than it has in years. Being around this woman is good for me. I’ve never been around someone whose presence is healing.
The yelp she lets out and her arms wrap around my neck when I stand up with her still in my arms. I don’t let go of her until I sit her down on the kitchen counter.
“Let me feed you,” there’s a teasing lilt to my voice as I wiggle my eyebrows at her. She groans and buries her face in her hands. I pull them away and shoot her a look as I shake my head. “Don’t hide from me, Fallon. It’s my pleasure to take care of you.”
Her voice is small and curious, “Is it wrong that I like it as much as I do?”
“Nope.” I grin and wink before kissing her again, this time keeping it short.
When she slides off the counter, I make a sound of displeasure in the back of my throat. She sasses me, “What? I want to take care of you too.”
Fuck.
“When you put it like that…,” I let my words trail off and kiss her forehead.
Working with her to make dinner should feel strange, but it doesn’t. We move around each other with easy and it feels like we’ve been doing this for far longer than a matter of days. It feels like we’ve stood side by side forever.
It’s nice.
It’s terrifying.
While it’s not easy, I push away the feeling of not being good enough even as it tries to well up inside of me. I know I need to share more with her, she hasn’t been afraid to be vulnerable with me.
Losing her mother shaped her into the woman she is, and she opened up to me honestly. She deserves the same thing from me.
Even though it’s difficult.
Even though I don’t want her to be able to see my weaknesses.
“I wasn’t planning on leaving the military,” I admit softly. Her movements pause for a moment before she just makes a humming sound to let me know that she’s listening. “It was my intention be a career soldier.”
“What changed?” Her question is a gentle prod, but there’s no judgement in her voice, only curiosity.
“My contract was coming up and I knew it and was planning to stay in,” I start. “Then we were sent out on a mission. It went sideways fast. I don’t know if it was the intel we had or what went wrong, but it was too much.”
“You lost people?”
I swallow hard and nod. When I glance at her, she’s pale, and my mind immediately goes to her brother. I want to kick my own ass. “Fuck,” I groan, “I don’t want to worry you.”
She shakes her head. “This isn’t about me, Hutch. You are allowed to have your own reasons for choosing discharge. I want you to be able to share that with me, in whatever way you’re comfortable.”
I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her against my chest. “I don’t want to make you more afraid for your brother. It can’t be easy being the loved one at home.”
“It isn’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m not proud of my brother.” She pauses, her eyes wide and filled with vulnerability. “And you.”
“Beautiful,” I growl.
I kiss her hard, wanting her to feel just how much her words mean to me. Joining the military was a hard sell for both my parents, but I wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Because neither one of my parents wanted me to join up or understood my decision, they’ve never told me they were proud of me.
“You’re so damn good for me,” I whisper against her lips and feel hers curve into an answering smile.
It might not be good enough for her, not with the echoes of my memories haunting me, but I’m going to make sure that I’m the man who holds her heart. I’ve already given her mine even if she doesn’t know it yet.