by Jillian Neal
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my cheek to the sculpted wall of chest muscle. “Clearly, it’s been a really long day. I don’t think you slept at all last night. Why don’t we go on to bed?”
“Hey,” he tipped my chin upward with his fingers. “Just because I don’t want to talk with my dad doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you. You know that, right?”
“I know. I just thought it might help.”
50
Griff
Her hair hung in limp waves that draped over her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed from that endless day. Exhaustion weighted us both, and yet she was trying so damn hard to mend all of the tattered edges of my life.
“I meant to thank you for trying to tell Smith this morning. That means so much to me, but I think we should tell him together. We’re in this together,” she reminded me.
At one time in my life, there had been eleven men I trusted above all others and without any doubt. Half of them were gone, and I still had no clue what to do with that. The only thing that stitched the gaping wound was her.
“Together is how I want to do everything, Hannah. You’re the only thing on this whole damned planet that…” I forced myself to go on with the entirety of this confession. “That makes me believe somehow everything is going to be all right. You make me glad to be alive. I love you so much. I know your dad is someone who means a lot to you and that you think if I’d just talk to mine it would undo years of lies and anger and abuse, but that just isn’t the way it always works, okay? This, right here”—I gestured between us—“this feels really good. The way it was always supposed to be. I’ll even buy into your optimism that Smith won’t hate me for the rest of my life because I want to believe that so fucking badly. But me and my father…..” I shook my head. “That’s just a bottomless well of pain I have no intention of throwing myself in anymore.” Someday soon, she’d have to see just how badly parents could fuck over your life. I still hated that ultimately I’d have to tell her what the general had done. I wasn’t sure I was worth that.
“Okay.” She nodded. I studied the tiny dip at the top of her lips and watched her long eyelashes close in extended blinks. My eyes tracked from the hollow at the base of her throat to the plump swells of her breasts tempting me under the V-neck of her T-shirt. I brushed my thumb over the seam of her lips, needing to touch what I was about to devour.
Every single thing about the day had been surreal. We’d existed in other people’s warped realities long enough. I needed to ground us in that moment, in that room, in my arms, in my bed.
Her eyes closed as I slanted my lips over hers. Since she’d stepped out in front of me in the lobby of The Obelisk hotel, I’d rushed every encounter. That’s how it always had to be. I would try to absorb as much of her as I possibly could because there was always a stopwatch on our time together. No more. Tonight, I was taking my time with her, savoring her, relishing the fact that as badly as I was about to fuck up my life, she was more than worth it.
She parted her lips under the persuasion of my tongue. The flavors of the beers we’d consumed melded with that sweetened spice that was all her. She’d been there for me in every possible way she was able since the first time we’d met. Today was no exception.
Tonight, I was going to prove to her that I’d be there for her no matter what life threw our way. I eased her T-shirt up her waist, desperate to touch her skin. My hand splayed across her abdomen as I pushed the shirt higher. Soft warmth filled my palms. The two sides of my soul went to battle over her once again. Her fierce protector and her ultimate corrupter. This time I would be a warrior over her. I tossed the T-shirt away.
She swayed against me. The cool night air carried her warm vanilla scent to my lungs as I popped the clasp of her bra. She lifted her head and I sank my lips back to hers, starved for the soft confection of her mouth. When I’d rid her of the bra, I slowed, letting myself really explore the tender swells of her breasts. Her sweet little gasp and delectable shiver took up residence in the very marrow of my bones.
More. I needed more. Trailing my hungry, open-mouthed kisses down her neck, I centered my mouth over her right nipple and felt it bead against my tongue. I took it captive.
A needy moan urged me onward. Wrapping my hands around her ass, I coaxed her closer as I drowned myself in the sheen of sweat that had gathered between her breasts.
Her fingers wove through my hair. Her back arched offering me more of the very thing I needed to go on. I popped the snap on her shorts to reveal a sweet little pair of lace panties that matched the bra.
Unable to help myself, I traced my fingertips lower. A greedy growl kicked up from low in my gut as I encountered wet lace and raw heat. “Why didn’t you tell me, baby?” Sliding my hand to the back of her open shorts, I cupped her delectable little ass and pressed the evidence of her arousal against my hard on. She trembled from the friction as I rocked her up and down against my obvious hunger for her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were so wet for me?”
Her quick pants of breath only served to stoke the fire already blazing between us. “I need you,” she whimpered.
“I know what you need, sweetheart. I’m gonna take good care of my baby.” Lifting her up into my arms with ease, I laid her out in the bed of my youth. Somehow she seemed to fit there as well. The only woman capable of mending the two broken halves of my life. I slipped the shorts and panties down those long legs and then painted kisses up her inner thighs. I skimmed my knuckles over her creamy pussy watching her writhe all for me. I indulged my tongue in the flavors of her, but she needed more. I knew.
Shedding my clothes, I grabbed one of the condoms I’d shoved in my wallet that morning. I turned off the lamp, and watched the streaming moonlight from the window bathe her slight curves. The very window I’d broken twice with a baseball, the same one I’d stared out of to wonder what life might be like outside of that trailer.
