31. Bash
31
BASH
Bash had stared at the wall all night, too abuzz with spoons to sleep. He was sure Faye hadn’t gotten any either but there’d been zero chance of him rolling over to find out. Nope . He and his body and his restless cock had stayed fervently on their side of the bed all night long.
He never should’ve kissed her. Should never have allowed it to be anything more than a peck. All he’d done was get his own hopes up for something he could never have. He’d been tempted by the fruit and he’d taken it.
But damn it he didn’t regret feeling Faye melt into his arms just once.
Sleeping next to each other afterwards had been a terrible idea too. Because how was he supposed to turn off his memories of her plush lips and her soft hips pressed up against him? It was enough torture to know what she looked like when she didn’t wear anything at all, but to know her in her barest form – the one where emotions slid in – of kissing her as well?
Agony.
Last night had been the best kiss of his life all because of Faye, and now the chances were slim that it’d ever happen again .
They’d gotten carried away in the moment.
End of story.
Did Bash know for certain though? No. Because he’d hardly spoken to her all day.
They’d manoeuvred around each other after waking up, like always. Had breakfast with his family, like always. Gone on one last final ramble through the fields like they’d done every day. All of it in a near total silence that was—What was the word he was feeling? Agony.
He’d tried to smile and make normal conversation, but at breakfast he’d decided to hang around his nieces and soak up their attention, since he didn’t know if he’d see them again soon, and on the walk he’d stayed beside Matt for the same reason.
Only now … he was stuck with Faye.
Literally.
The radio of his car finally announced the cause of the motorway backlog: an upturned lorry that’d skidded in the slush of melted snow. Three hours of driving and they’d been sitting idle for one of them. Miraculously no one was hurt, but it was going to take a while to pick up twenty thousand chocolate biscuits – and an eighteen-wheeler – off of the road.
“Oh my god,” Faye said, somewhere between a gasp and an irritated moan.
Bash cut off the engine once more and slumped back. “I guess we’re stuck.”
One hour since they’d last travelled at any speed, and they’d not even moved half a mile.
The sky turned black with its early sunset. Bash was hungry and grouchy and still in a hungover state of horniness from having his hands on the woman less than three feet away to his left, last night.
He should never be allowed to act on his stupid impulses again.
“There’s a junction not far ahead,” he said, rubbing at his temples to try and lessen the headache that came on from wondering how long they’d have to sit here. “I think we should get off. Find another route home.” Though everyone else in this three-lane crawling traffic probably wanted to veer off at that junction too.
“How?” Faye sounded just as irritated, and for a reason which made no sense to Bash, it turned him on even more.
She looked pretty today – she was always beautiful – but today her shoulder-length blonde hair was a little wild from wearing a beanie on the walk, her nose permanently pink.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Could you look on Maps ?”
Faye pulled up the app on her phone, typed, then moved her fingers around the screen.
Bash chose to close his eyes and rest his head back. Nothing in front of them moved anyway so it didn’t really matter if he looked at the road or not. The ignition wasn’t even turned on.
“Oh! Wait—wait—wait! ”
“Waiting,” he mumbled. “It’s not like I’ve got anything else to?—”
“I have the best idea.”
“—Do.” Bash peeled open an eye.
That pissed off look on Faye’s face like she’d contemplated getting out of the car and walking the rest of the way back to London had gone. She held up her phone and, intrigued, Bash listened to the beep of the dial tone.
“Darling! Hello!” Came a bright and masculine voice on the other end.
“Hi Dad.”
Morris Whittaker. Bash had met the stereotypical Englishman more times than he could count over the years. Now grey, he looked a lot like Faye – or Faye looked a lot like him. He’d never seen Morris and Faye’s biological mother in the same room to be able to differentiate the resemblance.
The man was a golden retriever on steroids. It was so strange to Bash to try and re concile the person he knew, who always had a smile and a story to tell him, with Faye’s recollections of arguing and fighting with her mother from when she was a child.
