Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
WALDEN
She talks while I cook.
Sits on my kitchen counter with her knees pulled up, bare feet dangling because I made her take off the ballet flats that gave her blisters, and she tells me about the letter Q lesson that went sideways when a five year old named Marcus asked if Q was a boy letter or a girl letter and the whole class devolved into a philosophical debate about letter gender that lasted forty minutes.
"Marcus is going to be a lawyer," she says, accepting the plate of eggs and toast I hand her. "Or a cult leader. It could go either way."
Her name is Hattie. Hattie Bloom. She told me in the truck on the drive from the mill to my house, offered it up like an apology. Like knowing each other's names after three months of texts is something she should feel guilty about.
Hattie suits her. Warm, a little old fashioned, unexpected.
She's shorter than I pictured. Rounder. Full hips, full chest, soft arms, a body that's built for comfort and designed to ruin me specifically, apparently.
Her hair is brown with gold running through it, pulled into a ponytail that's been losing the fight since she walked three miles uphill in August. Green eyes.
Freckles across her nose. Dimples in both cheeks when she smiles, which is often.
Pink mouth that moves when she chews, when she talks, when she's thinking.
She's thinking now. Fork paused halfway to her mouth, studying me across the kitchen.
"You're staring," she says.
"I stare. You text. We all have things."
The dimples appear. "You're funnier in person."
"I'm the same in person."
"No, you're not." She eats a bite of eggs. "In texts you're grumpy and efficient. In person you're grumpy and efficient but also you cook eggs for strangers and give them your spare room without being asked twice."
"You're not a stranger."
The flush that crawls up her neck is visible even in the dim kitchen light. She's been doing that since the mill. Blushing when she looks at me, then looking away, then looking back.
I know the feeling.
"Wal," she says carefully. "The texts were. I mean, I said things. Personal things. At 2 AM sometimes."
"I know. I was there."
"And you never told me you were three hours away. That you lived in a town my GPS might route me through."
"No."
"Why?"
Because the texts were the first thing in two years that made my chest feel like more than a storage unit for grief.
Because knowing you were out there, this funny, warm, ridiculous woman sending me paragraphs about the injustice of the letter Q, kept me going back to the phone every morning.
Because telling you any of that would've made it real, and I wasn't ready for real.
"Wasn't sure I was allowed to want something like that again," I say.
Her fork lowers to the plate. She sets it on the counter beside her hip. Swallows.
"Your wife," she says softly.
"Cora."
"You mentioned her once. Not by name. Just that you'd lost someone."
"Two years ago. Pancreatic cancer. She was thirty six."
Hattie doesn't flinch. Doesn't do the face, the one where people's eyes go soft and pitying and you can see them mentally constructing a sympathy card. She sits on my counter in her rumpled sundress with her bare feet swinging and says, "Tell me about her."
So I do.
Not the dying part. The living part. How Cora read three books a week, stacked them on the nightstand until the pile threatened structural collapse.
How she sang off key in the shower every single morning and never once cared.
How she picked Maple out of a litter at the shelter because Maple was the only puppy who didn't try to lick her face.
Cora liked things that didn't try too hard.
"She sounds wonderful," Hattie says when I stop.
"She was."
"And you think wanting something again means losing her."
My jaw tightens. She's a kindergarten teacher with green eyes and too much warmth, and she just walked into the center of my chest and turned on the lights.
"Yeah," I say. "Something like that."
Hattie slides off the counter. Bare feet on my kitchen floor. Five three, maybe. Comes up to my collarbone.
"Wal." She's standing close enough that I can see the individual freckles on her nose. "Can I tell you something I never said in the texts?"
"Yeah."
"I've been falling for you since the needy letter Q."
The laugh that comes out of me is rough. Broken at the edges. I lift my hand, and my fingers are in her hair before I've made the conscious decision to touch her. Her ponytail is half undone, the elastic barely holding. I pull it free. Brown and gold waves spill over my hand.
Her breath catches.
"I'm forty years old," I tell her. "I've got a missing fingertip, gray in my beard, and a closet full of my dead wife's clothes I haven't touched."
"Okay."
"I haven't been with anyone in over two years."
"Okay."
"I saved your number the first morning. Before you'd even finished texting. I saved it and I looked at it every day. Every single day, Hattie."
Her hands fist in the front of my henley. She rises on her toes. My other hand finds her waist, the soft curve of her hip through the thin cotton of her sundress, and I hold her there.
"Kiss me," she whispers.
I kiss her.
Three months of texts, of wanting, of reading her words at 2 AM and pressing my phone against my chest. My mouth covers hers, tongue sliding past her lips, and she makes a sound against me that vibrates through my whole body.
Her fingers climb from my shirt to my jaw, pulling me closer.
Sweet, warm, alive. That's what she tastes like.
My hands grip her hips, lift her back onto the counter. She wraps her legs around me, ankles locked at my lower back, her sundress riding up to her thighs. Soft, full thighs. My palms slide up the outside of them and she gasps into my mouth.
"Bedroom," she says against my lips.
I carry her. Hands under her ass, her legs around me, her mouth on my neck doing things that make my vision blur. Down the hallway, past the closed door to Cora's side of the closet, into the spare room where I put her bag an hour ago.
I lay her on the bed. She reaches for me, fingers working at the buttons on my henley, but I catch her wrists. Press them gently onto the mattress above her head.
"Slow down."
"I don't want to slow down."
"I've been thinking about this for three months." My mouth finds the curve of her jaw. The hinge below her ear. The soft spot where her neck meets her shoulder. She shivers under me. "I'm not rushing it."
Her back arches off the mattress when I scrape my teeth lightly along her collarbone. My free hand finds the strap of her sundress, slides it off her shoulder. Then the other one. She lifts her hips and I pull the dress over her head, toss it somewhere behind me.
