by Jordan Marie
Something to be thankful for.
To keep from getting a raging cock-stand, I pull my vision away from Hope’s ass and look around the room. The room isn’t very large, but it’s homey. It has a great feel to it and she has the walls painted a muted beige and has offset that by using warm hues of blue and teal. It’s… calming. It reminds me of the ocean. I can’t be sure I’ve ever been there, but still—
“Are you ready?” she asks, smiling, and strangely she goes to the chair I just vacated earlier.
“Come sit down beside me. You can’t see the television from the corner like that.”
“Sure I can. I do it all the time,” she argues.
“Hope. It’s my birthday. Come sit down beside me.”
“Okay,” she whispers her voice threaded thickly with nerves.
“Why aren’t there any pictures of me?”
“What?” she asks, and in a move I’m coming to realize is nerves, she blinks twice—yet again.
“All through this room and even Jack’s room you have pictures of him or you, or both of you and some of your family, but… there are no pictures of me anywhere.”
“I…Aden, you hate the camera.”
“Still… I mean I’m part of your life. I’m Jack’s father…”
“I told you that you aren’t Jack’s—”
“Let’s don’t start that shit again. And, quit trying to divert me. I’m being serious here. Shouldn’t there be at least one picture of me somewhere?”
“I…”
“Hope, is there something you’re not telling me?” I ask.
She looks at me and I wait, almost holding my breath.
31
Hope
It’s the moment of truth. This is the moment I need to tell Aden exactly what happened and that we’re not married. I need to come clean. My head is starting to hurt with all the lies and he’s thinking of things I never thought of. Of course he’s going to want to see pictures of himself. He’s been really patient. He’s barely asked anything, which I’m pretty sure is the exact opposite of what I would do in his shoes. So it’s time.
“Hope, it’s okay. Just tell me. I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers, and his thumb sweeps across my forehead. His breath fans against the side of my face and I hear his words and it’s time I admit I have a bigger problem than even I realized.
I might have started this lie out of desperation and fear. I might have continued it for the same reason. Actually, I know I did. I was terrified. I hated Aden. I might have slept with him. It was fantastic and I got several mind-blowing orgasms out of the deal, but that did not change the facts. Aden Smith was a major asshole. He was a dick and he could be a mean dick. That meant he would sue me and he wouldn’t rest until he took everything from me.
That alone should be laughable, because I didn’t have a lot. Yet, what I did have was important to me. This motel was important to me because it was a part of Aunt Edna—because it was family. My mom might not know the meaning of the word, but I did. Family is important. Someday Jack will need family, he will need ties, he will need…history. I haven’t been able to give him much, but I want to give him that. This motel was a small way of doing that, but it was important and Aden would destroy that in a second.
But the bigger problem was that the Aden who was sitting on my couch, who was touching my face gently and promising he wouldn’t leave, is different. He’s not the same Aden. He’s a new Aden—and it should be said I liked the new Aden. Seriously liked. So much so that now the biggest fear I had might not be him suing me or pressing charges anymore.
Now, my biggest fear was him leaving.
How does that even happen in the space of a week? I can’t begin to explain it, but I know that it is true. Which has me freaking completely out.
“Aden…”
“Babe, what’s wrong?” he asks. Jesus. I should hate that. Babe. I mean that’s the name of a pig on one of the old movies that I bought that Jack loves. It’s silly and meaningless, but when he says it…my pulse speeds up and my heart flips in my chest.
My moment of truth.
“You’re not going to like the answer, Aden.”
“I’m not?”
“No. You might even hate me,” I whisper and then more to myself than to him, but I suppose he can hear me as I continue, “I’m terrified you’re going to hate me.”
“You just made me a chocolate cake. The best chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted in my life. How can a man hate a woman who would do that?”
“You don’t remember having chocolate cake before,” I answer, not laughing at his smiling face, which I’m positive is what he is aiming for. Instead, I’m looking down and feeling rather hopeless.
“You made it, Hope. With all the million and one things you’ve been doing to keep things going, you took time out to celebrate my birthday and bake me a cake. I may not know a lot, but I know that the cake you made is the best fucking cake ever made, simply because you did it.”
“That’s sweet, Aden,” I whisper, feeling even more lost. “This would be so much easier if you hadn’t turned sweet.”
“Turned sweet? Hope, honey, you’re not making much sense here.”
That’s when the tears fall. I don’t plan them and I try to keep them back, but they fall and I can’t stop them.
“You shouldn’t be sweet to me,” I cry out, sounding pitiful.
“Jesus,” Aden whispers and then before I realize what he is doing, or can find a way to stop him, he pulls me into his lap, cradling my side to his front, and fixing my head so that it can rest in the curve of his shoulder.
I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of him, letting the heat of his body surround me. I can’t stop crying so I don’t even try.
