Chapter 17 #2
If Joe had stood still for a second longer, Jude might have pointed out that the necessity of planning the wedding rather hindered any exploration of Hannah’s residual feelings for him.
Joe’s marriage to her brother was, to put it crudely, the most effective cockblock imaginable – and at this moment, Jude actively resented it.
‘You take the bathroom first,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll sort you some blankets and stuff – put them on the couch.’
‘OK,’ he said, making his way past her to the en suite and shutting the door behind him.
Five minutes later, he emerged in a pair of cotton pyjama bottoms and a plain white t-shirt.
Again, he felt the odd embarrassment that came with being seen out of proper clothes by someone who’d already seen him in far less.
The situation was discomfiting – it felt vaguely improper – and he hated it.
The awkwardness seemed to represent everything they’d lost: all the things that had been right and were now completely wrong between them.
Hannah went to take her turn in the bathroom and Jude sat down on Joe’s vast sectional sofa, next to the pillows and throw blankets she’d neatly stacked there.
He put his head in his hands. He’d never felt so confused – so frustrated.
A lot had happened today; so much his head was swimming with the effort of processing it.
There were things he wanted, and things he shouldn’t want; things it was dangerous to want, but which he hungered for anyway.
And then there were things he’d thought he wanted: stuff he was supposed to care about, like keeping Larry onside, that now seemed small and far away and barely significant.
He was, without question, going to have a terrible night’s sleep.
He probably wasn’t going to sleep at all, he realised, because on top of this baseline turmoil, he’d be tortured by the knowledge that Hannah was in bed in the next room – her body separated from his by a single wall, not the thousands of miles he was used to.
He groaned aloud.
‘Er – are you OK?’ Hannah asked. She was standing in the doorway of the guest bedroom, peering at him in concern – her face scrubbed clean of makeup and slightly shiny with moisturiser.
The intimacy of seeing her like this did something delicious and painful to his stomach.
She was wearing a pair of red pyjama shorts and an oversized t-shirt with an angry-looking cat on it; nightclothes that hadn’t been designed for the male gaze, yet which qualified as the sexiest sleepwear he’d ever seen.
He smiled thinly. ‘I’m fine.’ He’d expected she’d go straight to bed – not reappear looking heart-stoppingly hot and worried about him. It was more than his nerves could take.
‘I’m just going to get a glass of water,’ she said, padding across the wood floor with bare feet. Her toenails were painted a deep, dark red; the same colour she’d always favoured.
A second later, Jude heard her sigh angrily from behind him. ‘Oh, for fu—why is everything so . . .’
‘High up?’ Jude finished for her, laughing softly. ‘Because only freakishly tall men live here, I suppose.’ He stood and followed her into the kitchen, reaching around her to stretch up into the cupboard she’d opened and fetch her a glass.
Shit. Standing this close to her had been a massive mistake. When he glanced down, he could see every shade of copper and gold in her strawberry-blonde hair.
She turned to take the glass from him before he could make himself step back, bringing herself chest to chest with him.
‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice soft and tremulous. Her eyes were wide, and – damn it – she was biting that lip again. He put the glass on the counter, beside her. Still didn’t move away.
‘Hannah, I—’ he began. ‘I wish that—’
She was looking right at him. Breathing heavily. The silly cat picture on her chest was rising and falling at speed.
She shook her head, like she was trying to throw off a trance. Decisively, she placed a gentle hand on his forearm, and Jude’s stomach lurched as he realised she was pushing him away. Telling him without words that she didn’t want to hear whatever he’d been about to try and say.
If that was her intention, though, something went wrong. For a few seconds, her palm rested against his bare skin. Then, instead of applying outward pressure, she let it slide slowly upward – let her body tip forward into his, like she was stepping into an embrace.
Instinctively, his arms went around her, pulling her even closer.
She actually shuddered as he buried his right hand in the soft hair at the nape of her neck and his left found the small of her back.
They stared at each other, gazes locked, and it was as if time stopped.
The moment hung between them, suspended, like it was a fixed point in history around which the rest of their lives would turn.
‘You have to stop doing that,’ Jude heard himself whisper, his voice hoarse. He brought his hand from Hannah’s neck to her face, cradling her jaw, then gently used his thumb to pull her bottom lip from between her teeth. ‘Every time you do that, I want to kiss you. It’s going to kill me.’
She turned her face slightly. Slowly kissed the pad of the thumb he’d just touched to her mouth. Then – and he wasn’t even sure whether she did it deliberately, whether she intended it as encouragement – she bit her bottom lip again.
It had often been like this between them: Hannah either refusing, or not quite able to articulate what she wanted from him, and Jude making up the ground between them, hoping he had it right.
With hindsight, he recognised it wasn’t the healthiest dynamic; that when they were together, this imbalance of honesty hadn’t helped them.
Driven by desperation to hear he wasn’t alone in needing her – needing them – he bent his head to whisper in her ear.
‘Do you want me to kiss you, Hannah? I’m going to make you say it.
’ He let his lips hover near her neck – let her feel him breathing there, right above the spot that, many times, he’d kissed and licked and bitten until she moaned.
‘Yes.’ The word burst out of her, quiet but urgent – like it had escaped her mouth without permission. ‘Please.’
And now he was on fire, that whispered entreaty enough to rob him of restraint. He kissed his way across her throat and up to her lips, which she opened for him without hesitation.
The kiss was frantic. Wild. Furious with all the things they’d needed to say and do over the past four years, but hadn’t.
It was fraught with the truths they’d failed to tell, the sex they’d longed for and not had, the arguments they hadn’t started or resolved.
It wasn’t the answer to anything – it offered no resolution – but it felt too good to stop.
Jude let his fingertips trace the hem of Hannah’s pyjama top, and she groaned into the kiss, wanting his hands on her.
‘Ask me to,’ he whispered.