As gently as I was able, I extended my body over hers, needing every square inch of her skin to be in contact with mine. Those cool blue eyes heated with desire. My cock pressed against her warm, swollen folds, blanketing me in heaven. “Let me take you like this, baby.” Bracing on one elbow, I drew her hands together and pinned them over her head, pressing them into the mattress with one of my own. I needed to feel her soft body pressed to my hardened strength, needed to be absorbed by her. She would only ever be vulnerable to me, and I would protect her until my last breath.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Please.”
Pausing only long enough to roll a condom on, I rocked forward, guiding my cock against her clit. Back and forth, slow and steady, watching her eyes close and her lips part on a keening moan. Tenderly, I sank deep inside her, drowning out every complication and every bit of insanity the day had provided. Her open thighs cradled my hips. Her nipples pressed insistently against the tats on my chest. All of my scars were hidden against her skin. Her silky channel drew me in like she’d been created for me alone. “Just relax and let me get you there, baby. Let me take care of you.”
51
Hannah
The next morning, I closed my eyes to savor the last few sips of the best coffee I’d had in a long, long time. I’d been to all of the coffee bars in Denver, and they had nothing on the hippie eclectic coffee shop in downtown Boise. “Say what you will about Idaho, but their coffee rocks,” I informed Griff who’d just ordered another basket of muffins for us to share.
“I told you this place was good, and my disdain for this state probably has more to do with Duke than the potato capital of the free world.”
“Wonder how Duke’s feeling this morning.” I pulled apart a pumpkin chai muffin that tasted like the very best parts of Sunday brunches mixed with Thanksgiving topped with cream cheese frosting.
“I’m sure he’s still giving everyone hell. They’re likely to discharge him for being an ass which means I’ll be back down here trying to get him to take care of himself.” Griff sounded like he’d rather s
hove a fork in his own eye than return to care for his father.
“I’ll come with you, but I got the distinct impression Georgia would like to be charged with caring for dear old Duke.”
“The woman must be a saint.”
“I wonder how they met.” I tried to imagine Duke sweet-talking a woman at a bar or maybe at the senior center. “Did he have girlfriends after your mom left?”
“He had women but not any actual relationships that I knew of. He used to tell me to go sleep in the barn the nights he had his dates come home with him. Damn cold in Idaho at night, let me tell you.”
Every recollection Griff shared about his father widened the hole in the balloon of hope I’d stupidly inflated in my chest. His father had skirted the border line between terrible and abusive and had crossed that boundary on several occasions. I remembered once when Griff told me he hadn’t found boot camp to be all that bad, at least he’d had a bed that was his that he could sleep in every night. Now, I fully grasped what his life had been like before he went from boy to soldier.
“You’re sure we can go back to Vegas today?” I studied the available flights on my phone and then accidentally wiped my sticky fingers on my jeans. Griff dipped his napkin in a glass of water and handed it to me to scrub my legs. “Someday, I will be able to eat an entire meal without getting it on my clothes,” I repeated my mantra though it was yet to come true.
That deep chuckle of his stirred inside of me. “I kind of liked covering you with ice cream myself.”
Heat pricked my cheeks. “Did you?”
“Hell yeah, baby.”
“I liked that, too. We could do more of that back in Vegas.”
“And on that note, yes, I want to go back today. I’ll come back out here and check on him after he’s out of the hospital. Maybe I can hire a nurse to look in on him if Georgia comes to her senses and decides to get out while she still can.”
“More coffee, sir?” the waitress asked as she approached.
Griff considered.
“We should probably stop stalling and get to the hospital,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, fine.” He fished his wallet out of his back pocket and paid the bill.
Ten minutes later, we drew on deep resolve and outstanding coffee as we headed inside Duke’s room.
Georgia was standing beside him trying to get him to eat the small box of high-fiber cereal that was on the tray for breakfast. Duke was not having it. “Tastes like that tofu crap on a slab of concrete. If that’s how I have to eat now, I’d rather just die.”
Griff rubbed his temples. “First of all, Dad, when have you ever had tofu? I lived ten months out of the year eating MRE’s. You’ll survive fiber flakes. And if you keep giving her crap, I’ll arrange for you to meet your maker sooner than later. Man the fuck up.”
“They already gave me two shots this morning, so why don’t you man the fuck up, son?”
“Believe it was you who told me at the ripe old age of six that the tetanus shot I had to get because you left rusted metal sheeting out in the barn served me right for being a dumbass. Looks like karma rode in on a gurney this time.”
Dear Lord. This was going nowhere good, and it was traveling rather quickly. “Duke, come on. Aren’t you hungry? They’re not going to bring you anything else. Just try it. It’s not so bad,” I coaxed.
Georgia smiled at me. “He just likes to complain.”
“Pretty sure it’s hard-wired into his DNA,” Griff huffed.
Duke did take two minuscule bites of the cereal before he shoved the Styrofoam bowl away, sloshing the milk as it slid and then ordering someone to clean up his mess. Georgia mopped up the milk on the tray with a napkin. God bless that dear, sweet woman. I had half a mind to gag him with the spoon itself.
