Chapter 39
do you believe in fate?
Rowan
“Dammit, Cecil!” Artie pounds a fist on the table, lamenting the dreaded checkmate his friend just doled out.
“It’s called chess. Ever played?” Cecil taunts.
Artie mumbles a curse into his coffee then levels a finger at Hannah. “And you? You gonna flatten me like a goddamn sniper this round?”
Hannah lifts a brow as she sets the board. “Keep playing like that and I won’t have a choice. Just cause you’re old doesn’t mean I go easy.”
“Oh, sunshine’s got extra snark today,” the big man snaps back.
Tom chimes in from my left, positioning his pieces to match up with Cecil. “Less talking. More playing.”
I snicker into my lap while I check my phone for the hundredth time. Nerves twist in my gut. Three texts split between Mom, Bri, and Dubs and they’ve all gone unanswered for hours.
Hannah squeezes my knee under the table. “I’m sure everything’s fine. They’re just busy.”
Logic tells me she’s right. If something was wrong, I’d hear from them. I give her a nod and tuck my phone away, trying to brush off the worry and focus on the present. Hannah’s hand permanently attached to my leg is the easiest thing to settle on.
She’s never shied away from touching me, but today it’s as if she can’t bear to lose any point of physical connection.
Something changed between us after she found the bullet-wound scar last night.
A single kiss to my shoulder, then my lips, and it was like the storm clouds parted.
She may have initiated it, but I dove in head first the moment I felt the shift.
We made out like teenagers for hours before our mouths finally called it, too swollen and tired to continue.
She never asked for my hand between her legs.
Just a gentle, insistent need for contact.
Nothing more than our mouths moving fast, then slow.
Hard, then soft. The push followed by the pull.
It was more passionate than any sex I’ve ever had.
I twine our fingers together, her knee knocking mine. She smiles, then discreetly juts her head. A reminder of why we came here today.
“So.” I clear my throat and shift in my seat. “Guys, I’m putting together a memorial service for my grandfather. Nothing fancy, just a small thing up at the lake house on Wednesday. Would love if you guys could come.”
“Of course we’ll be there,” Cecil says.
The others nod in agreement, and my girl squeezes my hand in a silent I told you so.
Then Artie goes and ruins it. “Hey!” he roars, every head in the VFW turning. “Memorial for Norm on Wednesday. All you sons of bitches better be there.”
No less than thirty pints are lifted in the air.
Hannah’s smile beams, even brighter when she clocks the glare on my face. “Don’t worry, big guy. Nothing a grocery run and a few extra chairs won’t fix.”
A shriek pings off the walls of the garage. I look up from the photo album in my lap to find Hannah bouncing on her feet. In her hands is Pops’ infamous briefcase.
“Is this it?” she asks, utterly giddy.
I chuckle. “That’s the one.”
She hugs it to her chest. “Oh my gosh, he kept it. That’s the cutest thing ev—STOP!” Briefcase forgotten, she rummages through the tub at her feet and pulls out the also-infamous needlepoint art my Nana made all those years ago. “Rowan! You have to hang this in the cabin.”
“Where? There’s no wall space in there.”
Hannah runs her fingers over the embroidered message: Hope is an anchor for the soul.
“I’ll find a place,” she says, voice reverent as she carefully sets it aside. “What goodies are you finding?”
“Just some old pictures.”
Her excitement returns and she prances over, wrapping her arms around my neck from behind to look over my shoulder. “I wanna see.”
Together we flip through the pages. I find a picture of my mom and me on the day I graduated from basic training—Hannah tells me I have her eyes. An older picture of me and Dad earns a, “Well, you may not have a daddy kink, but he definitely might’ve.”
We stumble across a dusty album at the bottom of the box documenting Nana and Pops’ wedding day where they were only nineteen years old.
“She was so pretty,” Hannah says, admiring an alternate wedding photo from the one on display in the cabin.
We filter past a few more until Hannah slows, pulling a framed portrait hidden beneath a stack of albums into view.
She points to the woman under Pops’ arm. “Who’s that?”
I blink at the picture, then at her. “That’s Nana.”
Her brows twitch. “That is not the same woman.”
I inspect the picture more closely, wondering if maybe I’m mistaken. But it’s clearly Nana and Pops—I’d know my own grandparents. They pose together on the dock, his arm flung over her shoulder. Probably taken a few years before she passed, if I had to guess.
“No, it’s definitely her,” I say.
“Huh…” Hannah goes quiet for a beat, swallows. “I guess I’ve only ever seen her in the wedding picture on the mantel. Never thought about what she looked like when she was older.”
“Makes sense,” I admit. “There’s, like, fifty years between that picture and this one.”
She nods, looking intently at the image a final time before placing it back in the box.
Her eyes widen on a gasp as her arm shoots back inside. She pulls out a new photo and waves it in my face, a taunt. “And what do we have here?”
I take one look and grit my teeth, cursing my mother for feeling it necessary to share every picture she ever took with my grandparents. A teasing finger pokes me in the ribs and I try to swat the photo away, but Hannah’s too quick.
“I don’t know, Rowan. She looks like a heartbreaker.”
She plants herself on my lap, presenting the picture for mutual inspection like we’re two parents admiring our newborn for the first time.
Fourteen years ago. Senior prom. Me in a tux. My date, Amy Carson, in a fire-engine-red sparkly dress. The two of us posed in front of Mom’s azaleas back home.
I nuzzle my nose into Hannah’s hair. “Jealous, baby?”
She tuts. “Of this little hussy? Not at all. What even is her name? Let me guess. Crystal. Jenny. Rebec—”
“Amy.”
