Chapter 15 #2
“You… sure?” she croaks, lifting her head to look over at me.
“Damn sure.” As far as I’m concerned, bringing Hattie home with me is the best possible outcome.
I pull into the Circle K parking lot and throw the truck into park. “Gonna get you a BioLite. What flavor do you want?”
“Not grape.”
I’m grinning when I leave my truck. “Not grape it is. Stay put. I’ll be right back.” I shut the door and pop the locks just in case, even though I don’t see anyone hanging around the convenience store.
When the cashier rings up my three bottles of BioLite—Berry, Citrus, and Lemon Lime—I shoot Margaret a text.
Me: I’m taking Hattie to my place. She doesn’t want to freak your mom out.
I pay and walk out, and my phone beeps before I’m back in the truck.
Margaret: And you think she WON’T freak if H doesn’t come home???
She has a point.
But I don’t ask Hattie about it because my girl is asleep when I get back to the truck. I know because she’s snoring the cutest little snore.
I text Margaret back.
Me: If they ask you where she is, tell them. She’s safe with me.
Fifteen minutes later, we pull up to the farmhouse and the porch’s motion light clicks on.
I’ve got a 20/80 chance of getting Hattie upstairs without waking Pop.
But even though the odds are against me, I try to be as quiet as possible, closing both truck doors with barely a click, which is harder than it sounds while trying to keep Hattie still and upright in one arm.
But my chances shrink to zero as soon as I get her through the front door.
“Is your… dad asleep?” Hattie’s voice is about twenty decibels above a whisper.
We’re standing just outside Pop’s bedroom door.
I put my lips next to her ear and whisper as softly as I can. “I hope so.”
She hiccups.
“Let’s get you upstairs.”
At first, she tries to climb them with my help, but she’s so wobbly, before we reach the landing halfway up, I sweep her into a bridal hold.
She gasps in surprise and then giggles. Pop heard that for sure.
Oh well.
I’ll be the first one to tell him this is worth it. Carrying her up to my room is a sugar rush.
Upstairs, I set her on the counter in the bathroom. “I’ve got a brand-new toothbrush, and you can take a shower if you want.”
“Yes to the toothbrush,” she says, then shakes her head, and the movement almost throws her off balance, even though she’s sitting and I still have hands on her. “No to the shower… for now.”
“Got it.”
I give her the toothbrush, but when she wrestles with the plastic packaging with no success, I hold out my hand.
“Can I help?”
Hattie nods and hands it over. “Not usually thi—” She hiccups. “This pathetic.”
I narrow my eyes, popping out the toothbrush. “You’re not pathetic. You should’ve seen me the first time I got drunk.” I turn on the tap, wet the toothbrush head, and top it with toothpaste.
She takes it from me and pops it in her mouth. “Teuw me dat shtory,” she commands around the toothbrush.
Fighting my grin at her ridiculous cuteness, I nod. “I blame Griff. He poured half a bottle of Crown into his camping canteen, and we drank ourselves sick in one of the store sheds.”
Hattie pauses the brushing. “How oud?”
I clear my throat and sniff, embarrassed. “Twelve.”
Her mouth, full of toothpaste foam, falls open. I laugh.
“Yeah. Old enough to know better, but too young to know when to stop.” I roll my eyes at the awful memory. “Once we stumbled back to the house, it took Mom and Pop about three seconds to figure out what we’d been up to.”
“Were dey mad?”
I huff. “Mad? Hell, yes, but even though Pop could chew us out when we messed up, when he was real pissed, he’d get quiet, and that was always worse.”
Hattie pulls the toothbrush out of her mouth, leans over the sink, and spits as delicately as possible. Then she straightens.
“Worse?”
I turn on the tap, nodding. “They took care of us and sent us to bed. Next morning, Pop was banging on our door at five a.m. sharp, fed us a breakfast of runny eggs without salt and we were in the fields planting slips by hand until the afternoon.” I curl my lip.
“Fertilized that field with my puke. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. To this day, the smell of Crown brings that memory rushing back.”
“Eww.” Hattie wrinkles her nose. So fucking cute. “You won’t wake me up at five to eat runny eggs will you?”
My laugh is like an uppercut. “No, sweetheart. Never.” I take the toothbrush from her and rinse it. She cups a handful of water to her mouth, rinses, and spits again.
I offer her the hand towel and she dries her face and hands.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I need to pee,” she announces.
I help her down from the counter. “I’ll leave you to it.”
In my room, I find her one of my softest T-shirts and a pair of sweats. When I hear the toilet flush and the faucet run, I head back to the bathroom and knock gently.
Hattie murmurs something that at least doesn’t sound like Go away, so I open up. She has her forearms braced on the vanity and she’s staring at her reflection in the mirror.
“Jeez… I look rough.”
Her face is pale and her eye makeup is a little smudged, but she’s still the most beautiful thing that’s ever been under this roof.
“Nah.” I step behind her and smile at her reflection. “You’re a knockout. You just need some rest.”
She snorts but lets me guide her across the hall to my room. I leave her to change while I hit the bathroom and brush my own teeth.
I check my watch. It’ll be two a.m. before I get to sleep, but I don’t fucking care.
Back in my room, I find Hattie’s dress in a puddle on the floor. It’s a sight I really like. But not as much as the one of her in my bed.
When I quietly shut the door, she squeezes her eyes tight and brings a hand to her head.
“You okay?”
