It was because Hap was being just that.
Hap.
Open and frank and amusing and self-deprecating in a way that was uniquely his and singularly charming.
“You?” Hap asked.
She faced forward saying, “Oh, I’m Italian. We’re far more candid about many things, including sexuality. When I was young, maybe eleven, I walked in on an older cousin having sex with a waiter at one of my other cousin’s weddings. I told my father about it and he said, ‘Bellisima, that is making love and it’s not for you for now, but when it’s your time, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.’”
“Definitely better than Intro to Sex: Two Dogs Fucking,” Hap drawled, making Luci giggle.
“Yes. Definitely,” she agreed. “Though I often looked back at that and realized my father was right. They were standing up and many would think it was sordid, but my cousin, Giorgia, had this expression on her face that was most attractive, and the man she was with was very handsome. They had no idea I was there, the moment was intense, there was only the other for them in it. She likely never saw him again, but she undoubtedly thought of him . . . fondly.” She turned again to face Hap. “But because of that, and what my father said, when my time came, I didn’t fear it. This is how I’d like to teach my children about making love. Obviously, I’d prefer they not see the act prior to me explaining its importance. But I would not ever want to make them feel it was base or shameful.”
“You’re talking to a dude who grew up in the Bible belt, Luce.”
Oh dear.
“And?” she prompted.
His glance her way was longer this time before he looked back to the road. “It’s not shameful, and I wouldn’t want any of my kids to feel it was. Though there’s a right time to talk about that, and I wouldn’t want them to be anything but kids until that time was right. But if my baby girl got an eyeful before she was ready to process that in an adult way, I’d lose my goddamn mind.”
That did not make her feel good and right in her belly.
That made her feel fiery and greedy and fiercely possessive. It made her want to crawl to him and take his mouth in a kiss that he’d remember the rest of his days.
Obviously, she could not do that as he was driving.
“Do you want children, bello?” she whispered.
“Yeah, baby,” he whispered back.
Luci licked her lips and rubbed them together while she turned her gaze again to look out the windshield.
His hand squeezing hers did not make her look back because it felt like the warning it would turn out to be when he spoke.
“We feel different because we’ve known each other awhile, Luce, and because from when this started to where we are now took some time. But we’re new, honey. Don’t lose sight of that. You with me?”
She was not.
They were not new.
She knew new.
Hap had practically crusted her red sauce with freshly grated parmesan before handing her the bowl of pasta he’d made for her the night before. He did this without asking. And he did this because he knew she liked it like that.
That was not new.
The discovery he was exceptionally talented at cunnilingus was new.
They were not.
She understood the nuance he wanted her to understand.
She simply refused to allow it to hold her back.
No.
Them back.
“Babe, you with me?” he pushed.
She turned again to look at him and took a risk she knew was grave.
But he was open and frank and this was too important.
He deserved that in return.
“I will not hide the fact I’m falling in love with you, George Cunningham.”
His fingers flexed hard around hers, nearly causing pain.
However, she was not finished.
“And you would not be with me if you didn’t feel the same. So yes, I do understand this new facet of us is very young. But the most important part of anything we will ever have is being friends, and that is not. I’ve loved you for a long time, Hap. That feeling is simply deepening to something fuller and richer, and I will not hide that I’m beside myself with happiness that it is.”
“You’re killin’ me, Luci,” he muttered, and she looked at him closely to see he did, even in profile, appear in pain.
“How?” she asked, not able to hide the alarm in her tone.
He did not speak immediately. It was as if he needed time to measure his words, make certain the right ones came out.
She had no idea if they were right or wrong in his mind when they did.
She just knew what they were in her mind.
“You make it sound like we can do this.”
And he was making it sound like they couldn’t.
“Well, we can,” she snapped.
Another glance and, “Babe—”
“Sam will get on board, Hap, and if he doesn’t—”
“It’s not that.”
“We . . . neither of us are unaware of how both of us felt about Travis and—”
“It’s not that either.”
“Then what is it?” she demanded to know.
Again with the hesitation, the searching for words, and Luci had learned quickly that there were instances when Hap found her quick temper “cute” and times when it was damaging.
She assessed now, losing patience with him he would not find cute.
So she kept quiet, even though it cost her.
It took too long, but he finally found his words.
“I just need to get past the idea you’ll eventually figure it out.”
“Figure what out?” she inquired.
He said nothing.
Luci gave him more time.
She really wanted to be patient, she simply found she could not.
“Figure what out, George?” she asked irritably.
“I’m an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole,” she shot back.
“And you got a quick temper.”
She could not argue that.
Merda.
“And you’re a supermodel,” he went on.
She looked to the ceiling of the cab of his truck. “Oh, for the love of—”
“And I’m a farm boy.”
She looked back to him. “I do not care.”
