Loose Ends

by Kristen Ashley

  “No, I don’t know,” she answered.

  She wasn’t resting on him long, considering at her words he pushed up farther to get his shoulders, not his head, on the pillows, taking her with him. This accomplished, he promptly shifted her to her back, partially rolling into her on his side.

  In this position, he loomed over her.

  But then he curled his arm around her waist and yanked her into his body.

  And in this position, he was partially trapping her.

  Dio.

  It wasn’t bad.

  It was very bad.

  Luci wrapped her fingers around his throat and slid them down to rest her palm on his collarbone.

  “It does not make me feel happy that you experienced the need to trap me before you share about your childhood,” she noted carefully.

  “It wasn’t a good one,” he stated bluntly.

  “I gathered that,” she murmured.

  “I grew up on a farm in Iowa,” he shared.

  “All right,” she replied when he said nothing further.

  “It was my grandfather’s farm. Lived there with Gram and Gramps due to the fact my dad was in prison.”

  She felt her eyes grow wide.

  “And my mom was a loser.”

  Oh no.

  “Dad got out, got me, held up another liquor store about three months into his probation, got caught, went back in. I went back to my grandparents. I was six. This happened one more time, when I was eleven, though he managed to go for nearly five months before he knocked over a convenience store, and after that I stayed on the farm.”

  Luci curled into him and once there, pressed tight, sliding her arm along his until she had it around him, holding him like he was holding her.

  Only after she’d done that did she see the expression on his face.

  Disbelief.

  Undiluted.

  “Caro?” she called.

  “A lot of reactions I’d expect from the different reactions I’d get when I’d share those nuggets, Luce. Not any of them has been someone pushin’ close and holdin’ on.”

  She was upset for him.

  She was also insulted.

  “You thought I’d pull away?” she queried.

  “Babe, my father is a felon.”

  “And you are a soldier.”

  “What’s your father do?” he asked abruptly.

  “He does many things. He’s an entrepreneur.”

  “Right,” Hap muttered.

  “And what does that matter?” she asked sharply. “You’d expect me to pull away because your father is a felon, I should expect you to pull away because mine is a successful businessman?”

  “Luci, you’re a fuckin’ supermodel.”

  “Former supermodel.”

  “Like they call a former president, ‘president’ after he earns that title, same goes for a supermodel. You never quit bein’ that.”

  It was rather funny how he put that.

  Luci didn’t laugh.

  “Your point?” she pushed.

  “You grew up with money. You got your own money.”

  “And?”

  “And the house you’ll see on Wednesday looks nothing like this one. Or Sam and Kia’s.”

  “Yes, Travis was still enlisted when we met and married and we owned a home in Fayetteville that was not like this one either.”

  “Yeah, I went to that home, babe. And that didn’t look anything like my place either.”

  She pushed up, having to press into him to do it, and got on her forearm to look him in the eye in order to share, “I’m still not seeing the point.”

  “There is no way, in fuck, when I got a workin’ vehicle, I’d spend money on a fuckin’ driver.”

  He was losing patience.

  So was she.

  “That’s understandable, but you weren’t going to,” she retorted.

  “Yeah, I know,” he shot back. “You were gonna dump a few hundred on a ride like it was nothing, like you probably dumped a couple hundred on that nightie you had on this morning. I’m not complain’, baby. That nightie is fuckin’ sweet. But no one spends hundreds of dollars on a nightie.”

  “I do,” she snapped.

  “Right,” he bit out.

  “So you’re telling me you have not progressed, like quite a bit of the rest of the world, to being capable of dealing with a woman who’s successful in her career, and financially?”

  “I’m telling you my dad was an asshole, my mom was a flake. I grew up on a farm with my grandparents in the time when small farms were being eaten up by big outfits or foreclosed on by banks. So we had nothin’ but pride in our land, which eventually was lost. A three-generation legacy owned by a bank for about two weeks before they auctioned it off to a corporate entity who ’dozed the house my great-great-grandfather built so they could plant more corn.”

  Dio mio.

  What a tragedy.

  “Hap,” she whispered.

  “We turned the lights off when we left a room,” he carried on. “We slept under three/four blankets because the furnace was cranked down to about fifty, because we couldn’t afford to heat the house when we weren’t conscious in it. We ate leftovers until they were all gone. Since Gramps would lose his mind if a banana got overripe, we had banana bread all the time because I didn’t like bananas. Gram never gave up on tryin’ to get me to eat ’em, but I loved banana bread and no way in fuck Gram would waste an overripe banana by just throwing it in the trash.”

  And Hap’s attention to meticulously putting away food was explained.

  “What did you do when you lost your farm?” she asked quietly.

  “Gramps got a job haulin’ around feed and seed at the feedstore. He was sixty-two. Gram got a job as a teacher’s assistant. I made it my job to drink, carouse, give them shit, cause them grief, and generally make them live in fear they raised one son to be good for nothin’, then they raised his son to be the same. We left a four-bedroom farmhouse to live in a two-bedroom apartment. It felt tiny. Because it was tiny.”

