HIS BABY: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance

by April Lust

  “What’s wrong?” Evan whispered.

  “N-nothing,” Hannah stuttered in response, handing over Evan’s cup. “Drink up.”

  Evan did what she said, drinking deep until he gagged a little. Hannah did the same, practically draining her drink despite the bitter taste of the vodka against her tongue.

  “I’m nervous that…that someone might have followed you. It’s not that I’m not happy to see you…”

  “Really? ‘Cause it kind of seems like you think it’d be better if I never showed up,” Evan said, a little edge of sharpness to his tone.

  Hannah cringed at the implication, feeling all of her insides shrivel up in shame. “That’s not true at all,” she said softly. It was like she couldn’t quite access her anger, like it was buried between foot after foot after foot of solid rock that she’d erected to protect herself in the months that had elapsed since she’d last seen Evan.

  She saw Evan bite down on his bottom lip, rubbing his forehead as his brows furrowed up. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Hannah said bluntly, her old capacity to fire back quips at him slowly returning to her. “That’s not the case, not at all. I…I’ve waited for this moment for….well, forever,” she said honestly, the bitterness seeping back out of her voice as quickly as it had arrived.

  “Yeah?” Evan prompted her, tearing his eyes away from the floor to meet hers. God, he’s so beautiful, Hannah thought, soaking in all the details of his body from the top of his head to the bottom of his shoes. It was like she had mentally reconstructed him. He looked so perfect, so fucking undamaged. It couldn’t be real, could it? Am I still hallucinating? Am I still dreaming? Did I never wake up? Do I even want to?

  Hannah downed the rest of her drink and poured out another one, giving herself more this time. “You’re really late, you know,” she said, walking closer to Evan until barely a foot of space separated their bodies.

  “Am I?” Evan asked, and his voice was half-serious, half-teasing. Hannah didn’t know which half to focus on.

  “Yeah,” she answered, keeping her tone subtle and soft. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

  “What do you mean?” Evan asked, now obviously confused as he stepped forward, once again narrowing the space between them.

  “I, um, I—” Hannah sighed deeply and stared down hard at her feet, wishing she could click her heels together and teleport away from this situation. Why did she feel so vulnerable yet again? Why was she so scared of the man who’d saved her? Had she really acclimated to being alone so quickly? “I, um, I dreamed about you last night. That’s all.”

  Evan immediately grinned, his entire face lighting up like the brightest bulb imaginable. “What was it about?” he asked, stepping a little closer still to Hannah’s body.

  “I, uh, I…” Hannah trailed off, feeling her heart pound in her ears, as if she was about to spill a scandalous secret that should have never been spoken. “I, um, I have to check on Alex,” she quickly said as an excuse, moving away from Evan yet again as she walked back around to the couch with her drink, seeing Alex passed out on the cushions, tired from the beach.

  “Angel,” Evan said softly behind her after following her back into the living area. “Him, I mean,” he said as soon as Hannah sent him a questioning look. “He’s the sweetest kid. I can’t believe he’s walking now.”

  “Do you want to—do you want to take him to bed?” Hannah asked softly, a little afraid that Evan was going to reject her. But instead he nodded and smiled softly, reaching forward to take the sleeping Alex into his arms. “I’ll show you where the bedroom is,” she said as she began to walk back to this room.

  Hannah watched as Evan tucked Alex into his covers, stroking his cheek lightly as he pulled the blanket up to his chin, humming a little as he leaned back just to watch him sleep. “Beautiful,” Evan whispered, and Hannah smiled widely to herself. She knew he meant to say it so that she couldn’t hear, just a private observation between Evan and Alex. And that made it mean so much more to her—that he loved her child so deeply.

  Her eyes prickled a little, tears threatening to make their presence known. Hannah quickly dabbed at her eyes, making the moisture disappear before Evan could notice. She had cried more in front of Evan than she had in all the time that she hadn’t known him. It was annoying, how easy he seemed to find it to push her buttons and turn her into an emotional mess. But she couldn’t deny: he still had that power over her.

  Evan finally got up and gestured back out the bedroom door. Once again Hannah checked to make sure the sound monitors were all connected and functioning before leaving the room, leaving the door cracked behind her as they walked back out into the living room.

  Hannah, still holding onto her drink, slipped past the couches and television and went back into the kitchen, right across from the vodka bottle in case she needed more later. She leaned against the counters, stretching out her body so that it looked long and lithe.

  “Whatcha want to do now?” she asked Evan teasingly as she took another deep sip of her drink. Her tone had immediately changed, her body buzzing with a need that she couldn’t exactly identify. It took her a second to put her finger on it, until Evan looked at her up and down, clearly surveying all the easily missed details of her body while he had the chance. She realized what it was, then. I wouldn’t mind getting fucked until I scream, she thought. Until all my thoughts go away and it’s just warm blank static wrapped around my whole body.

  “I want to hear more about you,” Evan said, surprising her. She had half-expected him to immediately launch himself onto her body, dig into every inch with his nails until sinking inside with his cock. But no, instead he just leaned against the counter opposite her, staring her directly in the eyes, almost unnervingly deeply. “What have you been doing?”