Pink bra. Matching underwear. She catches me looking.
"Not the inappropriate pair," she says, grinning. "Those are at home."
"Next time."
Her grin falters into something softer. Hungrier. "Next time."
I strip off my henley. Her hands splay across my chest, warm and small, fingertips tracing through the hair there, down over my stomach. My muscles tighten under her touch.
"God," she breathes, looking at me. "You're so..."
"Old?"
"Hot. I was going to say hot."
That laugh again. The one she keeps pulling out of me.
I unhook her bra, pull it off. Full breasts, pink nipples already tight.
Beautiful. My thumb brushes over one and she sucks in a breath.
Then my mouth closes over it, tongue flat, circling the tight peak before I suck gently.
Her fingers grip the back of my head, nails scraping my scalp.
"Wal." Breathless already.
I switch to the other breast. Take my time.
Her hips roll against me and I can feel how warm she is through her underwear, through my jeans.
My mouth trails down between her breasts, across her soft stomach.
I press my lips to the curve of her hip while my fingers hook into the waistband of her underwear.
She lifts her hips. I pull them down, off. Toss them toward the nightstand.
Hattie Bloom is naked on my spare room bed with her hair spread across the pillow, her chest flushed pink from her cheeks to her breasts, green eyes watching me from under heavy lids. The most gorgeous thing I've seen in two years. Maybe ever. And I need to taste her before I lose my mind.
My shoulders push her thighs apart. She opens for me easily, already wet, glistening. I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh first. Then the other. She squirms.
"You said you weren't going to rush."
"I'm not."
"This feels like rushing in the wrong direction."
My laugh is warm against her skin. Then my mouth finds her pussy and she stops talking.
I lick through her slowly. Tongue flat, broad, bottom to top. She jerks under me. My hands grip her thighs, hold her open. Again, slower. Again, circling her clit with the tip of my tongue, light enough to tease.
"Oh god."
Two fingers slide inside her. Tight, soaked, clenching around me immediately. I curl them forward, pressing up, finding the ridge of tissue that makes her hips buck off the bed. My mouth seals over her clit, sucking gently while my fingers work in a slow, dragging rhythm.
Her hand finds the back of my head, pushing me closer. Her thighs tremble against my shoulders. The sounds coming from her are wrecked. Little gasps, broken moans, my name tangled up in all of it.
"Right there." Her voice cracks. "Right there, please, don't stop, don't you dare stop."
I increase the pressure. Tongue circling her clit in tight, deliberate strokes while my fingers curl forward, pumping steadily.
Her back arches off the mattress. Her thighs clamp around my head.
She comes with a cry that echoes off the spare room walls, pussy clenching rhythmically around my fingers, hips grinding against my mouth.
I work her through it. Slowing the pace, easing the pressure, licking gently through the aftershocks until her body stops shaking. Then I press a kiss to the inside of her thigh, wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, and look up at her.
She's staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes. Chest heaving. Both hands fisted in the sheets.
"Where did you." She swallows. Blinks at me. "How are you that good at that?"
"Two years without practice. Lot of motivation."
That startles a laugh out of her. Shaky, breathless. She reaches for me and I move up her body, covering her with mine. Her legs wrap around my waist, soft and pliant from the orgasm.
"Condom," she murmurs against my mouth. "Please tell me you have a condom."
My wallet. Back pocket. I dig it out, strip off my jeans and boxer briefs while she watches with those green eyes tracking every inch. My cock is hard, thick, straining. She reaches for it, wraps her fingers around the shaft, and the groan that tears out of me is obscene.
"Hattie."
"Just looking." She strokes once, slow. Twice. Her thumb swipes over the head and my hips jerk into her hand. "Making sure you're real."
"I'm real." I pull her hand away before I embarrass myself. Roll on the condom. Position myself between her thighs.
One long stroke. All the way in. She's tight and hot and still clenching from the orgasm, and the sound I make is not something I recognize. Her nails dig into my shoulders. My forehead drops to hers. Both of us breathing hard, adjusting, feeling every single inch.
"Oh fuck." Her voice is thin, wrecked. "Wal."
Long, deep thrusts. Slow at first because she feels too good to rush and I want to remember every second of this. Her hips rock up to meet each one, finding a rhythm with me. I hook my arm under her knee, open her wider, change the angle. She gasps and her eyes roll back.
My hand slides between us. Thumb finds her clit, already swollen. Firm circles timed with every thrust. She whimpers, wraps tighter around me, nails raking down my back.
"Harder," she whispers.
I give her harder. One hand gripping the headboard, the other between her thighs, my hips driving into hers. Deep, full strokes that shake the bed frame. She cries out and pulls my mouth down to hers, kissing me through the building wave, moaning against my tongue.
"Come for me, Hattie." My thumb presses harder, circles faster. "Let me feel it."
She breaks. Clamping down around my cock so hard my vision whites out. Her whole body seizing, back bowed, mouth open on a scream she tries to muffle against my shoulder. I feel every pulse, every clench, her pussy milking me.
Two more strokes. I bury myself deep and come with her name on my tongue. Hard enough that my arms shake. Hard enough that the headboard cracks against the wall.
We collapse together. Breathing ragged. Her head on my chest, my fingers in her hair. Maple's nails click on the hallway floor, settle outside the door. The house is quiet around us in a way that doesn't feel empty. It feels full.
"Wal?" Her voice is sleepy already. Warm against my skin.
"Yeah."
"I'm really glad I typed the wrong number."
My arm tightens around her. I press my mouth to the top of her head. Close my eyes. Her heartbeat against my ribs, fast and slowing, matching mine.
"Me too, Hattie. Me too."