  “Oh, bello,” she whispered.

  “I enlisted, told them I did, Gram dissolved into tears. Cried for hours. She thought I’d land in prison like my dad. It wasn’t a surprise. I’d planted those seeds. Gramps, he grabbed my shoulder and held so tight, I checked later. It made marks. Then he snatched me by the head and slammed our foreheads together and just stood there with me, breathing, for what felt like years. That was his way to share his relief I might not turn out to be a total asshole.”

  “You’re not that young, angry man with an absent mother and father watching your grandparents struggle anymore, Hap. They’re surely proud of you now.”

  “I know that,” he bit out. “Though they were both dead before I made Private First Class.”

  So much sadness.

  So much loss.

  So young.

  Oh Hap.

  Luci again pressed close.

  Hap kept talking.

  “Dad’s still alive. So’s Ma. Until about five years ago, when I finally got my point across I was not down with the fact that they fucked away my childhood but felt entitled to hit me up for money or a place to stay, or I’ll repeat money when they thought I had it to give.”

  “Did you . . . give them that?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Fuck no,” he clipped. “Didn’t stop them from askin’, which meant I felt like a dick I couldn’t be the bigger man, take care of my folks, even if they didn’t bother takin’ care of me.”

  Well.

  No.

  “You should not feel badly because you refused to help them, Hap.”

  “Yeah, you find it easy to say no to your old man?”

  “My father loved me. He nurtured me. He was proud of me, showed it and told me. And I’ll admit, he even spoiled me. So yes, I assume I would have trouble saying no to him. The thing is, he doesn’t ask. Not only because he doesn’t need to, but I’m his child. He simply would not. Ever. Not ever. You don’t do t
hat to your children. Unless you were in the direst of straights that were beyond your control. You take care of your children until you die.”

  She stopped speaking and Hap just stared at her.

  So she started speaking again.

  “And I’m unspeakably offended that you’d think I would think less of you because of whatever decisions your father made, or your mother, or things you did as a young man. Or the fact you had a time when you didn’t have money and lost everything, so you value it, and I must have a mind to that. That’s all you had to say, and I would have a mind to it. As I hope you will have a mind to the fact I like to shop. I like nice things. I have the means to get them. I’ll even desire to get some of them for you. But I’ll do that in a way that does not make you uncomfortable, if you return that favor by not making me feel uncomfortable I have those means.”

  He seemed to be calmer, and was definitely holding her tighter, but there was something . . . off that she didn’t understand when he asked, “This works with us, what’s your dad gonna think when he meets me?”

  Luci was not calmer when she asked back, “What do you think he thought of Travis?”

  “Gordo didn’t have a father who was a felon.”

  She had entirely no control over her voice raising, and if she had, she wouldn’t have used it, when she asked, “So now you’re insulting my father, assuming he’ll judge you by your father’s misdeeds?”

  He rolled into her, trapping her full body this time.

  “Baby, calm down,” he whispered.

  “You just insulted my father!” she shouted in his face.

  “And the fiery Italian comes out,” he muttered, eyes twinkling.

  Damn the twinkle.

  And yes. She was a fiery Italian. A proud one.

  “Do not be charming when you’ve made me this angry, George Cunningham,”

  Hap dipped his faced to hers and said, “I’m sorry. Gordo. Sam. A few friends. None of my girlfriends. They had your reaction. The rest. No. So I’m conditioned to people thinking I’m a piece of shit about to turn bad at any given moment. But I shouldn’t have thought that of you.”

  Luci felt her eyes narrow. “None of your girlfriends?”

  “Oh shit,” Hap muttered, watching her closely.

  “So that’s why they didn’t last,” she declared flatly.

  “Luce—”

  “Puttane!” she suddenly spat. “Stronzi! Che palle!”

  “Babe—”

  “I actually liked one of them!” she yelled. “That blonde. I see her again, I’ll scratch her eyes out! Cazzo!”

  “Baby,” his body shaking on hers and that word shaking with humor got her attention, “calm down.”

  “It is not okay, Hap, that people treated you that way.”

  “All right, honey,” he said consolingly.

  “You should be angry,” she snapped.

  “I’ll let you do it. It’s cuter.”

  He was being charming again.

  She glared at him.

  “You done?” he asked.

  “No,” she spat.

  “You wanna fuck one more time before I have to hit the road?” he queried.

  That got her attention, mostly the him hitting the road part.

  All right.

  Also the fucking part.

  Luci turned her head to look at the sea.

  She did want to have sex.

  She did not want him to leave.

  “Luci,” he called.

  She drew in and let out a big breath and turned back.

  “Good to have that out of the way,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” she said sharply.

  “And thank you for bein’ that woman.”

  “I’ve always been that woman, Hap.”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  That made her melt under him and move her hand to rest it on the side of his face. “Bello.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Handsome,” she answered.

  “Puttane?”

  “It’s a rude word for certain kinds of women,” she muttered.

  He grinned. “You can teach me all the rest later, Luce. Let’s work off that anger of yours and then I gotta head out.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  It just slipped out.