“Where are you?” Faye asked, and it was the bounciest Bash had seen her all day.
The signal was scratchy from where Morris and his wife, Ruth, were supposedly still on their Norwegian cruise. He recanted the last few days of their holiday whilst Faye’s leg bounced impatiently.
Bash didn’t know why she was so anxious. It wasn’t as if they were in a rush.
“Listen, Dad,” she cut in and he could imagine the way Morris’ mouth would snap closed, “we’re stuck in back to back traffic just outside of Oxford. It’s getting dark and the road is already getting icy. Can we stay at the house?”
Ahhh . So that’s where Faye was going with this. Bash didn’t realise she was that desperate to get out of this car that he too was stuck in.
“At ours?” Morris sounded surprised but recovered expertly. “Yes, of course, if you’ve got your key with you, or else you’ll have to go to Mrs Papplewick for hers.”
“Yes, I have it. Thank you so much, Dad.”
“No problem. Also, who is ‘we’? Who are you with?” Morris preened.
Faye cast an uncertain glance his way and Bash raised his brow up expectantly. “ … Bash.”
“Hi, Mr. Whittaker,” he said loud enough for the phone to pick up his voice. I kissed your daughter last night and considered ripping her clothes off on my parents’ sofa. How are you?
“Oh, hello Bash,” Morris chirped. “Good to hear your voice.”
“Yours too. I hope the cruise is going well.”
“Everywhere is beautiful, Bash. You could find some real inspiration here.”
Travelling through Scandinavia had been on his bucket list ever since Freddy first went back with his parents to visit Denmark – their birthplace – and returned with stunning photos. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They listened to Morris reel off where he and Ruth had been so far, since they didn’t have anything else to do. Bash was able to move the car forwards twenty feet. Then another twenty. Whatever had happened up ahead must’ve begun clearing. That, or there were going to be a lot of crushed biscuits on the road.
“Dad’s house isn’t far,” Faye said when she eventually put her phone away. “If we can get to the next junction then it’ll only be half an hour.”
“If,” Bash tutted.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Me?” He gripped the steering wheel, feeling Faye’s eyes like laser beams against his cheek.
“You’ve been ignoring me all day.”
Bash could bite back, but that wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry if I have. I don’t know when I’m going to see any of my family next so I wanted to make use of the last of our time with them.”
“Oh … right.” The pause set Bash on edge. Had she been expecting a different answer?
He hadn’t been ignoring her, but Faye hadn’t exactly been all friendly as usual with him, either. He didn’t think the very ends of her fingertips had even touched him today.
He took his eyes off of the crawling traffic to glimpse her picking at her fingernails.
“Tell me what you’re thinking?” he said. And if his senses were correct, she was thinking about this distance between them that couldn’t decide if it wanted to shrink down or open up like an even wider cavern than it already was.
Her answer was hesitant. “That you’re regretting last night.”
God , Bash hated how small she sounded, and it was all his fucking fault. He knew better than to mess with Faye’s emotions like that, all bec ause of some silly tradition, but he hadn’t ever expected she’d say yes to kissing him in the first place.
This was all uncharted territory and Bash had no compass, let alone a map.
He gulped, already hating himself for this. “It was just a kiss.”
“Was it?” A flash of brown moved in the corner of his sight as Faye’s low eyes shifted his way.
Bash didn’t expect her challenge in response, and he was well aware of how much courage it would have taken her to press him like that.
What answer did she want? The one he craved to say, or the one she wanted to hear? Trapped in a car that wasn’t getting to their destination any time soon was the absolute worst place to be having this conversation.
“I don’t know.” His heart hammered, tongue feeling thick in his mouth as he kept his gaze straight ahead of him. “Was it?”
No. Say no.
It took Faye a distressing minute as she fiddled with something in her lap to answer.
“Yeah … ” Fuck. “Like you said, we just rectified my lack of ever experiencing that tradition before.”
“Exactly,” Bash trailed off.
That’s exactly what it was …