Chapter 30
banana bread confessions
Rowan
Me
Lydia
What’s it like being my favorite?
Me
Like I found my calling.
Lydia
Maybe you did.
You have my permission to never tell me what happens on this, the Lord’s day, after 11:30.
Me
Yes ma’am.
“Who are you texting?”
I slide my phone in my pocket as we climb the steps of Hannah’s front porch. “Your mom.” The statement rolls off my tongue, smooth and casual.
She scoffs in disbelief. “Very funny.”
My side-eye stops her in her tracks on the middle step. “If you say so.”
Her jaw goes slack as I breeze past her to the top. “Oh my god, you’re texting my mother!”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” I bark, spinning to face her.
All goes still for a beat, a calm before the storm. Then, like a bull launched out of a chute, Hannah lunges, hands reaching for my pockets. I deke and dodge to let the girl have some fun before I wrap her up, back to my chest, arms pinned over her front.
“Rowan!”
“Hannah!” I laugh.
I release her and she spins around with one palm open. “Let me see your phone.”
So cute when she’s riled up.
“Never,” I reply.
Hip jutted, she hauls in a long breath through her nose. “Maybe I’ll steal your phone while you’re sleeping. Better watch your six, big guy.”
I smirk. “Is that your way of asking me to stay the night?”
Her eyes flicker with uncertainty a moment before she pulls them away. Everything bright and beautiful drains from her face in an instant, and I know I’ve inadvertently crossed a line. She buries a hand in her purse.
When she finally retrieves her keys, she turns them over in her hands while I silently curse myself for saying the wrong thing.
I nudge her chin with my finger until those gold-flecked irises find me. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she breathes in a voice too wounded for comfort.
“You set the pace here, okay? I’m sorry if it sounded like I was pressuring you. That wasn’t my intention.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, shakes her head. “No, it’s not that. I…” Her thought trails off until only silence remains.
I want to say something, to fold her up in my arms, to kiss the tight lines of those lips away until they’re soft again. But I refrain. She decides what comes next.
“I—” She swallows hard. “I want you to stay, but…”
“But what?”
“How do I ask you to stay to just…sleep?”
To imagine, even for a moment, that she thought I might not stay if the only option was sleep breaks me a little on the inside.
I grab her hand, weave our fingers together. “Baby, if you wanna sleep, we’ll sleep. Tonight, tomorrow night, every night, it doesn’t matter. End of story.”
“Okay, maybe not every night,” she teases, the tension in her shoulders easing a bit. “But tonight, yeah. Then maybe we can play it by ear, if that’s okay?” Hesitation fills her words like tar running through a sieve.
There’s something she’s not telling me. And I haven’t forgotten what happened a few nights ago.
“Of course it’s okay. You decide, Hannah. But please talk to me.”
Her head bobs as deep grooves form between her brows. “Right, okay…so…I-I’ve had a hard time sleeping since…”
Since the night I beat Daniel’s face in—she doesn’t need to say it. My jaw clenches at the memory of him pinning her to the car.
The admission spills out softly as she continues, her gaze bouncing around in the void behind me. “It’s like the quiet is too quiet and the dark is too dark and my mind starts playing these tricks on me. Kristen stayed over last night and that helped, but—”
“You called Kristen?”
Hannah nods. “I didn’t plan to. I was getting some work done to take my mind off…everything…and I ended up calling her and…” Her tired shrug fills in the rest.
I don’t need to ask why she didn’t call me when I already know the answer. She didn’t want to be a burden. She thinks it’s not a big deal, that she’s fine, and she shouldn’t bother others with her problems.
Telling her she has it all wrong or how badly I wish she would’ve called me isn’t what she needs right now. She needs a friend, a shoulder. A safe place to rest her head.
I take the keys from her hand and kiss her forehead. “Let’s go to bed.”
One eye flutters open under the weight of Hannah’s stare. Over her shoulder, the clock on her nightstand, partially obstructed by her mass supply of chapstick, reads almost 1:00.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” I murmur.
She shifts closer on the mattress, and I set a hand on her hip to brace her against me.
While I showered the smell of algae-ridden carnival water off earlier, she popped my clothes in the dryer.
Her “generous offer”—literally her words—to let me wear my own hoodie to sleep in was quickly shut down.
I’d rather see her in it anyway. So I slid into my boxer briefs for bed, but decided to throw my shirt back on at the last minute because I didn’t want to make things more difficult than they already were.
The less access to bare skin under the covers the better. For both of us.
Wrapped in the thick fabric of my sweatshirt, she pulls the sleeves down over her palms and tucks one under her pillow. “My brain won’t turn off.”
