Chapter 33
“I’m going to water the hanging baskets on the porch if you want to shower the creek off you.” Tanner kisses my cheek. “There’s a toothbrush under the sink you can have and leave here.” He winks before slipping out of bed and leaving me in his bed.
His bed is centered between two small windows, covered with a white comforter and is set on an old brass frame. His Detroit baseball hat hangs from one corner post and there is a stack of Lauren and Rhett’s books on his nightstand, their spines cracked and pages curled.
I crawl out from under the covers and step over to his antique dresser.
An oak wooden tray lays on top with some loose change, a photo of him and Mayben, and a ticket.
The ticket from Winnie’s recital. He has a closed lid hamper in the corner, thin white curtains over the windows, and the wood paneled walls are painted white up here too.
It’s lived in, homey and every bit Tanner Auclair.
The bathroom is outdated with an antique mirror hung over the metal framed sink.
I open the curtain to the clawfoot tub, and I crank the cross-handled faucet.
I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a shower more.
The only reason I even get out is to save Tanner the tiniest bit of hot water.
I wrap my hair and body in a towel, find said toothbrush, use it, and drop it into the cup next to his.
When I step into the room, Tanner is shuffling through his dresser shirtless. Just like the rest of him, his back is sure and strong. My nail marks still trace up and down the breadth of his shoulders.
“Are you undressing me with your eyes?” he asks with a sly grin as I wring out my hair with the towel.
“Maybe.” I smile and he places a kiss on my shoulder as he brushes past me into the bathroom.
Once I dry off, I crawl back into his bed, listening to him hum in the shower.
I’m almost asleep when the water turns off.
I don’t pretend to be asleep, but I don’t make any move to show I am awake either.
Instead, I watch him walk out with a towel slung low around his waist. That trail of hair below his belly button shouldn’t be as provocative as it is but I can’t take my eyes off it.
“You’re naked,” he points out smoothing down his mustache as he gazes down at me.
“My dress is full of sand and dirt still.”
He curses under his breath.
“Come on,” I beckon him this time. “Get back in bed for a bit.”
And with little fight, he crawls in next to me, his arms find their way around my waist and pull me into him.
“You know.” He kisses my neck. “I still have those handcuffs.”
I don’t answer him. I just let the pulsing heat in my body answer for me.
“Good morning.” Tanner stretches next to me in bed.
I check the little analog clock on his dresser and see that it’s seven in the evening and we have slept all afternoon. Sitting up, I rest my arms across my knees and take in the softly lit room around me. The evening light glows in soft patches, catching the dancing dust particles as they float by.
“Let me make you dinner,” he says, trailing his fingers up the curve of my spine.
“I’ll help you.”
“Absolutely not. Let me take care of you. Please.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
He scoffs and props himself up onto his elbow. “After that performance? I’d say you deserve someone making you dinner at the very least.”
I lean down to kiss him and pull off the bed with a wink and slip one of his shirts on. “Oh, I was willing to offer my services in payment for dinner, but you insist we’re even…”
“Wait, you can still offer your services!” he says hurriedly and reaches for me, narrowly catching me by my hips.
He sits up and pulls me to stand between his legs.
“Dinner.” I smile down at him, resting my hands on his shoulders, playing with the ends of his hair. It has dried a complete mess at the fault of my hands. I smooth down his mustache as his hands grasp at my butt under his shirt.
He drops his forehead against my chest. “Fine.”
Kissing the top of his head, I drag him out of bed and sit at the kitchen table while he flips on the radio in the windowsill. Once that dish towel is tossed over his shoulder, he gets to work.
This is the life I had dreamed of from the beginning.
Warm summer evenings with open windows, creaking wood floors, a kind man cooking me dinner.
The smell of earth, bug spray and sunscreen.
Spending our days at the creek and our nights listening to crackling old radios.
Maybe it’s not too late to still have it. The only thing missing is Winnie.
When we finish eating, just like the other night at his parents’ house, we don’t rush to clean up.
Instead, we sit before our almost cleared plates and just talk.
In the glow of the candles, and under his gaze, this weekend settles into my bones, I push away the fear that this little world we have found ourselves in will rear its pumpkin head at midnight.
“Oh, this song.” Tanner tilts his head to listen better. “So good.”
