by L A Pepper
“How do you know it was an act? How do you know it’s not me? Who I am?”
I looked at him. Was I supposed to be stroking his ego now? He’d just mocked me to me. I took my pillow and hit him in the chest. He grabbed it and held on. “You egotist. You want me to tell you why I liked you? So you can feel like the cool kid again?”
“I want to know why you still do like me, because if it’s not for my looks and my wealth and status, then what the hell else do I have to offer someone like you?”
“Someone like me? I’m a dog walker, James. I’m a failure in life. I’m a mess. I’m living in my parents' house and spending my days with dogs because I can’t handle stepping out into the big bad world because I’m afraid all the time that he was right.”
He flexed his fingers into the pillow that he still held. “Right about what? What do you think he was right about?”
“Oh, now you want me to tell you everything that’s wrong with me? I get it. Praise you and ridicule myself. Not gonna happen, rich boy.”
He was looking away, around the room with its clutter, worn furniture, and the walls hung with my own bad art that wasn’t good enough to be professional. The thrift store lamps, and piles of books, shaking his head. Probably thinking what a loser I was. “You know what, Hannah?” He plucked my book out of my hand. “This isn’t a crazy book, it’s a classic. Even I know that. And your hair is gorgeous, you’re gorgeous. If you took a few years to grow into it, you’ve always been who you are, and have never been afraid to stand up against the world and declare it. You’ve always been so brave, climbing up on that roof and talking back to books and staring up at the constellations like you could make your own dreams come true and you didn’t need anyone else’s approval. You weren’t the only one watching.”
He was leaning forward, into my space, with the force of his conviction. “I was watching you, too, and wishing I could be up there on that roof with you, away from everyone else, not caring. Never trying to be anything else but myself.”
“You’re lying, James. You never would have dated me, you told me.”
He shrugged and inched closer to me. “Maybe not. Maybe not then. I was too concerned with being cool, with that stupid appearance. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t real, but it was all I had.”
I scoffed. “You had money, looks, and intelligence. It was not all you had.”
“I was a stupid kid, Hannah. I didn’t know that. All I knew was that you were a wild thing, and free, and you said what you felt and you did what you wanted. You were so brave. I may not have wanted to date you, no. I didn’t, you’re right.”
“Awesome. You always were honest. Brutal, hurtful, but honest.”
He grimaced. “I wouldn’t have dated you. I was too shallow, and you were too different, but Hannah, I wanted to spend time with you, I wanted you to invite me in. I wanted to be brave like you. And I wasn’t entirely comfortable with any of those desires. I like the dog rhinoceros. I like you.”
I laughed. It was hysterical. “Oh. My. Gosh, James. That is ridiculous. You never—”
He swooped in and pressed his mouth to mine, kissing me like he couldn’t hold it back anymore. He tasted like whiskey and heat and hope and I was dizzy with it. He leaned me back against the arm of the couch, his hands braced on either side of me. “You are, were, and have always been phenomenal, Hannah. And I was jealous of you. But I’m not afraid of you anymore. It’s like you’ve lit something within me. I’m drawn to you and I can’t keep away.”
“Stop,” I said, and he startled.
“Oh, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have,” and then he started to back up off of me. I did not mean for him to stop kissing me.
“No!” I twisted my fingers in his shirt. He couldn’t leave. “Stay.”
“Stay? Okay,” he said, and kissed me again, deeper, his tongue sliding against mine, taking possession. My hands slid under his t-shirt because I wanted to feel him. I’d wanted to feel his skin against mine since I first saw him again. I wanted to see if he was real. And here he was, muscle and sinew and bone underneath my hands. I moaned and pushed him up to tug his shirt off and put my mouth to his chest.
Oh, he was so much more beautiful than he had been in my dreams. Strong and broad, the ridges of his abs like monuments to his near-godlike beauty. Everything I had always imagined. I licked down his chest, and he released a ragged sigh. Better than a fantasy. Better than anything teenage me could have imagined.