“Amy.” She purses her lips, eyes slitted. “Of course that’s her name. I could take her.”
Stifling a smile, I ease the photo out of her hands amidst her protests and toss it back in the box before I use my mouth to shut her up.
“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.” Hannah jerks, head snapping toward me. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
I plop down beside her on the stairs at the top of the dock. She’s in my hoodie again, knees tucked inside. The lake stretches out before us, smooth under the midnight sky, moon hidden beneath a blanket of clouds.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she admits. I figured as much when I rolled over and found her side of the bed empty.
“And I like cloudy nights,” she tacks on. An amused huff escapes my lips. “What?”
“Nothing, it’s just I don’t think I’ve ever noticed night clouds.”
Hannah shrugs. “It was a Maddy and me thing.”
The air goes quiet as we watch the clouds overhead. When I turn back to her, a few strands of hair have fallen from her ponytail. I sweep them behind her ear. “Everything okay?”
She looks at me for a beat, lips twitching in a forced grin before she glances away.
“No masks with me, runaway.”
A real grin this time. “Good grief, you and my mom really are besties, aren’t you?”
“Yin to my yang.”
She pauses and I watch a nervous lump move down her throat. “Do you believe in fate?” she asks.
“As in...”
“As in there’s something or…someone bigger than all of this. Like, maybe there’s someone up there who knows more than we do and everything down here that we call ‘random’ or ‘coincidence’ aren’t really that at all. But, maybe it’s all just...someone looking out for us.”
“Like…angels?”
She pops a sheepish shoulder, teeth raking over her bottom lip. “Maybe? I don’t know—I…never mind, it’s stupid.”
“Hey,” I coax, turning her so I can see her eyes. “It’s not stupid. I don’t know about angels or God and all that, but I don’t believe everything in life happens by chance alone.”
“You don’t?”
I shake my head, gaze dancing across her face. “Meeting you on that sidewalk five years ago felt like fate.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhmm,” I hum, voice dipping. “And when I concussed you with that metal door?” Her chest bounces in a tight chuckle. “Felt like fate too.”
“Fate’s kind of a bitch sometimes,” she quips.
My mouth wants to smile, but the next memory won’t let me. “And when he hurt you…” I pull her forehead to mine. “Fate, kismet, destiny, whatever the hell you wanna call it, all I know is it didn’t feel like coincidence that I found you.”
Her breath coasts over my jaw. “Rowan.”
“I think I was meant to find you.”
Maybe I do believe in angels or God or whatever because this thing between us has always felt bigger than me, bigger than her.
“Maybe someday you’ll find me and I won’t be such a mess.” It’s a sad attempt at a joke, but I can’t let it be funny. I won’t.
“Baby, you are not a mess. You’re strong and brave and intelligent and funny and beautiful and perfect and I—” I love you. I sniff sharply, jaw clenched to hold the words in. “You’re not a mess.”
I set my lips to hers, resting there. A breath in, a breath out.
She frees her legs and drapes them over my lap to angle herself to me, thighs nothing but skin up to the hem of the sweatshirt. Her hand finds the back of my neck and pulls me closer, gliding over my shoulders and down my bare chest.
“Can I touch your legs?”
Her nod is swift as she repositions my hand from her waist to her thigh.
I smile into the kiss, tilting my head, tongue diving deep as I smooth my palm over her skin. Up and up until my fingers dip beneath the hoodie and find only lace. “My god, baby, where are your shorts?”
“Sorry,” she breathes, but her kiss says otherwise.
I tug the sweatshirt back down, reluctantly finding a small tether of self-restraint. She’s half-naked and I’m in nothing but a flimsy pair of pajama pants.
“Rowan, no. I want you to.”
She hasn’t asked me to touch her there since before our make-out session two nights ago. I haven’t asked why and I never planned to. Hannah is in control here and it’s been that way from the start.
Pulling back, I meet her eyes. “Are you sure?”
Something flickers in her gaze and she looks away. “Actually I—”
“You’re allowed to change your mind,” I cut in, clearing more hair off her face.
She brings our foreheads back together, sagging side to side in a lazy shake. “No, I—I wanna know what you want.”
“All I want is for you to feel comf—”
“I do. I’m comfortable. I’m safe. God, I feel so safe when I’m with you.” A hard kiss that tilts me off my axis a bit. “But I need to know what you want. I promise I won’t break, I just…I need to know.”
My heart cracks at the rawness in her voice. Mine doesn’t sound any better. “Of course you won’t break, baby.”
“Then tell me. Please. What do you want?”
I level our eyes again, mine searching hers for any morsel of fear or hesitation. Nothing. All I see is a desperate need to know how much I want her. And trust. So much trust it wrecks me.
“One condition, Hannah. If you don’t want the same, you say no. You don’t hold it in here”—I tap her temple—“okay? You don’t pretend with me. Ever.”
She bobs her head twice, legs clenching over my lap to let me know how badly she aches right now.
“Say it, sunshine.”
“I promise.”
I stare at her long. The need for her thrums through my veins, pulsing a path into every limb. She waits as the seconds tick by. Waits until her body can’t take it anymore.
Expression eager, she begs, “Rowan, please. I need to—”
“I want my face between your thighs.” I’ve been living off the secondhand taste of licking her off my fingers and damn, I want to experience it from the source.
Hannah’s grin spreads slow, feline as she removes her legs from my lap, crosses them on the step below without breaking eye contact. She leans back on her palms and wets her lips—pure sin in a sweatshirt.
“On your knees, soldier.”