“With a criminal dad and a never-there mom you just could not understand because that’s so far from what you are, it’s not even in your DNA.”
“We’ve discussed this,” she clipped.
“And he’s gonna show, or she’s gonna show. They’ve been away way too long so they’ve had plenty of time to significantly fuck their shit, so they’re gonna land on my doorstep, one of them. And if you’re with me, you might be there and you’ll see the me they made, even if they had fuck all to do with raising me.”
“And who’s the you they made, caro?” she asked, not hiding her frustration.
“My temper, I don’t hold it, will make you understand why I think yours is cute.”
“So?” she asked. “Do you not think my temper comes from somewhere? My father’s is explosive. If I did not know him to be the loving, caring man he is, it might even be frightening.”
“I can guaran-damn-tee you mine has his beat.”
Luci fell silent.
“I told you when I was young, that shit could get physical, baby,” he said quietly. “And it’s only the fact that my grandfather and the sheriff were good buds that I didn’t have a juvie file a mile long and didn’t hit detention repeatedly back in the day.”
“That’s not you anymore, Hap,” she pointed out.
“One of them shows, I try to hold it, but they push it and it isn’t pretty, Luciana. Trust me, honey. I go off and even I hate the me I become when I do. And it itches in my goddamn bones, thinking you’d ever see me that way. A way it’s for sure to change the way you look at me.”
She always found it very odd how things
that were so obvious to those on the outside were so very concealed to those who were closer to it.
This time was no exception.
It just made her madder.
“You do know, Hap, that you’ve explained some of your childhood to me and it is not something I understand because I was not brought up that way. However, you’ve explained enough that if I was there, and you went off, as you say, on one of those two individuals who created a precious life and then left that life in order to carry on doing criminal or selfish things, I would think nothing but they deserved the power of your anger. Even your rage. They earned it and you should feel free to offer it to them however you see fit. I would probably think they deserved more than you’d give them. And last, you should be aware should this happen, caro, that you might not have the focus to give it to them because you’d be holding me back from saying a few things myself.”
Hap stared straight ahead, continued driving and said not a word.
“Did your grandparents speak to you about your temper?” she asked.
“It bothered them,” he said softly.
“And you felt they worried it meant you’d turn out like your father,” she surmised.
“His first stint in prison was because he beat a man half to death for knocking over his beer in a biker bar. That being, he was pulled off that guy by some cops and therefore caught for a grocery store robbery for which he was wanted for questioning because he was tying one on to celebrate robbing that grocery store.”
Hmm.
“And you think you have that in you?” she queried.
“A man sees his father in him, Luci,” he whispered. “I figure good or bad, he searches for that. I don’t know about the good. But I know about the bad.”
“You’re not your father, George.”
He pulled her hand he was still holding to his stomach and pressed it there, using this like a tactic to soften the blow of the words he was about to say.
“You can say that until you’re blue in the face, baby, and it won’t matter. It just is what it is. I have him in me. He’s a part of me. I see him in me when I get like that. And that’s in a way that won’t ever change.”
“And there’s nothing I can do to help you with this?” she pressed.
“I wish there was, but I don’t see that happening,” he replied.
“Well, then, I suppose when you’re eighty-three and I’m still sitting beside you in your truck you’ll realize then that I’ll never figure it out and finally relax. It saddens me it’ll take that long. But if I’m sitting beside you in your truck, I’ll be fine with that.”
He was now pressing her hand deep into the hard muscle of his abs and holding it way too tight.
Luci didn’t make a peep.
He came to the realization of what he was doing so he released the pressure on her hand and moved it to tuck it into the crook where his thigh met his hip.
Luci turned to face forward.
“I want two children, a boy and a girl, the boy first,” she announced to the windshield, and the pressure on her hand came back.
She ignored it.
“If I have two girls, I will be happy,” she continued. “If I have a girl first, and a boy second, this will be disappointing, but I’m sure I’ll be able to live with it. If I have two boys, my life will be over.”
The pressure released but Hap carried on holding her hand.
“Your life will be over?” he asked quietly.
“If I can’t dress at least one child in frilly pink dresses, I’ll expire from sheer devastation.”
He started stroking her fingers with his thumb, muttering, “Best find a crossroads to make a deal with the devil for at least one girl.”
Luci grinned at the windshield.
“Though I want all boys,” he added.
Luci frowned and looked back at him.
She ignored his lips turned up and squeezed his hand irately. “Do not even say that out loud. It might cause a maledizione.”
“A what?”
“Maledizione. What is it in English? A spell, a bad one.”
“A curse?”
“Yes, that. Don’t speak of such things.”
“Baby, you know you’re gonna get what you get.”
No.
She knew they were going to get what they got.
She believed in God. She was a good Catholic (okay, she tried to be a good one, thank God He was forgiving).
