Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
“It’s the oxygen.”
Her favorite hospice nurse, Shannon, had just started her shift when she woke Hanna, who was slumped sideways in the chair beside her mother.
Lisa had been silent for two days.
“What?”
Shannon’s lips twisted, a sunburst of wrinkled wisdom emerging around them.
“It’s basically life support at this point, love. If you took her off, it would only take a few hours, maybe less.”
Hanna wished she could go back to sleep.
“I just thought you should know that’s what’s happening. Knowledge is power.”
Shannon had repeated that to her a few times. Knowledge was power. Funny how it seemed to drain her of any.
“What would you do?” She sat up in the chair, stretching her neck, unsure if she’d ever sit properly again between the weeks spent on hospital floors, cancer center chairs, and air mattresses. “If it were your mom?”
Shannon laid a hand on Hanna’s shoulder, her eyes saying everything she needed to, but she affirmed it for her anyway.
“If the only thing keeping her here is a machine…”
Hanna nodded, the weight pressing down on her chest building quickly. It was that thing again, that goddamned anger she couldn’t escape. Anger that this happened. Anger that the surgery hadn’t worked. Anger that the chemo only made her worse.
Anger that she’d been staring at her lifeless face for two days, desperate for it to be over but unable to say it out loud.
Anger that she had to be the one to call it.
Her lungs squeezed against the responsibility. Who could possibly make that kind of choice? She reached for her phone—it was muscle memory.
But who the fuck would she call?
Hanna woke with a start, her fingers threaded through sheets that didn’t smell like her, sweat pooling at the back of her neck. Her breathing was stilted—it always was after one of her hospice nightmares.
“Hanna?”
She couldn’t focus her eyes, her lungs pushing against her ribs with shallow gasps.
“Hanna, it’s okay.”
The evening sun streamed into his bedroom, painting the blacks and grays in a soft amber. She must have fallen asleep waiting for him to get home. Milo’s hand pushed against her chest with a soft insistence, finding the right pressure to force a breath to catch.
“You’re okay,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes, letting the pressure pull her back into her body. When the fire in her muscles finally burned out, she covered his hand with hers, staring at the face of the clock inked on his arm.
“You were screaming.”
“I had a nightmare,” she managed, still unsure when she’d even laid down. Milo brushed her hair away from her face, his body flush against hers as the room fell back into focus.
“I won’t make you tell—”
“I was in the hospice home again, having to make the call to kill the oxygen. It, uh, it’s just a recurring dream I have.” His lips fell into a sorrowful tilt as he moved to lift his hand, but she pinned it. She wasn’t ready to give up the anchor yet. “Sorry I was screaming.”
“Don’t apologize,” he insisted. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” she repeated.
She risked a glance at his eyes, filled with all sorts of thoughts he didn’t share.
His lips parted, but before he could ask her if she really was okay again, she silenced him with a kiss, shifting his hand lower.
She’d caught him off guard with her tears the night before—once the dam broke, she couldn’t get it back.
But she trusted herself a little more, believed that she could bend and not break, even if only for a little while.
And if she didn’t trust herself, she trusted Milo.
She felt the resistance bubble against his lips as she ran her hand across his side. She pulled away.
“I’m supposed to go to dinner with Matty,” Milo mumbled. “I was just coming back to change.” He pushed forward, enveloping her completely, his leg wrapping around hers and tangling them into his blankets.
“Won’t take long,” Hanna said in the space between them.
Milo glared, his hand wandering over her neck and cradling her.
“Thanks for your vote of confidence, Arizona.”
It felt so fucking good to laugh into him.
“Please?” In most situations, it was the magic word, and this was no exception.
Milo flicked his watch over and groaned. “I had it all planned out for when I got home.”
Hanna hooked her fingers through his belt loops, pulling his hips into her as she sighed and sank her teeth into his neck. The rough stubble against her lips brought her mind back from wherever it’d wandered. She crawled her hand lower, brushing over him, breaking his plans in half.
“Fuck, okay. You make a good argument,” Milo muttered, reaching under her to scoop his arms around her back.
He rolled so she fell over him, her messy curls tickling the edge of his jaw as she giggled.