“We shouldn’t do this, Hannah.” I looked up at him, his body dominating me and for a second, fear lanced through me. Memories. I swallowed hard. Maybe he was a dream, but I was still living that nightmare. I slid back up on my elbows so that his broad chest was no longer overwhelming me.
I nodded, like a puppet with loose strings. “I know, you’re right, you’re just divorced.” He sat up and I sat up too, stripping my tank top over my head. He growled, and his big hands found my waist, settling me into his lap. He bent his head and kissed the top of my breast that rose above my plain, no-nonsense bra. He bit the skin there, just lightly and I felt a spike of desire go all the way through me. “We definitely shouldn’t do this,” I said, twisting my fingers in his hair so that he couldn’t stop doing what he was doing to my boobs. The bra slipped off of my shoulders and I let it fall to the ground, and oh that was much better. I gasped as his lips closed over my nipple. “Oh,” I panted, my head fell back in delight. “I’m such a mess, you don’t want any part of me.”
“I definitely want you.” He kissed my pulse point, whispered into my ear. “I want all the parts of you.” He lifted his lips from my skin, and put a hand to my jaw, tilting it so I would look at him. “You’re not a mess.”
“I am.” I took deep breaths, trying to get my thoughts together, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, running my fingers through his thick hair, dark as midnight. “I’m such a mess, you don’t know. I’m better with dogs, you don’t see the rest.”
“Then you’re better with dogs and me.” He kissed me quick, nipping at my lower lip. “Does that make me a dog?”
I laughed. “A little, rich boy.” I petted down his side. He was the dream.
“Ah,” he said. “You’re smiling again. See? You’re not such a mess.”
The smile faded. “No. I’m a mess. I used to be that girl you remember, and then I met Marcus. And we got married. And I forgot who she was.”
He frowned. His nostrils flared. His blue eyes stared into mine like he wanted to convince me of something. James ran his thumb over my cheekbone, he held onto my the side of my head. “But you won.”
“What did I win?”
“Your freedom. Sometimes divorce is a victory. You said. You got out. You get to be you again.”
I sighed. “Oh, this is why we shouldn’t. I don’t know who I am. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of men especially.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
I searched myself for the answer. And found it. Surprised. “No.”
His lips curved up into a smile. “No?” His eyes gleamed with pleasure.
“Don’t get a big head. I think my brain just thinks of you like another big shaggy dog.” I couldn’t help smiling at him.
He laughed and so did I. The dream.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him so that we were pressed together, chest to chest. “Bette doesn’t want me to be with you. She thinks I’ll hurt you.”
“Yeah, I think she’s probably right.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. This is why we shouldn’t do this.”
And there was the fear. But it wasn’t like fear with Marcus, dark and heavy and panicky. This was a fear from up high, light and lemon yellow, bright like too much sun, like flying too close to the sun. “There’s no way to do this right without risking pain, James.”
He jolted. “What do you mean?”
“If it means something, it means we put our hearts on the line, even just a little. Even if it is just a rebound for yo
u and an adventure for me.”
“What do you mean?” There was a panic in his voice.
“I mean that if we do this, we recognize that it will probably end because that’s what happens, but while we’re together, we’re honest. We are real. We’re all in. And that means it’s going to hurt because we care.”
“You said you’re not brave.”
“I’m scared of everything. Of the world, of people, of failure, of getting back out there. But this isn’t out there. This is in here. It’s just us. It’s… rediscovery. I deserve it.”
“You deserve to be treasured.”
I felt my cheeks heat up. “No. Just. Just be here.” I placed my palm over his heart. “Now. With me. Let’s just…” what was the word I wanted to say?
Fall.
But I couldn’t say it out loud, it was teetering on the edge of something I wasn’t ready for. He didn’t make me finish my sentence.
“Yes. Let’s,” he said.