“You were mean, you hated me, and I could deal with that. I was dealing with it. I was! I was making you leave,” I cry not realizing what I’m saying, just trying to tell him everything all at once. But, I’m not paying attention to how it sounds, or the broken fragmented story I’m giving him. I’m lost in my own misery, and in the fact that I’m about to lose a man that I suddenly find I really want to keep.
“You were making me leave?” he says quietly. His fingers press tight into my side, holding me close.
“Yes! You were so mean! But then you fell! And you hit your head, then poof.”
“Poof?” he asks, and it sounds like he’s laughing, but he can’t be. There’s nothing about this entire story that’s funny.
“Yes, poof. You weren’t you anymore,” I cry, unable to catch my breath from the force of my tears.
“Who was I, Hope?”
“Someone I actually liked!” I tell him.
He doesn’t talk after that. Instead he just holds me and lets me cry. I don’t know how long we sit like that. Eventually my tears stop, and my breathing evens out.
“Piecing this together, Babe. I’m getting I was a dick to you and not nice.”
“Yeah.”
“Did I make you cry?”
“Yeah,” I whisper again.
“I scare you?”
“Kind of, but—”
“Did I hit you, Hope?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Thank God for small favors, I guess,” he mutters.
“Aden—”
“I think I’m talked out for right now, Babe. Let’s watch the movie,” he says and I know it’s wrong—weak even, but I stay there in his lap, snuggle my head even closer into him and let him start the movie.
Thankful because, though I am going to lose him soon…it’s not right now and selfishly, I’m okay with that.
32
Aden
“You still awake, Hope?” I ask her softly, almost afraid to wake her up.
“Yeah,” she whispers back, curling her body into me deeper.
We’re lying on the sofa, her back against it, I’m lying flat and she’s on her side. Her body is draped over mine and her head is resting on my chest, while mine is on the a
rm rest. I have one arm propped behind my head and one arm wrapped securely around Hope.
I don’t know how many times I’ve hugged her in the past. I can’t remember that and I mourn the fact. What I do know is that having her in my arms right now has to be the single best feeling in the world. It even feels like I might belong here. After the week I’ve had where I feel like I’ve been lost in a maze, bumping into walls and unable to find my way out—that’s heaven.
“You never told me why there’s no pictures of me. Did you destroy them when you were kicking me out?”
“I… uh…”
“It’s okay, honey, I understand.”
“Aden?”
“Yeah?” I answer, as she shifts so that she can pull her upper body away from me, her head raising up to look at me.
“Can I just say I like it when you say honey even more than babe?”
“Duly noted,” I whisper, my lips moving to a grin, and again something else happens for the first time since I woke up in that hospital room.
I’m happy.
I watch as she returns the smile. I let my fingers move down into her hair, sifting the strands through my fingers, enjoying their soft texture. She’s special. I might have been a blind fool before, but I’m not now, and I can see it shining in her eyes. She’s special. I don’t know why she wasted time with me—with someone who treated her as anything less, but I’m glad I get a second chance.
“You know…you gave me a wonderful birthday, honey.”
Her smile broadens and those eyes of hers warm further.
“I did?” she whispers.
“The best,” I answer. “But you forgot one thing,”
As if on cue, that wrinkle on her forehead appears as she looks at me. Instantly, my hand moves toward her and I use my thumb to smooth it.
“What did I forget?”
“My birthday kiss,” I answer, moving both my hands to her neck, my thumbs sliding against her jawlines. I bring her to me at the same time I bend down, our lips touching.
“Oh…” she gasps, whether in answer or just a breath in response to the touch of our lips, I don’t know. I just know her sweet breath feathers out against my lips and I like it.
Our lips barely touch, but even then I can taste her and that taste is definitely familiar and further proof I’m where I belong. My tongue darts out against her lips, teasing, stroking and priming. She leans further into me, her fingers curling into my hair as she tries to force the kiss. She sucks at my tongue, taking it into her mouth, and since that’s exactly where I want to be most I let her. She takes my tongue in a way that makes me moan, in a way that makes my dick ache and finally, in a way that I know eventually, when I earn my way back inside of her, she’s going to be the only place I ever want to be.
It’s crazy, but it is no less true.
I let her play because I like it. Soon however, I couldn’t hold back. I took control of the kiss, my tongue pushing deeper into her mouth, drinking her in, plundering and memorizing everything I could absorb. It was a kiss to remind me of what I once had and forgot. A kiss to remind me it could be mine again and it was definitely a kiss to let her know I was claiming it.
Claiming her.
33
Hope
“Where’s Jack?”
It’s a horrible question for a mother to ask, but here I am finding myself asking it. I woke up in my bed, the morning after falling asleep in Aden’s arms on the couch. The morning after we kissed and Aden definitely made it to second base and I definitely wish he had made it to third, but he didn’t push it. I woke up to an empty house.
No sign of Aden and no sign of Jack.