She was still righting herself as her dress came off, his hands rolling the hem of it over her back with a flourish.
He pulled at the clasp of her bra and slipped his tongue between her lips, a low rumble in his chest the only sound as his hands cupped her. Hanna tried to concentrate on his belt, but her senses shot into overdrive as his mouth swirled across her skin.
He slid his hand to her hip, pushing down on her so she could feel every inch of him.
“Why aren’t you naked?” she asked, bouncing over his lap.
He laughed, pushing her away and standing to strip off his work clothes.
She lay across his bed and watched what little show they had time for while he fished in his nightstand for a condom.
It landed beside her on the bed as his knees settled into the mattress.
He reached forward, stroking her back lightly before pulling back on her hips so she landed in his lap, her knees spread over his as he kissed the back of her shoulder.
Her head fell back onto his shoulder, baring more of her neck to him as she weaved fingers into those dark curls. When she looked down, she could only see skin and ink, his hands covering as much of her flesh as they could, his hips pushing against hers.
Milo reached forward, dipping his hand between her legs. Her breath hitched, but there was no alarm, no panic. Only pleasure as he circled her and nipped at her ear.
“Goddamnit, Hanna,” he hissed into her skin. “You want it so bad.”
She nodded, pushing her hips into his lap, grinding against him with zero regard for playing coy. They could play games later.
He twisted her mouth toward his, consuming her in a kiss so smoldering she struggled to see straight as his fingers moved faster. He clutched at her throat, the pressure sending her onto another plane, where nothing bothered her at all. The shift in her moaning must have registered with him.
“Fuck, are you going to come for me, Hanna?”
She nodded, whining against his hand.
“Keep going, oh my god, don’t pull away from me,” he ground out, pushing down on her hips and forcing her to sink into the blinding pleasure.
“Stay right here with me. You can do it, Hanna. Shhh,” he whispered, pressing his fingers into her chest. “You don’t want Sara and Matty to hear you scream my name, do you? ”
She cried out against him, her vision exploding into white bursts of light as he pushed her beyond the edge and straight out into the icy Bay, her entire body seizing against his touch.
He pulled her chin toward him and kissed her, but she could hardly feel anything as her cells rearranged and merged into a new version of her body, one that now knew what it was capable of with the right encouragement.
“Come back to me,” Milo whispered, laughing into her shoulder.
“I need you present for this part.” Hanna fought the haze in her head, finding where her mind and her body met and attempting to bridge the two.
As he nudged her knees further apart and felt him pressing against her, the line snapped, her two halves fusing back together.
He ran his hand up her spine and pushed her forward onto the bed, dragging his fingertips back down to her hips and digging them into her soft curves, teasing her.
Milo tore at the condom, the foil wrapper floating to the floor as she braced herself.
It wasn’t regret she felt as Milo Galantis, the too-hot, too-unavailable groomsman she’d had at the top of her stay-the-hell-away-from list ran his hands over her back, curling his fingers into her skin before he fucked her into absolute oblivion.
No, she’d never regret knowing what it felt like to wrap around his thighs or have his hands crawl her ribs, or knowing what he sounded like when he raced toward a climax she’d been dreaming about for months.
It was, in fact, a grief all its own.
She’d have to mourn the doubt she’d clung to about what it would be like with him. She’d have to lay to rest the plausible deniability that he was all talk and tease. She’d have to grieve the sick hope in the back of her mind that maybe—someday, somewhere—they’d be more than whatever this was.
“You’re so quiet,” Milo said, squeezing her hips. “You okay?”
Hanna swallowed and kicked herself for missing out on a good thing for no good reason.
“Sorry,” she gasped, arching her spine more to make room for him. But Milo moved away, nudging her so she rolled onto her back. He fell over her, like a favorite blanket, and leaned in, gripping the back of her leg for leverage.
“What’s wrong?” he breathed, nipping at her jaw. Hanna’s hands ran over his back, her nails dragging lines into his skin. He hesitated moving against her, the uncertainty in his muscles somehow the hottest thing he could have done.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she insisted. “That’s what’s wrong.”
His weight collapsed as he laughed. “I really wish I didn’t understand exactly what you meant.” He landed in a heap beside her.