Page 34 of A Lifetime of Afters
For a long time, I remained silent. Should I tell him? I’d decided not to hold back the next time I found a good man. Not only was Hawkley a good man, but he was alsotheman. If I couldn’t go all in for him, could I go all in for anyone?
Was it too soon? I’d known him all my life, but this part was new. Sort of. I didn’t want to lie, but it was too soon for the truth. At least, too soon for all of it.
“Once.”
He looked at me for a long time while I fidgeted on the edge of my seat.
Wrapping my hair around my fingers, I opened my mouth to ask him the same question, then decided I didn’t want to know. Looking into his beautiful, sad eyes, I decided I really didn’t want to know.
He stood and held out his hand. “Should we go?”
I slipped my hand into his and he helped me to my feet, help I didn’t need but would not deny seeing as it involved his hand wrapped around mine. He led me, his strong fingers gentle on the small of my back, to the coat check.
The attendant took our tickets, her appreciation of his dark, ruggedly handsome face obvious.That’s my mountain to climb, bitch. Back off.
I smiled to myself. In my head I was truly a badass bitch. Not so much in real life.
“Ready?” His voice broke into my reverie as he held my coat open for me then smoothed it over my shoulders, his nose in my hair. Turning me around to face him, his stormy eyes held mine as he dragged the backs of his fingers down the lapels, fastening the buttons as he went.
My chest filled with air as the back of his knuckles brushed over my breasts.
I heard a soft gasp and looked up to find the attendant, her hand to her chest, lips parted, eyes on his hands.
Her eyes flitted up to mine and she smiled wide, and wagged her eyebrows in the universal message for, ‘you go, girl’!
I decided I could be friends with her. I smiled at her, then Hawk’s fingers brushed over my lower belly and my attention swung back to him. Impossibly, in every spot his hands brushed past, my skin burned and hungered for more. I blew out the breath I’d been holding.
“Good Lord,” the attendant breathed. Fanning herself as she walked away, she called, “Have a good night!”
Hawk offered her a perfunctory nod and led me, half-dazed, out of the restaurant.
He touched me so innocently, but with such focused intensity, she could feel it from three feet away. Awareness snapped between us. A magnet pulling me into his orbit, my entire being attuned to him.
My first date at Ayana’s surpassed my wildest teenage imaginings. Far from being a teenager anymore, the imaginings I indulged on the quiet ride home would have sent teenage me under her bed.
He kept a hand on me the whole way home. When he merged onto the highway and needed two hands, he pulled my hand over to his thigh. He laced our fingers together. Cupped his palm over my leg.
Used to being alone, the quiet didn’t bother me. It wasn’t until Hawk spoke that I realized he might have misinterpreted my silence.
At the stop sign leading onto Sage Ridge’s main road, he tugged my hand to pull my attention away from our linked fingers. “Are you okay, Noelle?”
I squeezed his hand and turned my smile on him. “Never better,” I replied, the huskiness of my voice revealing the train of my thought and darkening his eyes.
“Come home with me,” he demanded, his eyes slightly wild. “Will you do that? Will you come home with me?”
“Of course,” I smiled.
He rubbed a rough hand over his face and didn’t smile back. “I don’t know if I can give you what you deserve. If I were a better man…” he petered off.
The flash of headlights illuminated the back window. Hawk looked at the rearview mirror then back to the road as he rolled through the intersection.
I sat with my hands folded in my lap, my fingers twirling around each other.
He gripped the wheel with both of his.
“But I’m not a better man, Noelle. You need to know that. If you come home with me, you need to know that.”
Are you going to go all in or not?“Take me home with you, Hawk.” I paused then reminded him of my truth. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
