by Serena Bell
“And how does that make you feel?” Griff teased. “Tell Dr. Griff everything. I bet he can make it all better.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling now. He’d already made it better. He made it better by just existing. And she was so damn proud of him. He’d continued leading the support groups. He still had flashbacks, because that trauma was part of him, lodged deep where it would take years—or a lifetime—to purge the poison, but now he went to his own therapist and learned the best techniques for wrestling PTSD to the mat. He was finishing his bachelor’s degree online, and his long-term plan was to get a counseling degree and become a therapist himself.
He was also happier than she’d ever seen him, despite the stress of being privy to some of people’s hardest moments. He worried about his peers, he suffered with them—but he also lived their successes, small and big, the moments when they walked again, worked again, got their GEDs, spoke their toughest truths. When they told him they felt whole and that he’d helped them heal.
“Tell Dr. Griff about your day,” he suggested.
“Work was good. I came up with a new system for dealing with the VA paperwork.”
“Of course you did,” he said fondly. “The VA will probably be using your system by next week.”
“I spent a couple of hours at KidsUp. Jed let me talk him into entering a writing contest about dealing with academic challenge. If he wins, he’ll get a $2,000 scholarship.”
“He’s still letting you talk to him about going to college?”
“He made me a deal,” Becca said. “He’ll consider it if I agree to think about it too. He wants me to get a teaching degree.”
A few months into their working together, Jed had asked Becca why she wasn’t a teacher, and Becca had had to admit that she’d never gone to college. Since then, he’d been steadily harassing her, as stern with her as she’d ever been with him. But now she had the best possible reason to give in—because she wanted Jed to go to college more than she feared going herself.
Griff grinned at her. “Tough kid.”
“The best,” she said.
“Second best,” he said, inclining his eyes towards the photo on his desk, of Robbie. “Soon to be third best,” he added, because Alia was several months pregnant with a sister for Robbie. “And speaking of . . . Alia and Nate are making grilled pork chops in adobo with applesauce.”
“Ohhh,” Becca moaned.
Griff made a sound that was halfway between a grunt and a growl.
“How does that make you feel?” Becca teased. She was well versed now in how her appetites stoked Griff’s.
Griff rose from his seat and stalked towards the couch.
“If you’re troubled, Dr. Griff can help,” said Becca, struggling to suppress her laughter. Then Griff was kneeling over her, lowering his mouth to hers, and her giggles were swallowed by his warm mouth and swept away by the bliss of his tongue stroking hers. He broke the kiss and rocked back on his heels. “God, Becca.”
He slid a palm down her belly and eased his hand under the waistband of her pants. His fingers parted her curls and found her clit.
“Uh—” she said. Words were giving her trouble. “Griff. We’ll be late.”
“Fuck being on time,” he said, but he withdrew his hand from her pants, reaching into his own pants to reposition himself. Not that it helped. His jeans were broadcasting his state loud and clear.
“You said you wanted Friday Night Dinner to be foreplay for the rest of our lives,” she said helpfully.
“I did say that, didn’t I?” he growled. He scooped her up. “I was full of shit. Friday Night Dinner will be the palate-cleanser between sex beforehand and sex afterward.”
He carried her down the hall and set her on her feet in the bathroom.
Their place was a small rental on one of Tierney Bay’s adorable side streets. They could walk down to the ocean and have their donuts and coffee there. Plus, they could be louder than they’d ever felt comfortable being in Griff’s tiny room. They were saving to buy their own place and would be able to afford something later this year.
Meanwhile, they had discovered some great features of the rental. Like the fact that the detachable nozzle in the shower could make Becca come in under thirty seconds. Which made shower quickies especially fantastic. And especially efficient, since Becca’s pleasure pulled Griff’s trigger like nothing else.
A few minutes later they were clean, damp-haired, and seated in Griff’s truck on the way to Alia and Nate’s house.
“If she tries to start talking about my mom’s wedding,” Becca said, “You need to suggest a game of Taboo. I can’t take any more.”
Griff laughed. “Will do.”
All their friends and family members had long since gotten over their hang-ups about Griff and Becca dating, and now it was just the way things were. In general, Nate and Alia had backed way off on their overprotectiveness of Becca, but she knew from time to time she’d have to remind her sister that she was a big girl.
But she didn’t mind. Alia needed to be needed and probably always would, and until she had five or six kids crowding up the house and demanding a hundred percent of her attention, Becca would always be on her radar screen.
“I always like playing Taboo with you, anyway,” Griff said. “Reminds me of the night when you asked me to be your personal Jondalar.”
“You did a very good job,” she murmured.
“It was not a hardship,” he murmured back.
“Stop or we will not make it to Friday Night Dinner.”
He was quiet for a stretch, then said, “Becca.”
“Mmm?”
“I still think of myself as your personal Jondalar.”
“You do not.”
“I do.”
“It’s the Wonder Schlong thing, right?” she teased.
“Well, there’s that,” he said, modestly.
She blew a raspberry at him.
“Seriously, though, baby. You know what it is?”
His voice had gotten, suddenly, much more serious.