I stood up, no more talk, and held my hand out to him. I nodded my head towards my bedroom and led him there. We shed the rest of our clothes along the way and I pulled him into my unmade bed, with its mismatched sheets and the pile of notebooks and sketch pads that I shoved onto the floor in a careless tumble. I fell back among the pillows.
“I like your room,” he said.
“Liar. It’s a mess just like me.”
He brushed my hair out of my eyes. “When will you figure out that I like the mess you are? You’re real, and imperfect, and strange and smart and I can see who you are.”
My heart thudded as he lay down next to me, and ran his beautiful hand down my side, to my waist, over my hip. He lifted my thigh, so it rested on his hip. I leaned into him. We touched in all the places I liked touching him. “What do you see?”
“Beautiful Hannah,” he kissed my lips. “Crazy Hannah.” He kissed my neck. “Sexy Hannah.” He kissed my breast and slid his hand down to my center. I clutched his shoulders as he stroked me. He smiled as I gasped at his touch.
“It’s been a while for me, James.” I felt I needed to warn him for some reason. Another sign that I was this mess.
“Lovely Hannah…” he said, he kissed my ear. “Clever, wonderful, funny Hannah.”
I wanted to make a joke, to tell him that I was the one who was going to get a big head with all his compliments, but I couldn’t speak anymore, what he was doing to me with his nimble fingers had taken my words away. He kissed me and swallowed my moans. I grasped at him, trying to get closer to him, closer until the skies exploded in my head and I saw stars. He caressed me until I came down.
“Hannah is wonderful,” he whispered and smiled. I blinked into the brilliance of it. “And she has enraptured me. Somehow, I don’t know how, but ever since I realized you were Phil, it’s like… it’s like…” He shook his head like it was ridiculous.
“No, tell me.” I kissed his jaw.
“It’s like something in me said ‘yes,’ in recognition. As if you made sense. As if I made sense.”
“You don’t make sense. Are you drunk?”
“Not anymore, but I don’t think I’m quite sober. I think I’m drunk on you. But I do make sense, Hannah. We make sense. You feel like home.”
“Oh, James…” my heart sunk. All this time, I’d been thinking that I was the mess, that I was the one who would get her heart broken, but now I realized, it wasn’t me. It was him. My perfect, dream James, the boy yearning for something real. He realized who I was, and I’d given him back his childhood. Oh, he’d never put his heart on the line. That’s why he wasn’t sad about his ex. He didn’t love her.
“Let me love you,” he said, looking down at me, his eyes so blue I felt like they were drawing me up into the sky, like a cloud, or a bird, or an angel.
I couldn’t tell him no, because I wanted it so bad. I wanted him. I wanted the way he looked at me. I wanted how he treasured me. I’d been thinking I was the one who was vulnerable, with my broken heart and destroyed life, but he was the one who had no defenses whatsoever. His heart had never been in danger because he’d never given it to anyone and now he was giving it to me.
And I longed for it. I reached up to him and pulled him down into a kiss that would show him who I was and who we were together. All our years of history, the time we were apart along with who he was to me; the dream, and the joy, and this thing between us. This couldn’t be love, because love wasn’t real anymore, but I wanted, I still wanted.
And we gave it to each other.
Chapter Five
When I woke, the sun was pouring through the wide windows, and I didn’t want to wake up. The bed was soft, and I remembered an even softer Hannah. I reached for her, without opening my eyes and found only cool cotton sheets. She wasn’t with me.
I heard a thump and then a muttered “fuck!” and cracked my eyes. There she was, in her cluttered room full of color and drawings and books, dressed in another tank top. Yoga pants this time and sneakers. Still outrageously hot.
“Good morning,” I said, and turned over onto my side, propping my head on my hand to watch her. If she was a mess, it was the kind of mess I liked.