And she knew her God would not give her two beautiful, kind, loving, loyal men who made her happy only to take both of them away.
She knew this.
She also knew that He expected you to work at earning the goodness in life.
Travis had been easy.
Hap was proving difficult.
She did not mind.
In the end, God was going to give her the opportunity to have the best of both worlds.
This would not come without pain and suffering.
But then, what in life mattered if it didn’t?
No?
She saw a sign go by as Hap drove.
“I’m hungry,” she declared.
“Babe, we ate two hours ago.”
“I saw a sign for Bojangles. There’s one off this next exit.”
“You want Bo’s?”
He sounded intrigued.
Yes, she very much loved this man.
“I’m uncertain I can make it to the beach without chicken and biscuits.”
“Yeah, I feel the same way.”
Luci looked at Hap again. “You want chicken and biscuits?”
He glanced at her before looking back to the road and hitting his turn signal.
“No, baby. What you said earlier. I feel the same way.”
She wasn’t certain what he was talking about.
“A woman who can down two waffles and four smoky links and two hours later need chicken and biscuits,” he muttered. “Yeah. I feel the same way.”
Luci was still confused.
Until she remembered.
And you would not be with me if you didn’t feel the same.
That was what she’d said earlier, after she’d told him she was falling in love with him.
It was like he sensed she understood this because he lifted her hand to his mouth and touched his lips to her knuckles before he dropped both their hands to his thigh.
And he kept hold all the while exiting. All the while navigating the roads to the drive-thru.
In fact, Hap didn’t let her go until he had to pull out his wallet to pay for their food.
And Luci was just fine with that.
He could hold her hand as long as he wanted.
Hap Cunningham could hold her hand forever.
And she hoped, symbolically, he would.
I Wish
Luci
“WHAT’S GOING ON?”
Luci was pacing Sam and Kia’s living room, their sweet, little dog, Memphis, trotting at her heels thinking it was a game, her eyes aimed out the windows to the deck where Hap and Sam were talking.
“Luci, honey, you both show, Hap barely says ‘hey’ before he asks Sam outside . . . what’s going on?”
Kia’s question came at her again, and Luci stopped pacing to look at her friend.
Memphis yapped.
Both women ignored her.
Kia was showing now, slightly, and like many women, she was even more beautiful carrying a child than when she was not.
Luci thought of this only briefly.
“Hap came to me last Saturday to work things out,” she announced.
“Yeah, I guessed that when you two showed here together,” Kia replied, watching her closely.
“He wished to find a way to take us back to where we were before we . . . you know.”
Kia nodded. “I know.”
“Instead, we made love and spent most of the rest of the weekend in bed.”
Kia’s eyes became huge.
“He drove out to come get me on Wednesday. I
’ve been with him at his home until today. Now he will be with me at my home until he has to leave tomorrow,” Luci told her.
“You’re together?” Kia breathed.
Luci straightened her shoulders and wished she could smile, but she was too worried about what was happening on the deck, so she could not.
“Yes, cara, we’re together,” she confirmed.
Kia’s face grew bright with happiness, a smile growing wide on her mouth before her expression darkened and she turned her head to look out the window.
Luci looked out the window as well.
Body language was not good.
Both men seemed tense. Hap was talking. Sam’s face was made of stone.
Merda.
“Yes, Hap is very concerned how Sam will take it,” she muttered in answer to Kia’s unspoken comment.
“Maybe I should go out there,” Kia muttered in return.
“I do not think Hap would welcome that,” Luci told her.
“Honey,” Kia called, and Luci pried her eyes from the men on the deck to look at her friend. “Are things going well?”
She could not say they were going well.
She could say she thought she was getting somewhere.
“He’s an exceptional lover.”
Kia’s smile came back. It was hesitant this time, but it was there.
“Well, that’s good.”
“He has issues that are not mine to share, cara, but even though some of them have to do with Travis . . . and Sam, most of them are all Hap’s.”
“Oh man,” Kia mumbled.
“We’re working through them,” Luci stated, and even she heard the defiance in her voice. Then again, she felt the same in her heart. “But when we’re not, he’s lovely, Kia. You know how he is. He’s Hap. He’s funny and he’s sweet and he’s loving. He’s also honest and forthright and that’s so very refreshing. And he makes me dinner and tells me stories of growing up in Iowa.” She drew in breath and let it out, sharing, “Bellisima, he makes me happy.”
Kia studied her a moment and then replied, “Good.” Her head tilted a bit before she went on to ask, “But . . . I don’t get . . .” She shook her head and carried on, “It’s kind of new, so isn’t it kind of soon for Hap to be taking it there with Sam?”
“He thought, and I have to admit I agree, that if we let too much time pass with us as we are now without sharing with Sam, he would be even angrier, thinking we were keeping it from him.”
Loose Ends Page 13