“What?” she asked.
“Every time, Becca. Every time with you, it’s like the first time. And the best part is? I know it always will be.”
THANK you for reading Holding Out! I hope you’ve loved spending time with Becca, Griff, and their friends. If you missed any of the earlier books in the series, here are some pointers to help you find them:
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IF YOU MISSED Jake and Mira’s story, grab Hold On Tight, the second-chances story of a badly wounded hero, the woman he never stopped craving, and the son he never knew he had.
* * *
FIND HOLD ON TIGHT HERE.
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IF YOU WANT to spend more time with Nate and Alia, you’ll love Can’t Hold Back, the story of a man in physical and emotional pain, the woman with the power to heal him, and the complications that lies leave behind.
* * *
FIND CAN’T HOLD BACK here.
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IF YOU’RE HOPING to learn more about Hunter and Trina, discover To Have and to Hold and meet a man who can’t remember the last year of his life—including a passionate romance—and the woman who refuses to forget.
* * *
FIND TO HAVE AND TO HOLD here.
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IF YOU’VE READ ALL the Returning Home stories and are craving more heat, heart, and humor from Serena Bell, it’s time to explore my Sexy Single Dads series. You’ll want to start with Do Over. It’s the story of two people who have gotten everything wrong except the son they had together, the crisis that lands them under the same roof for the first time ever, and the sparks that fly.
* * *
FIND DO OVER HERE.
* * *
KEEP READING for an excerpt from Do Over …
* * *
JOIN my newsletter list so you won’t miss a new release, sale, or giveaway!
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JOIN MY NEWSLETTER LIST HERE.
I APPRECIATE your help in spreading the word, including telling a friend. Reviews are like hugs for authors, and they help readers find books! Please leave a review on your favorite book site.
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TURN the page for an excerpt from Do Over!
DO OVER EXCERPT
Henry fans a set of tickets under my nose. “Pac-12 championship. Fourth row courtside.”
We’re taking a break from the trim carpentry work we’re doing, sitting on a newly poured retaining wall in the watery Pacific Northwest spring sunshine. “Fucking A,” I breathe. “When?”
“Tonight.”
My excitement crashes. “Can’t.”
“You have Gabe?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you have him last weekend?”
I shrug. “Maddie has some work thing to go to.”
“Can you tell her something’s come up? Something important?”
Henry and I have been friends since junior high school. He’s my wingman. He’s one of those guys that people say has “a great personality”—you know, code for a little overweight, dresses sloppy, but so fucking funny. And the kind of guy who always has your back.
He’s still got the tickets under my nose, close enough that I can smell the sharp smell of the paper and ink, and holy fuck, do I want those tickets. I can feel the energy in the arena, taste the beer and dogs, hear the crowd noise.
Henry sees me start to weaken. “Cheerleaders.”
My brain supplies: sports bras, short-shorts, tanned, toned flesh, tits bouncing, long shiny hair. My body reminds me that it’s been longer than usual since I last had sex.
“Hey, Jack, you in? College girls. Drunk, amped up on the smell of sweat, and hoping for a little Friday night excitement?” Clark plops down next to me, sub sandwich in hand. Henry and I, who’ve worked together for ages, met him on this job, and lately he’s been heading out with us.
“He’s got Gabe tonight.”
“Again?” Clark demands around a huge mouthful. “You had him last weekend. It’s always your weekend. Does she ever get him?”
“She has a work thing.”
“She has your balls in a vise is what she has,” Clark says, shaking his head in disgust. “The only good excuse for giving up a perfectly good Friday night for child care is if it’ll get you laid.”
“Does that mean you’re gonna start taking babysitting jobs?” I needle him. He’s been in a drought lately, and we don’t hesitate to give him shit about it. “Some of us don’t need to provide child care to keep ourselves in pussy.”
I don’t. Some of it’s probably just luck of the draw in the looks department; some of it’s manual labor, plus hoops and touch football with friends, and lifting when I’m bored at home. The rest is, I go in knowing that I’m going to close the deal, and that seems to open legs.
That logic, though, doesn’t and never will apply to Maddie, Gabe’s mom, so it’s definitely not why I agreed to take him tonight. I agreed because even though I may not be dad material, I’m also not a dick about things like child support and watching my kid. Plus, when I said yes, I thought my mom would be in town and my sister would be free, so I wasn’t picturing a whole evening of corralling Gabe by myself.
But now I’m wishing so hard I’d said no to Maddie’s request. It’s been a crappy week, with stupid shit going down on the job like a built-in bookshelf the client claims is the wrong width and no paper trail to back me up. I just want to wash the bad taste of that out with a few beers, not to mention the possibility of taking home one of those ready, willing, and able female fans Clark was sketching such a vivid picture of. Instead, I’m going to be fumbling through a night with Gabe, feeling like another guy would have this kid-care thing down to a science by now. And, obviously, there will be no hope of getting laid.
A moment later I wish I hadn’t thought that, because now I’m remembering the brief time Maddie was fair game, which never leads anywhere good.
Henry scowls. “What could Maddie be doing that’s possibly more important than the Pac-12 tourney?”