“Mm… Room’s just spinning.”
“It’ll do that.” I cross the room, grab the lined wastebasket by my desk, and move it to her side of the bed. “Just in case.”
She groans. “Please tell me I’m done puking.”
She sipped the BioLite on the ride home, and that stayed down. Gotta be a good sign. “You’re probably done puking. Time will tell.” I reach for the switch on the bedside lamp. “Okay if I turn the light out?”
Hattie doesn’t open her eyes. “Mmm hmm.”
I kill the light, kick off my boots, and shed my jeans and shirt, leaving me in boxer briefs and a white T.
“Did… did you just get naked?” Hattie asks, sounding awestruck.
“No-o-o,” I say through a laugh. “Still have boxers and an undershirt. Promise.”
Silence.
Then—
“Darn.”
I swear, this woman.
Failing to smother my laughter, I climb under the covers with her. I get close, but I don’t touch her. She’s still not feeling great, and I want her to know I’ll leave her be.
But as soon as I go still, she wriggles. “Where are you?”
“Right here.” I reach for her hand under the covers and squeeze it.
“Would… would you…” She doesn’t finish.
“Would I what?” I don’t tell her the answer is yes, no matter the question.
I hear her take a deep breath—a courage-fortifying breath. “I’ve never… spooned.”
Jesus, I’m so glad she can’t see my shit-eating grin right now.
“Want me to spoon you, honeysuckle?”
Her voice goes timidly soft. “Yeah.”
Then I feel her turn onto her side, her back to me.
And when I curl around her—my chest to her back, one arm locked around her middle, her ass tucked against my lap—it’s like I’ve notched cleanly into my place in the universe. The one custom-made just for me.
With my nose in her hair, I breathe in her sweet apricot scent and sigh all the way to my toes.
“You feel so fucking good.” I can’t help that it comes out like a growl.
Hattie lays an arm over mine. “You feel good. I feel terrible… No. That’s not true.” She squeezes my wrist. “I feel better than I did at… at… where were we again?
“The Grouse Room,” I say through my chuckle.
“The Grouse Room,” she echoes, enunciating carefully. “Grouse Room… Anyway, thank you for coming to get me… for bringing me here.”
I scoff. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much I wanted to.”
Her yawn warps her next words. “But… yeer…. so… b-busy.”
I hug her tighter to me. She’s right. But the thought of not going to get her when she called? The thought of not prioritizing her over a good night’s sleep or a productive day tomorrow? It seems wrong down to my core.
Maybe in a way nothing else has before.
Even when Mom got sick, I put the farm first. Maybe that was because taking care of the farm meant taking care of her and Pop. Maybe it was because work was the only thing I had control over back then. Maybe it was a little of both.
But this feels different.
There’s a real possibility I could lose this place—part of it in less than three months and the rest of it a season or two down the road when I can’t make ends meet—and that scares the crap out of me.
If this shit with Uncle Paul would’ve happened a year ago, I’d have left nothing to chance. Not one night’s sleep. Not one lost hour of daylight.
But now?
“The farm is not the only thing that matters.”
A tiny jolt runs through Hattie’s body. She lifts her head off the pillow and looks back at me over her shoulder. The moon is still high outside, and the curtains in my room are sheer. Her eyes find mine in the near dark.
“Beck… Are you… talking about me?”
“Hell, yes, I’m talking about you.”
I barely make it out in the dimness, but she bites down on a smile. Then she rolls over in my arms, facing me. The feel of her breasts against my chest and her thighs pressed to mine stymies my breath. My hands ache to move over her body, but I keep perfectly still.
It’ll be hours before she’s sober, I remind myself.
“But… what about you?” she asks.
I frown. “What do you mean?
Hattie’s hands come up between us and she hooks them on my shoulders. “Who drops everything for you?”
The question makes my throat tighten so fast, I almost choke. I clear it hard. “Griff, of course… If I would need him.”
“If?” Even in the dimness, I can tell she’s searching my face. “You don’t need help… on the regular?”
Shit. Why is my heart suddenly thrashing in my chest?
I clear my throat again. “Javier steps up when Pop falls or if I need to take him to a doctor’s appointment.”
Hattie smiles. “He’s your friend.”
A laugh startles from me. “He is.” The fact she recognizes that my foreman is more than an employee warms me from the inside like good whisky.
She’s never even met him. Only heard me talk about him.
How he teased me about having her over. How he’s first in line to sample a new batch from the micro distillery.
She tilts her head into the pillow, almost hiding one eye, grinning at me. “I’d drop everything if you called me.”
“Hattie,” I growl. My heart twists with some potent mix of awe and longing. I cup the back of her head, wanting so badly to pull her to me and kiss her hard.
But I won’t.
We’re touching practically head to toe. Already, this is testing my restraint. I want to kiss her. Taste her. I want everything. I’d love to make her come like I did in the store shed. I’d love to make her come with my mouth.
But I’m not taking any chances she’d regret it tomorrow. Not a single touch.
It’s dark, but I’d swear her half-hidden smile turns wicked. She leans in and I freeze, sure she’s going to kiss me.
Which is fine.
This is fine.
She can kiss me, and I can handle it.
Maybe.
But her lips hover over mine, so close I feel her breath. And then she passes them by, moving over my cheek to my ear.
“I’d drop everything if you called me,” she whispers. “Maybe even my pants.”
Then her forehead thumps my shoulder, and she’s out.