  It was perhaps too much too soon.

  She was very fortunate Hap didn’t feel that way and showed her instantly by moving in to kiss her.

  He pulled back and whispered, “I don’t wanna go either, baby. But I gotta. Wednesday’ll be here sooner than we think.”

  Only that made her smile.

  She did that before she lifted her head and kissed him.

  Things progressed delightfully.

  But long before she’d wish, she was in her bomber lounge set (yes, also cashmere, and she would never share with Hap how much it cost), Givenchy slides (ditto on the cost), standing with Hap by the door of his truck, telling him to text her when he made it home.

  He shook his head. “No text.”

  What?

  “I’ll call, babe.”

  Ah.

  She smiled.

  He kissed her smile but it was way too short before he broke it, put a hand in her belly and pushed her back.

  “In the house,” he ordered as he turned to his door.

  “I’ll wait until you leave,” she replied.

  He stopped in his opened door. “Get out of the chill.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  Sadly.

  “Babe, in the fuckin’ house or I carry you in there.”

  She kind of wanted to force that.

  Instead she gave him a look and then turned and very slowly walked to the steps.

  She also walked up them very slowly.

  However, apparently Hap could be more stubborn than she as he simply sat in his truck and stared at her through the windshield until she was inside her opened door.

  She stood in it and waved as he reversed.

  He lifted a hand, one finger pointed up, and flicked it to return her wave.

  That made Luci giggle.

  She only closed the door after he arced in her drive, pulled out and away.

  She touched the button for release, and the latch clicked.

  She rested her head against the door.

  She’d just spent twenty-nine hours with Hap.

  They’d talked.

  They had a plan.

  He’d bared his soul.

  She’d exposed her quick temper.

  And when he got home, he would not text.

  He would call.

  “Wednesday,” she whispered.

  And then she smiled.

  Great

  Hap

  LATE WEDNESDAY NIGHT, Hap hit the button to the garage door before he pulled into his drive.

  “Is that your house, Hap? Oh my. I like it very much,” Luci, at his side in his truck, exclaimed.

  He couldn’t see his house very well in the dark. But he didn’t need to. He knew what it looked like.

  The development was a newish build. He supposed it would be better once the trees filled in, say, in ten years.

  Now, it wasn’t special. The houses were close together. He liked the blue of the siding, he liked the parts that were brick.

  But other than that, it wasn’t only not special, it wasn’t much of anything, outside a house.

  He glanced at Luci’s face in the dash lights before he swung in his drive.

  She couldn’t be inauthentic if she tried. She’d probably spontaneously combust in the effort.

  And so, she looked excited at his nothing-special house.

  That was because she liked him.

  Which meant everything that came with him.

  Which meant for Luci . . .

  Done.

  Hap did not know what to do with that.

  They’d started this trek on rocky footing seeing as she’d clearly been waiting for him. He knew this w
hen he’d barely pulled into her drive and she was already out the door, hoofing it down the stairs, carrying a big black tote bag.

  He could not say it sucked that she’d been waiting for him and was so excited to see him, and go home with him, she was out the door and racing down the steps with her bag in hand before he’d even come to a stop in her driveway.

  He could say it surprised him.

  She’d dropped her tote to the gravel and thrown herself in his arms when he’d folded out of his truck.

  He was a dude. A dude banging Luci, and Luci was Luci. So they’d made out in greeting.

  Once that was done, he’d lifted his head and said, “You ever carry a bag again, I’m spankin’ your ass.”

  She’d blinked up at him and asked, “What?”

  “Babe, you got a bag, I carry it.”

  She looked to the house, then him. “But now you can just throw it in your truck and we can go, instead of you having to go up and get a bag I’m perfectly capable of carrying.”

  “It’d take five minutes.”

  “Five minutes we’d save, and three we could continue to save if this conversation doesn’t go on any longer.”

  “I carry your bag, Luce.”

  She gave him a look that said she’d argue and the instant she did, he’d brace to argue.

  As long as this lasted, he didn’t have a lot to give. He didn’t have lots of money. He didn’t have a cush pad. He didn’t drive a Mercedes.

  But he could carry a fucking bag.

  She thought better of it and he knew that when her body melted into his and she said, “Okay, Hap. You carry my bags.”

  “Awesome,” he muttered.

  She gave him a tentative smile and moved away.

  He grabbed her bag, put it in the cab, and asked as she rounded the hood, “Everything locked down?”

  She nodded, her long, thick fantastic hair sliding all over her shoulders and down her back. “Yes. All ready.”

  She’d climbed in. He had too. He pulled out and they’d been on their way.

  It was awkward for the first five minutes, and then Luci started chattering.

  Nothing new. Luce had always been a talker.

  She did this until they hit a diner Hap liked that was halfway between him and her. She did this during dinner. She did this after they got back in his truck and headed out.

  He had to admit, Luci at his side, listening to her throaty, sexy, accented voice blathering at him on a trip he took usually blasting out metal and not minding the time or distance, got a fuckuva lot better.