  Hannah crossed her arms across her chest, trying to protect herself a little bit from his piercing gaze. “You know. Working. Got a job doing accounts for a business around here. Keeps the lights on.”

  “You like it?” Evan asked.

  “It’s honest work,” Hannah replied. “That’s all that matters to me, at least for now.” She had spent far too much time in her life doing crime or witnessing crime or having crime done to her. She was sick of it. Anything legal was a welcome relief.

  “And Alex? He’s been okay, he’s been developing…” Evan trailed off, like he didn’t know any of the proper terminology for early childhood development.

  Hannah nodded and smiled encouragingly, feeling like a kindergarten teacher giving a progress report to a young dad. “Yeah, he’s great. Very healthy. I’ve been able to take him to the doctor and there’s no…there’s no sign that anything went wrong, with Salvatore, you know,” she said, referencing both the time that Salvatore hit Alex and the incident in which he was left out in the cold despite his fever. God, Hannah could still feel anger boil up in her belly like a stew at the mere thought of Salvatore. That fucker had gotten off so easy, relative to everything he’d done. But he was gone. She didn’t have to be afraid of him anymore, and Alex didn’t even have to know his name. All thanks to Evan.

  “That’s good,” Evan said softly. He wasn’t smiling. Instead there was an expression of deep contemplation, some silent secret thoughts clearly rocketing through his brain, his entire consciousness lost inside his own mind.

  Hannah used the opportunity to finish her own drink and walk over to Evan’s side of the kitchen and examine his. He was doing all right, but he needed a little refill, so she filled up both of their cups to the rim and took her drink back, sipping on it slowly, as her body already felt warm with inebriation.

  “And you? Are you healthy?” Evan asked her after a minute, turning to look her in the eyes.

  “Boy, is that ever a loaded fucking question,” Hannah said with a laugh, trying to play it off as a joke despite the way her insides clenched up in response to his words.

  “Are you?” Evan persisted, his eyes still and un
blinking as he stared at her.

  Hannah felt the smile leak off her face, in slow little drips until there was nothing left. “I don’t even know what that means,” she said with a sigh. She didn’t have the energy to lie right now, not to him. Not to Evan. What was the point? He’d be able to tell anyway.

  “So that’s a no, then,” Evan replied, stepping closer to her but not touching her again. Hannah backed up anyway until her hips hit the kitchen drawers behind her back.

  “Listen, I’m fine. I’ve been totally fine. I’ve just been…waiting.”

  “For?” Evan prompted her, stepping a little closer until he invaded Hannah’s space a little.

  Hannah huffed out a laugh, but it was humorless and bitter. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “For me?” Evan suggested, stepping closer and wrapping his hand around her face, causing Hannah to close her eyes again, shutting them against the burning white truth hidden in Evan’s eyes. It was too fucking intense, looking at him like this with nothing in the way, nothing to prevent them from being honest with each other, from being vulnerable. From being open and true.

  “Yes,” Hannah whispered, the word burning her like a missile as it left her mouth. “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you. Every day, every fucking—every goddamned hour, I was waiting for you. Hoping to see you show up. Hoping for a postcard or—or—or anything, anything at all. I just needed something, Evan, some sign that you were still here. But instead I’ve just assumed that you were…that you were gone, one way or another. That you’d left the planet or left…left me, left me for some other, better life. All I could do was wait. And now you show up and I’m supposed to just be ready for it? What do you expect from me, Evan? What do you want?”

  Evan swallowed, his throat working visibly as Hannah opened her eyes to face him, the desire to be brave always overcoming all else. “I want you,” Evan said, stroking the side of her face. “I want you to be with me. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Is that…is that asking too much?”

  Hannah shook her head, unsure of what to say. “Of course not. Of course. No. I just—I just don’t know what I’m able to give you. I feel like I’ve withered away into nothing this past year, with nothing but Alex to keep me afloat.”

  Evan took her hand into his, lifting it up to press it against his mouth, applying a sweet open-mouthed kiss to her skin, practically lighting it on fire with pure sensation. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You had to be alone, and it was worse than what I had to do, hard as that was. You had to hold yourself together for your son, all by yourself, waiting on edge the whole time without being able to do anything about it,” he said slowly but confidently.

  “Yeah,” Hannah said in response, feeling all of the air leave her body like a balloon deflating as she took his words in.

  “What was your dream? From before, the one you obviously don’t want to tell me about?” he asked. Hannah was surprised. Once again he caught her with her shields down, and her face must have betrayed her feelings, as he leaned in again and brushed his thumb along the furrow between her brows. “Just relax. Tell me.”

  Hannah blew out her breath all at once. “You were here, or, well, not here, but with me. Alex wasn’t there. I don’t know where he was in the dream.” She sniffled a little and wiped at the side of her mouth in between sentences. “We were just…in a forest somewhere, I guess. And you were there. You popped up out of nowhere and…I’d never dreamed that before, so it was hard for me to tell, you know, it was hard for me to tell that it wasn’t real. Especially because…” Hannah sighed again and trailed off, focusing on her drink for the time being.