I push the hair off her neck. “You’re safe. I promise.”
“I know. My mind’s just going a mile a minute.”
The stove light down the hall glows dimly beyond the bedroom door. I told her it’s safer to sleep with it closed in case of a fire, but she was adamant it stay open. I didn’t push.
My vision adjusts to the dark until I can make out the shape of her face and the contrasted whites around her eyes, the round tufts of her cheeks.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask.
She traces the ink on my bicep with the pad of her finger.
“I wanna know what all your tattoos mean.” Her touch glides lower, delicately grazing the puckered flesh on my forearm.
“And how you got this scar.” Her eyes stop following the path of her finger and lift to mine.
“And how you like your eggs in the morning.”
I find her hand under the pillow. “Over medium”
The shadows above her cheeks darken atop her smile. “Same.”
“I’ll tell you anything you wanna know. Just ask.”
Her lashes dip and she goes quiet. I think she might have dozed off until she squeezes my hand and says, “What were you thinking when that little boy came up to you at the carnival?”
When you join the military, there’s no course on how to handle interactions with strangers in public. Ostentatious guys like Dubs eat up the attention like bottomless wings and beer on Pay Per View fight nights at the bar, while I’ve always found them to be a little uncomfortable.
“That must happen to you all the time,” Hannah adds.
“More so with adults, but yeah, often enough.”
“Is it weird?”
“It’s definitely less weird when they’re small, can’t say Qatar, and cute as hell.”
“Oh my god, right? I wanted to carry him around in my pocket,” she coos.
Our breathy chuckles intermingle in the dark as she shuffles closer.
Her knee wedged between my thighs, ankles locked together, I tug her flush against me.
Those legs of hers are warm, and I know if I dove my hand under the blanket, I’d find nothing but smooth skin all the way up to the hem of her sleep shorts.
But I’m in control, I remind myself. I keep my hand on top of the comforter, holding her close, the other folded around hers under the cool pillow.
“Did seeing him make you think about your dad?”
My heart stumbles. Of course she’d witness my interaction with a googly-eyed boy eager for his dad’s return and know I was thrust back into the memory of the day my dad didn’t come home.
A lump forms in my throat and it’s a long time before I manage to speak. “I still can’t eat banana bread.”
She doesn’t reply even though I know what I said makes zero sense without context. Her thumb coasts over my knuckles—waiting, ready to listen.
“My mom,” I croak, voice rough. I clear my throat. “Mom had just pulled a loaf of banana bread out of the oven when the soldiers rang the doorbell. The smell, the taste…I just can’t.”
“Makes sense.”
“When Micah said his dad’s coming home soon I thought to myself, I really, really hope that’s true.” I pause, take a breath. “And then this overwhelming sense of gratitude came over me.”
Her brows crinkle. No judgment or confusion, just curious. A gentle nudge to go on. And the déjà vu of it all—lying side by side in bed, whispering secrets in the dark—washes away every hesitation I’ve had about talking through the shitty headspace I’ve been in recently.
“I wasn’t planning to retire for a long time. But then, with Mom’s accident, everything changed, and I’ve struggled with this resentment over losing my career before I was ready for it to end.”
For months, I’ve shouldered the guilt of feeling this way about something as trivial as a job.
Yes, the work I did mattered and I’m damn proud of it.
But Mom and Nana and Pops always tried to instill the importance of family over glory.
And until Micah looked up at me with those big, bright eyes and I saw that baby girl on his mom’s hip, I think I’d lost sight of that.
“In four generations of Shaw men, I’ll be the first one whose children won’t have to watch their dad deploy. They’ll never have to worry about whether or not I’ll come home. I won’t miss birthdays or baseball games because…I’ll actually be there. I’ll be home to tuck them in every night.”
Hannah’s mouth tilts in the shadows, and I trace the lines of it with my finger.
I think I memorized the taste of her lips the moment I kissed her.
When I marched us out to that parking lot earlier, it’d dawned on me how insanely lucky I was to be present in my life.
For Mom. For the family I dream of having one day.
And for the woman I get to keep for a couple more weeks.
To waste another second not kissing her suddenly seemed insane.
“I’m just really, really lucky,” I whisper, dipping in for a kiss. Brief. Tender. Reverent.
She pulls back an inch, mouth moving over mine. “You’re gonna be a really good dad.”
An unbearable ache settles behind my ribs. I kiss her again to try and staunch the pain.
I know the answer will hurt, but I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to her. “Tell me something real, Hannah.”
Her gaze lances through me as sharp as the swallow that moves down her throat. “I really wish I could be there to see it.”