I had no idea if Aden slept with me that night. I didn’t smell him on my sheets, but I don’t guess that means anything, I mean we didn’t have sex… so it’s possible he did, but I got the feeling he didn’t. That made me sad, and for obvious reasons—the foremost being I’m a lair of epic proportions—I didn’t want to investigate why that made me sad.
Instead, I rushed outside and found Aden, working on the landscaping around the front office.
“Morning, beautiful,” he says, giving me a lazy smile. It’s weird—the things that hit you. Because, in that moment I realize that not one single person in my life has ever called me beautiful, except my dad.
The fact that Aden calls me beautiful fills me with warmth and other things, that again, I’m not willing to investigate just yet.
“Where’s Jack?” I ask, trying my best to ignore the warm tingles Aden’s smile and words send through my body. I’m not very successful at it, but I try.
“Your friend, Daria, came and picked him up about thirty minutes ago.”
“My friend…thirty minutes ago? Why would she do that and why so early?” I question, confused and not really understanding what’s going on.
“Babe it’s noon.”
“I like honey better…what… Noon? How?”
I screech the words, but I can’t help it. I never sleep in. Never. I didn’t do it before Jack was born and then afterwards there was no way I could. Plus, I’m a single parent. Single parents never sleep in. There’s no possibility in the world that can make it happen. I am all Jack has, and whether it’s getting up early for work, or to feed him breakfast, nurse him to health when he’s sick or just hold his hand while he gets what he needs from me to feel safe, happy and healthy, I’m there.
“You were tired, honey. I let you sleep. Your girl called and I explained you were sleeping and Jack and I were going to work on the flowerbeds and she didn’t agree.”
“She didn’t?” my eyes went round. Partly because I liked the idea of Jack and Aden working together on the flowerbeds, but mostly because I knew that Daria had to have guessed that I still hadn’t told Aden the truth. She knew—like I did—that when the truth came out it was going to be cataclysmic, horrible, frightening and perhaps world-altering for me…and for Jack. So I knew—because I knew Daria—that she was giving me an opportunity to try and fix some of the damage that would be done today. A smart woman would do that.
If history had taught me anything in the last three years, it was one thing.
I was not a smart woman.
“She said it had been too long since she had spent time with Jack and it was her day off, so she was claiming him for the day.”
“She did?”
“She did.”
“I should maybe call her,” I whisper.
“Probably, but first I need something from you.”
“You do?”
“Two things actually.”
“What’s that?” I ask, feeling like all I’m doing is asking questions—probably because I am.
“First, you need to kiss me.”
“I do?”
“Had your lips last night, slept with my hands full of you. Which I liked, but I wanted more of your body and I couldn’t allow myself that, so I didn’t take what I wanted. But, today, I definitely need your lips again, honey.”
I processed what he said. All of it was good, all of it made me tingly-warm, and my knees weak. All of it was something I had never had before in my life and finally, all of it was something I never knew existed.
All of it was something I liked.
So I gave him my lips. It was a sweet kiss, nothing hungry about it. It was slow, soothing, loving and it was delicious. It still made my heartrate speed, my body heat and when we broke away his smile and dark gaze made that heat increase.
He held me close, his arms encircling me and his hands moving to my ass to hold me close to him. For a minute, I just allowed myself to be here, to be in this moment with him and not let the black cloud that was hanging over my head inside.
Then a thought occurred to me.
“You slept with me all night?” I whisper.
“Mmmm…” he almost moans and I can feel wetness pool against my panties. I had heard him make that noise once before and that was when he licked my juices from his fingers. I remember watching as
he did it, hearing the moaning growl that indicated he liked the way I tasted, and I remember wanting more of him. I remember reaching down and guiding his hard cock inside of me and I remember the feel of him sinking inside as he stretched me. I remembered it because ever since that night, it had never left my mind. It haunted me because I wanted it again. I wanted him again. “Hope?”
“Sorry, I was…thinking…”
“If you keep looking at me like that…” he says trailing off, but the look on his face leaves no question as to what he means. I did want him to give me the promise of what was in his eyes, but I needed to remember I was a big fat liar, sitting on a case of dynamite, that was probably going to take me and everything in my path out… so I let it go.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I said, I slept with you all night and discovered something,” he said patiently.
I had totally missed this part of the conversation while I was reliving the one night that Aden and I shared. From the sparkle in his eye, I got the feeling this was leading somewhere. I should probably worry about that, because he looks almost cocky right now.
“What did you discover?”
“I didn’t snore loud enough to wake you or Jack,” he says.
Oh shit.
“In fact, you snored and woke me up.”
“I don’t snore!”
“Honey, you do.”
“I do not.
“Whatever you need to believe. The point is, I didn’t wake up you or Jack.”
“Oh…”
“Any idea how that could happen?”
“Miraculous healing powers of the Idaho valley?” I asked, hopefully.
Aden stares at me in shock. Then, he does something I like almost better than anything else that’s happened so far.
He throws his head back and laughs.