  “Because?” Evan prompted her, his face wide and curious, like he desperately needed to hear the end of the story.

  Hannah shrugged, trying to fake a casual vibe despite the fact that her heart was once again pounding painfully in her chest. “You were dead, I think. That’s all. It was like you came by to tell me you were going, you know, going away for real. For good.” She shrugged again, but she had a sense judging from Evan’s concerned face that it wasn’t a very convincing gesture.

  “I’m not dead,” Evan said softly, picking up his drink but not yet taking a sip.

  “I know that now,” Hannah said with a short, punctuated laugh. She tipped her cup up to pour half of the vodka down her throat, the sick burn of the liquid grounding her, giving her something to focus on rather than the mental pain of this godforsaken conversation.

  There was nothing to be gained here, Hannah felt. It was like Evan was squeezing at her barely-closed wounds, trying to extract more blood from her even though she’d been dripping all year without him. Anger simmered deep in her gut, her stomach acid gurgling with it—although maybe the alcohol she’d guzzled down in the last few minutes had something to do with that. But still. There was some injustice happening here, Hannah was sure of it. She felt like Evan was a ghost, sitting here teasing her and making her spill all of her secret feelings with no real promise that he wasn’t about to disappear yet again.

  “Do you?” Evan asked in a barely audible voice. He was still just holding his drink, staring down into it as if he was addressing the alcohol instead of Hannah. “Do you know that now? Because it feels like…like you don’t even know I’m here.”

  Hannah groaned a little and slammed her now-empty cup back down on the counter. “What do you expect from me? I’m exhausted, Evan. I don’t have the energy to be happy that you’re back yet. Is that okay? Does that make any sense to you? I’m fucking…I don’t even know if you’re going to be here tomorrow. So what’s the point in letting my guard down if you’re just going to go off again?”

  Evan was silent a moment, his thumb skimming over the rim of his cup. “You were mad at me for leaving. You’re still mad at me,” he murmured softly a moment later.

  Hannah scoffed a little, but a column of heat started building at the back of her neck, sliding down her back until her entire body felt flushed. “Why would I be mad at you? You did what you had to do.” It was true. Evan didn’t leave her for shits and giggles. There was a job to do, and he went off to do it. It would be ridiculously unfair for Hannah to hold that against him. Wouldn’t it?

  Evan nodded a little in agreement, but then he opened his mouth to reply. “You’re fucking pissed at me, and you’re pissed at yourself for being pissed. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  Hannah could have sworn her bones started shaking underneath her skin. She didn’t know if she was angry or nervous or something else entirely. “I don’t—that’s stupid, I didn’t—” She cut herself off, sighing deeply and marching back over to the other counter to pour herself more vodka. “That’s dumb,” she said, but it wasn’t very convincing, not even to herself.

  “You were alone for a whole year,” Evan said. “It makes sense that you’d be—”

  Hannah cut him off then, interrupting him even though his mouth was still hanging open. “No, no, that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been alone my whole goddamned life. What’s the difference, adding one more year to the list?”

  “Exactly,” Evan said. “So you tell yourself it shouldn’t bother you, because you’re so used to it. But it does bother you, doesn’t it, baby?” His voice dropped on the last word, becoming impossibly softer, almost fragile sounding. Hannah swallowed hard around another mouthful of liquor, needing something else to focus on other than the gorgeous breathless way Evan was talking to her. It was making her knees shaky, her legs going weak and wobbly. Don’t be a little schoolgirl. Be tough. Be strong, she coached herself, but the inner voice that usually bossed Hannah around sounded weaker, smaller now.

  Evan continued while Hannah sipped on her drink. “You’re so used to being by yourself, taking care of yourself and Alex. You don’t want to depend on anybody.”

  “I don’t depend on anybody,” Hannah retorted, feeling weirdly defensive and on edge.

  “But isn’t it tempting?” Evan said. “Wouldn’t it feel so fucking good, to ju
st sink back and let someone take care of you, for once?” He put his drink down on the counter behind him and crossed the space in between their bodies, leaving an inch between his mouth and Hannah’s.

  “How did you get so smart?” Hannah said with a humorless laugh, ducking her head to avoid Evan’s piercing gaze. She felt exposed, completely naked to Evan’s eyes, and not in a fun way.

  “Lot of time spent thinking in between hits,” Evan said. “Lot of time thinking about you,” he replied.

  Hannah felt her breathing start to get more rapid, and her chest was rising and falling so quickly that Evan could probably tell. There’s no hiding from him, she thought. He knows me. He knows my deepest fears and my most shameful desires. And he…he accepts it? Hannah furrowed her brow, her entire brain flexing in an attempt to disentangle her thoughts and feelings. But Evan distracted her yet again, stepping even closer, until their chests touched. Hannah felt like she could detect Evan’s heartbeat even through the fabric of his shirt. It’s going as fast as mine, she thought. He’s as scared as me.