She looked up at me with an almost guilty expression. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said. “You can go back to sleep. I just have to get up and walk the dogs.” She bit her lip and looked up at me through her hair. Her hair was wild again. I’d done that last night. I remember how I couldn’t get enough of her hair. I remembered running my hands through it, twisting it, getting wrapped up in it. It had caught me. She pulled her hair up to the top of her head, tying it into a knot and shrugged. “If I make the dogs wait, they pee all over the floor.” She laughed.
I loved it.
I found myself out of bed, and at her side without even meaning to. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her to me, still naked as a jaybird. “Good morning, Hannah,” I said, not letting her look away from me.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Morning, James.” She laughed again and patted my chest. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this.”
“You knew how to do it just fine, sweetheart.”
“Not that!” she slapped my chest this time, and I grinned. I liked teasing her so much. Was this why I’d been such an ass to her as a kid? “I mean. This. The morning after. I’ve never had one. I dated Marcus in college when I was still a virgin. We were already serious when we slept together. Then we got married when I graduated and... I’ve been alone since I left him. I’ve never been with anyone else.”
A wave of possessiveness rolled through me. The thought of Hannah and that guy made me boil. I didn’t know what he’d done to her, but he took my Hannah and broke her. Made her stop believing in herself and I couldn’t forgive him for that. He never deserved her and I hated thinking of him touching her. “That Marcus guy is a prick. I don’t like him.”
She snorted. “I mean he is, but he’s not a prick for taking my virginity. That was the OK part.”
It wasn’t okay with me. Wow. I had never felt jealous before. Even with Brigitte, I never cared about her past lovers, her on-screen kisses, or even what she did while we were married. I’d just never cared. I wasn’t a jealous person. But with Hannah, I was. It was an odd feeling. “I don’t like him at all. He didn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve you.”
She chuckled huskily, and I wanted to throw her back down on those rumpled sheets and hang on to her hair again to see just how wild I could make it if I tried. “I suppose you deserve me?”
“Oh hell no. I don’t deserve you either, we’ve already established I’m an ass. But I’m your ass.” I bent down and pressed a line of kisses onto the skin of her neck, slipping my finger underneath her strap and sliding it down her shoulder, watching her cleavage get deeper. I let my tongue slip out in anticipation.
“Get dressed!” she said, laughing. Good. She was laughing. “Not undressed! You ARE a dog, James.” She pulled her tank top back up and set her straps to rights.
I winked at her. “You wanna walk me?”
She shook her head at me and turned back to her dresser, grabbing a ring of keys on a cord and stringing it about her neck. When she turned around, I was zipping up my pants and pulling my t-shirt back on.
“What are you doing? I said stay. Sleep. Go back to bed. You didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Neither did you and you’re up.”
“I have dogs to walk. You’re a billionaire playboy with no responsibilities..”
“I work, I’ll have you know. I own three companies and multiple properties.”
She rolled her eyes at me, leaned into me with one hand on my chest, and kissed me. “That means you ‘own stuff’ not you ‘work.’ Work is when you’re required to show up, or your clients pee on the floor.”
“I have definitely experienced that before.” I grabbed her before she could slip away, no more joking. “Let me walk you through the garden. I’m going there anyway, I have to talk to my people in New York. My companies run themselves, but I do actually work. I’ve just been doing it from LA for the last year. Now that I’m home, I need to get things set up back here.”
“Sorry. I was just teasing.”
“I like when you tease me. But I’m still walking you home.”
She ducked her head. “Such a burden. All the way through my courtyard and your garden.”
“I’ll tell you what a burden is. Finding my shoes. Where are my shoes?” She laughed but we only ever found one shoe, so instead of ripping apart her already ripped apart home, I just walked home barefoot. It was, after all, just through the garden.
The dogs were ecstatic to see her, and I made her a cup of coffee to go while she fed them and got them ready for their walk. When she left with them, out the front door this time, donning her baggy windbreaker and leashing them, she gave me a kiss goodbye. It was the kind of kiss that shook me to my toes and made me stare at the door, long after she’d gone. I required a shower and gave myself a strict talking to before I could focus enough to call in to the office and talk to my CEO.