I don’t know the song, but it doesn’t stop me from getting swept up with Tanner as he tugs me out of my seat.
He wraps me in his arms and sways me about the kitchen as he sings softly along with the music.
It’s a crooning country song about love and we dance around his worn kitchen floors.
Soon his singing goes from soft and sweet, to downright ridiculous as he belts out the words that don’t make much sense.
Something about the guy telling the girl to leave because they both know they just can’t help themselves.
I am laughing too hard to care and by the time the song ends, we are breathless in a messy kitchen.
“We should do the dishes,” I groan as he kisses me.
“I’ll wash. You dry and put away.”
“I don’t know where anything goes,” I point out but he shrugs and tosses the rag over my shoulder.
“You’ll have to learn at some point.” Another stolen kiss. “Come on.”
He gives my butt a slap and we clear the table and counters together. With each dish I dry, he tells me which cabinet or drawer it belongs in and soon I don’t even need to ask. I just wonder what on earth he did to use this many dishes.
“Now.” He sighs and leans back against the counter. “Am I driving you home? Or will you let me keep you another night?”
“Winnie won’t be home until tomorrow night.”
“Good.” He nods. “I have a few things in store for us.”
“Oh, do you?”
“Yes. First thing is laundry,” he says seriously, then leads to me to a little washroom next to the front door. The washing machine inside has an agitator in the middle and it looks like it has probably lived more lives than something of that age should have to.
“That basket has some clean shirts if you want one that doesn’t smell like dinner. I pulled them off the line yesterday,” Tanner tells me. “I’m going to get the hamper and your dress to put in. I promise it’s not a greasy load, so it won’t hurt your dress.”
“Off the line?” I ask, and he nods. “The dryer died a few months ago and I just haven’t bothered replacing it yet. And besides, it reminds me of when I was little. My mom never used the dryer for anything other than storage.”
He taps the doorframe like he’s fighting himself to leave a room I am undressing in.
Once he peels himself from the doorway, I slip the shirt off over my head, drop it into the washer then find a thin flannel in the basket and pull it on.
It’s falls to my mid-thigh, and it smells like fresh air and sunshine, like the wicker basket it was in. It’s my new favorite shirt.
When Tanner returns, he stops dead in his tracks, eyes wide at the sight of me.
“Is this okay?” I ask.
He curses, throws the clothes into the washer then turns on me. His eyes are a molten brown and darkened with an unbelievable shade of hunger.
“You.” He shakes his head and lowers his mouth to my neck, then my shoulder, but the flannel becomes a roadblock when it won’t stretch any further.
“You can take it off,” I tell him, but he shakes his head.
“I want you in my shirt for what I’m about to do to you.”
“Speaking of,” I push him off me, “I believe I promised to pay you back for dinner.”
There are flashes of lightning in his eyes as I kneel in front of him, blinking up through my eyelashes. I take my time in teasing him and running my hands along his legs before reaching up to the button of his jeans. His boxers do very little in hiding his want from me now.
There’s a confidence he brings out in me.
I never would have initiated this before, but here I am, learning just as much about myself as I am about him.
Little pockets of ourselves that no one else has privy to.
Like the sound of him moaning my name, the freckle on his hip just below his waistline, the way he gazes down at me with those lust drunken eyes.
After, he pulls me right up to his lips and the slow caution he took with me last night in my bed and even this morning is gone.
Instead, now, it is replaced with yearslong hunger.
He presses me up against the wall, his lips cursing into my neck.
He’s commanding of my body, and it, in turn, knows exactly how to respond.
Even as he navigates us back upstairs and into his bed.
Our hands desperately grab at each other to somehow get closer than we already are. Sounds of my gasps, his grunts, and skin-meeting-skin fill the room, and soon we are coming undone together again.
We spend a few minutes catching our breath to the sound of the buzzing fan blades and the gentle clank of the chain tapping against the glass light globe. I have no idea how I am going to go more than a few hours without this after today.
“So. Hannah,” Tanner whispers into the dark room. “Tell me about your day.”
“Even the boring parts?”
“In fact, only tell me the boring parts, then we can just re-enact the exciting parts after.”
I turn so that my leg and arm are draped over his body and we do exactly that.