“Georgie was thinking you and me should talk. Maybe the girls could go to the cafeteria and find me some real food,” Duke informed his son. Those delicious muffins I’d indulged in turned to bricks in my stomach. If I left Duke and Griff in a room alone for any length of time, there was a decent chance the entire hospital would implode from the detonated rage.
“Talk about what?” Griff demanded.
“Why you never come to see me.”
“I don’t come to see you because you’re an ass. There. Conversation over.”
“Well now, I think Duke knows he hasn’t always done right by you, Griffin. Maybe he’d like to apologize.” Georgia’s desperation leaked into her insistence. I met Griff’s incredulous gaze.
“If you want to talk, then talk, old man.” Griff’s arms crossed over the expanse of his chest as he glared down at his father. In that moment, he certainly did look more god than man.
“I don’t want to do it in front of her.” He pointed his finger three inches from my face.
“Get your fucking finger out of her face,” Griff snarled.
Okay, maybe it was time to let them go at it. If Duke was really going to apologize, it might be worth it. Griff deserved his apologies a thousand times over. “It’s fine. Why don’t we go take a walk, Georgia? You can tell me how you two met.” I gestured to the door.
“I’d love that.” Hope and delight twinkled in her pale brown eyes, weary from spending the night taking care of Duke.
“Text me if you need me,” I whispered to Griff as we headed out into the corridor.
52
Hannah
Georgia and I made one lap around the cardiac unit and then she stopped outside of Duke’s room. Apparently, she wasn’t as interested in telling me how she’d met Duke as she was hearing him apologize to his son. Spying on a Green Beret was never a good idea. The likelihood of getting caught was extremely high, and I didn’t want to be intrusive. I wanted Duke and Griff to have their moment whatever might come out of it.
“We could go get Duke some flowers or something from the gift shop,” I urged quietly.
“No. I want to hear this.” She edged closer to the partially opened door.
The squeak of nurses’ shoes as their owners paced up and down the corridor and constant buzz of visitors and machines muffled her explanation.
Okay, then. We were officially eavesdropping. I doubted Griff would care. I knew more than his father did about his past.
“Georgie thinks I ought to be nicer to you. I told her you were a damned Green Beret. You didn’t need me to be nice,” was Duke’s opening line.
“Did it ever occur to you that you’re my father not my CO?” Griff sneered. Okay, that was heated, but they were sharing real feelings. Maybe this would be good.
“I lied to you,” Duke said suddenly. “When you were a kid. About your mom.”
Oh, holy fuck. Here we go. I dug my fingernails into my palm and glanced toward the skies with a quick silent prayer that somehow Griff might get some closure.
“Yeah, I know that, Dad.”
“How the hell do you know that? You don’t know anything.”
I ground my teeth. Stop being an asshole! I wanted to scream.
“I found Mom. She’s working in some bar up in Montana with her new husband and the half-brothers I never knew I had. I talked with the husband. Never let on who I was, but he mentioned that she’d been married to a real shitwagon and had a kid before they met. Seems she got sick and tired of putting up with the two of us, so she met him on the state line and never looked back.”
Georgia’s eyes rounded with shock.
“Why the hell would he tell you that?”
“People tell me shit, Dad. It’s how my job works. People lay their shit on me and I take it. I’ve watched enough men die to know every fucking regret anyone could possibly have in this life. I had to hear them all.”
“Who the hell gave you permission to go looking for her?” Duke sneered.
“I don’t need permission to do anything at all, Duke. I’m a grown man. I get to live my life any way I please. Why the hell did you tell me you kicked her out? Of all the shit you could’ve said, why did you lie about that?”
&
nbsp; “You needed someone to be mad at.” A cold block of realization sank slowly through me, cementing my shoes to the floor of St. Luke’s Medical Center. Of all the things I thought Duke might say, that wasn’t one of them.
“What?” Griff demanded.
“You were just like me. You needed someone to be mad at and I figured…”
“You figured what?”
“That it should be me. I didn’t want you to blame yourself for her leaving.”
I placed my palm along the cool painted concrete blocks that comprised the wall, trying to hold myself upright. I wanted to go to Griff, to hold him in my arms, but he had to hear his father out.
Silence ate up far too many seconds. “I didn’t need someone to be mad at, Dad,” he choked. “I needed a parent.”
“I didn’t know how to do that,” Duke admitted. His voice almost somber now. I closed my eyes and prayed Griff would understand that.
“I figured that out all on my own.” Griff’s tone had been drained of all of its fury.
“What’s with you and Hannah? She’s been worrying sick over you for years now. You can’t keep your damn hands off her. Why don’t you make an honest woman out of her?”
My pulse thundered in my ears. What would he say to that? “I’d marry her right now if I could. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated,” Duke scoffed. “That’s a bunch of bullshit coward speak.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, old man. Stay out of it.”
“What if I don’t want to stay out of it? What if I’m worried about you? I may not have been much of a dad, but I do want you to have a better life than I did. You’ve…been through a buncha shit you…shouldn’t a had to go through.”