She didn’t tell me what it was, only that it was work-related. And even though I should be stuck on the image of college women in clingy Huskies T-shirts raring to go, I’m wondering about Maddie’s evening instead. What’s she up to on a Friday night? Is her asshole boyfriend escorting her? Will he be with them tonight when she drops Gabe off?
Just then, my phone buzzes.
We good?
It’s Maddie, and something shifts in the center of my chest.
And just like that, I realize: Clark’s right. There are lots of different ways to have your balls in a vise. Maddie might not be the kind of woman who’d give me hell for ditching out on her tonight, but that doesn’t mean I will ever do a good job of saying no to her. And it doesn’t help that our lives are permanently tangled up because of Gabe.
“Always use a condom, boys,” I say. “Let this be a lesson to you.”
Not that I’d undo Gabe. Never. But—if I’d been able to foresee moments like this five years ago when I barged past common sense and into Maddie, well, I might have slowed down and used the big head.
“So—that means you’re out?” Clark wrinkles his forehead.
“I’m out,” I confirm sadly.
They both shake their heads. “Sorry about your balls, dude,” Clark says.
Henry sticks the tickets back in his pocket and says they’ll find someone else. I have to practically clamp my mouth shut to keep from changing my mind and grabbing the ticket.
We’re good, I text Maddie.
Yeah. At least if I’m not the dad any woman would choose for her kid, neither am I my dad.
I’m still wanting to beg Henry for another chance at that ticket as I head home in my pickup a couple of hours later. The site where we’ve been building is three miles from my house, but the town where I live has changed a lot in the last couple of years. When the Seattle real estate boom went crazy, developers started buying up land everywhere, including places no one ever thought of as being Seattle suburbs, like the town where both Maddie and I grew up, Revere Lake. Five years ago, Revere Lake looked pretty much like it did when we were kids: a small main street with a market, a diner, a couple of coffee shops, and stores catering to lake tourism. Now there are new cookie-cutter developments everywhere and box retailers popping up, and the city council, in its infinite wisdom, decided it would be a good idea to widen the main drag and put in traffic lights. End result? It takes twenty minutes for me to make what should be a five-minute commute home.
So I’m late to meet Maddie again.
I finally turn off Route 132 and round the last couple of corners. Maddie’s little red Toyota Prius is in my driveway, and she and Gabe are sitting on my front steps.
I jump down from the truck and call out, “Hey.”
I’ve decided I’m not going to apologize because some dumb politician has installed too many traffic lights in a couple-mile stretch of road. If she wants to turn the vise, that’s her problem, but I’m not going to offer her my balls so she can do it. I’m under ten minutes late, and that’s good enough. To be fair, she doesn’t call me out on it. She just looks at her watch and shakes her head.
Gabe comes running from her side. I open my arms and he jumps up. I give him a hug. “How are you, buddy?”
“Good! We gon’ play football?” He wriggles in my arms and I set him down, catching a whiff of the clean shampoo scent of his hair. How do little kids smell so good?
“Of course!” I tell him. There are about ten more minutes of daylight, but we’ll make it work. If there’s one thing I’m determined about, it’s that Gabe will know how to throw and catch every kind of ball there is before he goes to kindergarten. I’ve actually had to talk Maddie into signing him up for sports—soccer, T-ball, pee-wee flag football—which floors me. It’s like she just doesn’t understand that it’s Gabe’s ticket to Mandom. You can suck at anything else in life, but if
you have a passable knowledge of sports, you can survive boyhood. I should know; sports was about the only thing I was ever good at. I’m hoping Gabe will turn out to have Maddie’s brains, but if not, at least I’ll give him the tools he needs not to get eaten alive.
“The football’s in the garage—you want to go get it?” I ask him, and he runs off.
That leaves Maddie and me alone, and I get my first real look at her. She looks good. Maddie cleans up great, anyway, but this is another level. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a scoop-neck red shirt that bares the tops of her breasts and shiny red boots with spike heels. My brain serves up a quick, dirty flash of what she’d look like wearing those boots and nothing else. Unfortunately, I have never been able to get out of my head how good she looks naked, so it’s a vivid picture, right down to how pink her cheeks get when she’s turned on.
That ship, however, sailed a long time ago, so I do my best to draw a curtain over the mental pictures.
“So,” she says, breaking the awkward silence. “Everything good with you?”
“Yeah. Good as it gets. You?”
No way I’m going to make a big deal of how much I’d rather be at a basketball game than babysitting. Especially because nothing gets Maddie pissed off faster than referring to watching Gabe as babysitting. Apparently it’s not babysitting if it’s your own kid. That said, when you’re as clueless as I am about fatherhood, it might count as babysitting.
“Things could be worse.” She shrugs.
We both shift our stances awkwardly. You’d think two people who have a kid in common would eventually find some comfortable way to deal with drop-offs and pickups, but I guess the water under our particular bridge is just that muddy. It’s pretty crazy when you think about all the history we have and all the talking we did, once upon a time. But we were just kids then, and the connection we had didn’t translate when it came to real life.
