One move is all it’ll take.
One shift of his arm, or curl of my fingers against his chest. My mouth twitches at the thought, my tongue paints a slow line against the back of my teeth. Dustin’s gaze shifts to my mouth.
“I really should go.” His eyes are on mine again, and that moment—the time for one more move—has passed. It will come again. It has to.
I nod and he rolls to his side, sitting up and pushing his fists into his eyes before stretching his arms high above his head. His shirt lifts as he does and I’m gifted a glimpse of his waist, the definition of his abs teasing me with a brief show before his shirt falls again and he stands. That body and mine made a life together. Holy shit.
I’m amused by that thought when Dustin turns around and I blush that he caught me staring at what is clearly his ass. He doesn’t tease me, but his smirk says enough. I cover my own shame with a yawn as I push myself up to sit in the center of my bed.
“It’s the Santa Hike today. I thought maybe we could take Bristol. My mom would love it, you know.”
“I’d love it,” he says without pause. I dare say I think he really will.
“Okay.” It’s a date. Well, a family plan. But a date too. I close my eyes and will away the flutters.
“Hey, don’t fill out any paperwork yet,” he says before he reaches the door. His sudden change hits my gut, and my breath falters.
Before I can question why, he waves his hand. He must have seen my panic.
“I don’t want a record for Alex to find. Not until I figure out what to do.” He holds his tongue between his teeth in thought, his focus off to the side, no doubt his mind working from the moment he woke up.
“I understand,” I respond.
“I know you do.” His eyes return to me, and hidden under his words, I read the double meaning. He gets why I had to hide her. He understands, too.
“I have to find Tommy. He probably hates me right now,” he says, patting down his pockets for his phone. He pulls it out to check for texts, but his dejected expression tells me my brother has remained radio silent. I’m sure my phone is messageless too. It has been for a while.
“He hates me a lot more, so use that to your advantage,” I quip.
“Nobody hates you, Hannah. They couldn’t.”
It’s not forgiveness, but it’s close. His words wrap around my heart and hug me from the inside. It isn’t love but it’s an unequivocal rejection of hate. I celebrate it internally as we give in to one last longing stare. At least, it’s longing on my part.
“I’ll be back here by noon. Just in time to climb a mountain.” He flashes his signature grin and I nod, marking our date in my mental calendar.
I have nothing to do . . . other than figuring out where I’m going to live. Or how I’m going to support myself now that I’m giving notice to the institute that I won’t be back to teach in the spring. Or how I’m going to repair my friendship with Bailey, and engage her help to somehow reignite the inner vixen who was once able to wrap Dustin around her pinky finger all with a pair of very short denim cut-offs.
I do have a lot to do.
Dustin makes a stop at Tommy’s room to look in on our daughter one last time before he leaves, and rather than sprint from this bed to join him, I let him have his moment. He’s due so many of them. I’ll know when I’m wanted at his side.
I wait until I hear the Supra fire up before I slip from bed. I’m anxious to change out of yesterday’s clothes, but I also like that I smell like Dustin. I think I’ll keep them on for a little while longer, at least through coffee.
I slept in my shoes and my feet ache from the feeling, so I slip them off and stuff my feet into my old house slippers. Ducks, because for an entire year I thought I would go to Oregon for college. That never happened, obviously, but the slippers are boss.
I slide my way down the hall and stairs, fumbling through drawers until I find my mom’s secret stash of the expensive coffee grounds. I prep the maker and fill the water enough to brew an entire pot, assuming everyone of adult age in this house will need the added boost.
With idle time on my hands, I riffle through the pile of mail on the counter, holding what looks like a check from one of my dad’s clients up to the light the way I did when I was little. Unable to make out the numbers, I pretend it’s worth a million dollars and busy myself with the remaining envelopes.
My mom gets a lot of mail here. It’s forwarded from city hall, and the letters are mostly from people with big ideas or gripes about local politics. I recognize most of the names, and in a way, it’s satisfying to see that the regular players haven’t changed a bit.
A thick booklet listing wedding vendors catches my eye, so I flip through that, sliding up on one of the kitchen stools and crossing my legs. As I fan through the pages, though, a rogue letter slips to the floor. I ignore it for a few minutes, half-tempted to leave it there because my mom has enough of those to go through. But she answers every single one of them. When my handwriting got nicer in junior high, she used to dictate and let me respond for her.
“Emails get emails in return, but people who bother to walk to the post office and plaster on a stamp deserve the same,” she always said. It’s a dogma passed down from my grandfather, and it’s the way he ran city hall. My mom may be a lot of things, but she is most certainly not above the people. My grandpa would have been proud of her.
I pick the letter up and nearly discard it among the others but stop when I realize it’s addressed to me. I don’t recognize the formal handwriting, but I’m on edge simply at this letter’s existence. I grab a knife from the drawer and slice through the end of the envelope, shaking it upside down until a single folded note falls to the counter. The paper is expensive. The embossed monogram is recognizable from the back side.
AO
I swallow the razor blades down and unfold the paper.
So tell me, Hannah. Does Dustin know she’s his?
14
Tommy has been gone all morning. I can tell he didn’t sleep here. His bed is pristine—pillows lined up, spread tucked and all that—exactly how our weekly housekeeper left it two days ago. Tommy barely knows how to clean out the dryer vent, let alone make his bed. Lucky Bailey.
I feel pinned. I have so many things I want to accomplish, but I can’t move forward until I have this out with Tommy. I’ve been bobbing my legs while propped on the coffee table for the last thirty minutes, and I keep having to scoot the damn table back in place after shoving it away with my jack-hammering legs.
Finally, our front door beeps the alarm sound of someone entering. I set it to alert anytime someone enters, because now I know. Alex is going to hold me hostage forever, and I was only operating under the illusion that I was keeping everyone safe.
Tommy grumbles and flips the panel on the system, so I leap to my feet to stop him.
“Leave it. I reset it,” I say. His hand falls and so does his head as he groans.
“It’s the worst noise. It means I hear you come in late, when I’m sleeping, or leave early . . . when I’m sleeping.”
Tommy is always sleeping.
“I know, but there are things happening now and we need to know when someone is at our door, bro.” I’m trying not to sound freaked out, but honestly? I’ve worked myself up into a pretty wound-up mood.